During the height of the state capture years, both then president Jacob Zuma and Free State premier (and later ANC secretary-general) Ace Magashule had very little between the two of them in terms of coherent political policies to radically change South African society.
It was only as the pressure mounted from repeated media revelations of their malfeasance – and their relationship with their “capturers”, the arrogant and greedy Gupta family – that they started their deflection campaign, with the help, ironically, of white, foreign spin doctors Bell Pottinger.
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Suddenly, the talking point or mantra became “white monopoly capital”, the supposed evil which had hijacked the South African’s people’s revolution and prevented a better life from being handed to all.
On the heels of that racially divisive slogan came the Zuma-Magashule camp’s attempt to claim the ANC policy of “radical economic transformation” (RET) as their own.
They convinced many of their supporters that this “fight” was not about corruption, but about their “just” struggle against the horrors of neo-colonialism and global capitalism which seek to “enslave” African people.
Most right-thinking people could see through the base attempts at covering up venality and the Zuma-Magashule camp began to look increasingly on the wrong side of history. Until this weekend, that is.
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Former president Thabo Mbeki (if he is correctly quoted, of course) maybe have given them the gift of political legitimacy by telling the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) meeting that the ANC could split because of “ideological differences”, as happened in 1975, when the Africanists opposed to non-racialism were expelled from the organisation.
In other words, this was not about corruption – the millstone around the neck of the ANC – this was about what policies were best for the country.
Those comments may have made martyrs of Zuma and Magashule and may blow a huge hole in anti-corruption machinery.