Mkhize says Zuma can still lead South Africa

ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma’s lifelong confidant and political ally, KwaZulu-Natal Finance Minister Zweli Mkhize, has defended Zuma, saying the former deputy president was capable of leading South Africa and taking the ANC into its centenary.

In a no-holds barred briefing with newspaper editors in Durban, Mkhize said Zuma remained a strong and capable contender for the position of ANC president and president of South Africa, despite his ongoing run-ins with the law.

He said Zuma was being undermined because he was not a highly educated man.

The M&G has gathered that Mkhize also defended Zuma’s national election campaign for the top ANC job, saying Zuma’s behaviour and the behaviour of his supporters was not foreign to the ANC.

‘He said lobbying was an integral part of any ANC conference.”

Mkhize admitted that Zuma lieutenants were talking to influential interest groups in the ANC and that selling their candidate was part of a healthy and vibrant internal party democracy.

He specified, however, that this was not campaigning but lobbying.

‘He took us back to the ANC conference in 1991, where hard lobbying between the Mbekites and those punting for Chris Hani led to a deadlock and [Walter] Sisulu was brought in as a compromise.”

At that conference in Durban, Hani and Mbeki were contenders for the deputy presidency of the ANC when party elders intervened and appointed Sisulu as Nelson Mandela’s deputy.

Mkhize said media analysis of the succession race in the ANC was out of touch with reality and appeared to be a misreading of ANC traditions.

Mkhize, who has until now been a behind-the-scenes campaigner for Zuma, told the editors that ANC delegates at the elective conference in December would not be concerned about Zuma’s rape case or his pending fraud and corruption trial because those matters had been resolved.

Addressing fears that Zuma would be South Africa’s own Hugo Chávez, Mkhize pointed out that South Africans and the media were initially sceptical about President Thabo Mbeki stepping into Mandela’s shoes, but learned to embrace him at the beginning of his second term in office.

Defending the decision by KwaZulu­-Natal to announce that it would support Zuma to replace Mbeki as party president in December, Mkhize said the ANC was more interested in what Zuma had to offer than in scrutinising his perceived flaws.

Mkhize, who is also the deputy provincial chairperson of the ANC, leads an anti-Mbeki group that includes provincial secretary Senzo Mchunu, eThekwini regional chairperson and provincial Minister for Safety and Security Bheki Cele, eThekwini regional secretary John Mchunu, Speaker of the provincial legislature Willies Mchunu and other provincial leaders behind Zuma’s campaign.

Mkhize’s spokesperson Mashu Cele said Mkhize had rejected the M&G‘s requests for an interview or comment on any specific matter.