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Malema – a poem called "History" “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme,” the writer Mark Twain once commented. He could just as well have been referring to the Julius Malema-induced dramas within the ANC-led ruling alliance and the socalled verlig/verkrap battle within the ranks of its predecessor National Party (NP) government. Malema is increasingly starting to look like the ANC alliance’s incarnation of the late Dr Andries Treurnicht.
For our younger readers, Dr Andries Treurnicht was the frontman during the late 1970s and early 1980s for a group within the NP, dead set against any reform to the apartheid system. He became the leader of the Conservative Party.
As the marriage of convenience conceived by the freedom struggle between the ANC, SA Communist Party, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco) increasingly comes under the strain of day-to-day government, political realignment is becoming increasingly inevitable.
When erstwhile top NP constitutional negotiator Roelf Meyer in 1997 broke away from the NP to form the United Democratic Movement in partnership with erstwhile “homeland” military leader Bantu Holomisa, it was in the belief that the realignment was at hand and the ANC about to split.
When Thabo Mbeki, in the run-up to the 1999 election, roped in Marthinus van Schalkwyk and what was left of the NP, it was part of a wider political deal. Dr Gatsha Buthelezi was party to that deal and would, in fact, have become deputy president of the country.
Like he so often did throughout his political career, Buthelezi at the last minute stepped back from the deal. Mbeki, however, went ahead with an attempt to implement a realignment strategy.
The rationale behind these moves was an attempt by Mbeki to consolidate the middle ground and rid himself of the stranglehold of the communist-led Left. In fact, after the election, there were some 'redeployments' throughout government structures in an attempt to sideline the Left.
Historic processes such as these are usually quite messy and seldom without a degree of disruption and always have actors who at times play apparently crucial roles way beyond their long-term importance.
The latest outburst by ANC Youth League (ANCYL) President Malema has, if anything, served more dramatically than ever before to lay bare the self-destructive tensions currently at play within the ruling alliance. However, it is more than likely merely another scene in a political drama of which the final act may still be some way off.
But, in what may be a rather desperate attempt by an almost powerless jacob Zuma within party political context to hold together the feuding alliance, the ANC president was seen trying to steer a neutral middle course, patch up relationships and sooth dented egos wherever he could – a task that may yet prove to be impossible.
As it did when the late John Vorster appointed Treurnicht to the position of deputy minister, but when – in a crucial caucus meeting – he was asked to rule out “power sharing” as becoming an option, he said he was “not willing to try to rule from the grave”.
The ANC and Zuma, however, do find themselves at something of a crossroads in their relationship with their left-wing allies, and the ruling alliance has drifted steadily into probably its greatest, and most self-destructive, crisis ever since the SACP and the ANCYL, among others, first played a critical role in ousting Mbeki at the ANC’s 2007 national conference in Polokwane and bringing Zuma to power.
