Polokwane — Award-winning South African journalist Zubeida Jaffer, who has chronicled South Africa's struggle for liberation from the inside, sums up the first day of the ANC's five-yearly conference in the northern province of Limpopo.
When we arrived at the University of Limpopo this morning, groups of delegates chanting in favour of two opposing presidential candidates were making their way to a large white marquee constructed especially for the ANC conference.
Since the unbanning of the ANC in 1990, I have covered the four-year and then five-year conferences regularly, and the scene was not unusual – the opening sessions have always been characterized by boisterous singing of freedom songs, much ululating and exchanges of warm greetings.
Today, however, there was a palpable tension in the air. Provincial delegations displayed their preferences, with the Eastern Cape chanting for Thabo Mbeki and KwaZulu-Natal singing the famous Zuma song, "umshiwimi wam" ("Bring me my machine gun") Warm greetings between delegates appeared to be confined supporting the same candidates.
At first I mistook the singing for a spirit of healthy competitiveness. But then the chairperson of the ANC, Terror Lekota, attempted to open the conference and was ignored. This was the first serious indication of the extent of the tension. He eventually managed to quieten the delegates sufficiently so that the interfaith prayers could take place.
Very soon after that however, he was once again unable to bring the meeting to order and the secretary-general, Kgalema Motlanthe, had to come to his rescue. Motlanthe clearly had the support of the opposition forces and immediately the mood quietened down.
For many this was an uncomfortable display of disregard for one of the most senior ANC leaders. The chairperson traditionally is somebody who enjoys the support of everybody. In the past few weeks, Lekota had spoken out against the Zuma campaign and it is this that observers say provoked the reaction this morning.
This trend was further cemented when about half the delegates greeted the end of President Mbeki's two-hour-long address with a thunderous expression of pro-Zuma singing.
Lekota stood by helplessly while they swung their arms in the air and rolled their hands simultaneously as a sign of changing of the guard. For a moment, the combination of sound and rapid movement gave a sense of a Mexican wave at a soccer game. But this was no soccer match. This was expression of vociferous dissatisfaction with the leadership. At the same time, it was a healthy sign that the led were not afraid to speak out.
Some ANC members and leaders have explained this morning's dramatic events as purely an exercise in letting off steam. They say that only the voting will reveal people's true feelings.
Those who support President Mbeki place their hope in the conference's secret balloting. Within the branches, they say, delegates were subject to pressures from others. Alone in the voting booths at conference, they will express their true preferences.
Those in the Zuma camp believe that they have vociferously demonstrated that they are way in the lead. By tonight, the voting will start and from tomorrow we will have some sense of what the coming years will bring.
To be fair to those who accorded the president little respect when he finished his long political report, it could be argued that he provoked this reaction. In analyzing the present impasse, he failed dismally to sketch a context that would allow all conference members to attempt to understand the challenges at hand.
Instead, he suggested that the present tensions were solely due to careerism and political immaturity. The underlying message was that delegates did not know what they were doing because they did not understand the traditions of the ANC, that they had not been sufficiently schooled in politics. He chose to highlight the worst cases of intimidation in the run-up to the conference.
What he did not do was to consider that some of the present tension appears to flow from the lack of recognition that perhaps the old ANC traditions do not adequately meet the demands of a new time. He did not elaborate on the fact that this was the first time that the ANC was faced with a serious presidential race and had no previous experience to draw from.
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Instead of dealing with the criticisms directed at him and his leadership group in the National Executive Committee (NEC), he presented all those outside of this group as opportunistic and stupid.
This may be a harsh thing to say, but it was the underlying message of the speech and this attitude is what may cost him considerable support. It would have been good to see him suggest a framework within which delegates could consider how to deal publicly with an intense contest for leadership, which by its very nature is an inevitable part of a democracy.
Tonight the voting gets under way in an atmosphere fraught with tension with nobody able to forecast the outcome without any certainty. And while this produces in me a feeling of unease, at the same time I have to consider that perhaps we are going through the growing pains of learning to deepen the democratic process in an open society.
