In which ANC delegates, numbering roughly 4,000, converge on Johannesburg’s Nasrec convention centre in order to decide on stuff like whether or not White Monopoly Capital exists. Regardless, as has happened in the past, the consensus of the many can be overturned by plenaries of the few. It’s a scenario that Khrushchev would have found familiar – although the coffee is probably worse than any brewed during Soviet Russia’s darkest moments of deprivation. But in a country that is starting to engage in a conversation about the outsized role of political parties in democracy’s architecture, the conference will probably terrify those hoping not only for rational leaders, but for a revised means of choosing them. In this, the only thing the conference attendees are not pretending not to discuss is something South Africa desperately requires to move itself forward: the reformation of our electoral system, so we’re voting for people, not parties. By RICHARD POPLAK.

Every morning, as one enters Nasrec’s Gate 16 through the media pen, one encounters an abandoned fairground trapped behind a fence. Is there anything more bereft than the sound of long dead children shrieking with joy? Teacups sit unstirred. A dormant roller coaster resembles the twisted spinal column of a forgotten megasaur. Merry-go-round horses are frozen in mid-gallop, their faces locked in a rictus of rage and terror.

And so, an analogy: the ANC in its 105th year is a ghostly, ideologically abandoned amusement park. The fun is gone; the vibe is muted; the party and its leadership are scandal-whopped and dazed with face-melting angst. The conference itself kicked off with revelations that Minister of Natural Resources, Mosebenzi “Mosebebi” Zwane, helped funnel Free State agriculture cash to a Gupta front company, with which they paid for their famous wedding. At the same time, there was the death of two female journalists to deal with, one having succumbed to a stress-related malady related to the perils of the job. And then there was the physical harassment aimed at Tiso Blackstar editor-at-large Peter Bruce, by otherwise unemployable Gupta mini-mob.

That set the tone nicely.

Even the normally avuncular Gwede Mantashe was punchy and grim. On the conference’s inaugural morning, just hours before the Secretary-General dropped his now famous Zuma-baiting diagnostic report on delegates, he grumped his way through the media centre, staring down at a Styrofoam cup of coffee with what appeared to be terminal disgust.

“Members are here today to discuss policies, that’s the essence of the conference,” he snarled at me.

The diagnostic document itself, which seemed to favour the outlook of cadres who stood in opposition to Zuma and his Premier League backers, had been the subject of much debate in the National Executive Committee (NEC) the previous week. This was largely because it tears down the Zuma-era’s belly-first non-policies, name-checks the Guptas, and demands a serious bout of critical exfoliation. The president and his most slavish allies tried to water it down in the NEC, to no effect. And now Gwede wanted to fling it into the policy conference mix, ratifying what we all knew: “The policy conference,” as one insider put it, “is a lobbying conference. And this one is all about the leadership transition.”

But Mantashe refused to see it this way. “The succession debate is not a factor here,” he said, wincing as he sipped his coffee-type beverage. “Anyone who wants to bring that here is going to cause problems.”

Others echoed this position. Treasurer-General Zweli Mkhize would later draw for me the battle lines:

“Issues of reorganisation, or organisational renewal, have been one major issue. The other has been economic policy – those are the two big ones on the table. We will not tolerate ill-discipline regarding being in favour of one group or another.”

The way Mantashe and Mkhize saw it, organisational renewal in particular was an inherently ANC impulse.

“The ANC has seen many things,” Mantashe explained to me. “In 1930, we picked for a president one of the greatest ever African intellectuals, Pixley ka Isaka Seme. It was a disaster.” The dismissal of JT Gumede as president-general in favour of Seme was a historical mistake; the resultant slide, he said, was properly arrested only during the Morogoro Conference in 1969. “So, these events will help the party self-correct,” he said.

History and brand would meet policy in a proton-split of extreme renewal. This, at least, was the plan.

* * *

The execution, however, left something to be desired. The Nasrec grounds were designed by Satanists to be a working approximation of Hell, rendered in concrete and brick instead of fire and pain. The site is dominated by the convention centre itself, out of which dozens of rooms bleed off into a square cluttered with fast-food joints and various attempts at Mandela-era rainbowist public art.

The ANC had worked hard to make this environment even more foreboding. Their security hacks set up replicas of the fencing that inters mutant Brazilian chickens in pampas coops, but in this case was keeping journalists as far away from the 4,000 delegates and their 11 working groups as possible. “We can’t have you watching them as they work,” a communications apparatchik told me, mock-galled at my frustration, “or they wouldn’t be able to speak freely.”

But as Ferial Haffajee noted in an elegiac piece, this wasn’t always the case, and it did nothing to stem the leaks – journalists blew airtime calling delegates, who blew data WhatsApping rumours of their resolutions. It was more a reflection of the ANC’s creeping paranoia, articulated in Mantashe’s diagnostic report, which ludicrously cited the pending dangers of imperialist regime change – as if re-colonising South Africa was top of Donald Trump or Theresa May’s respective to-do lists.

So journalists were restricted to the poultry pen, where we shared bird ‘flu viruses in the media centre, or pecked at the party line in the press room.

A fun thing to do was to watch luxury vehicles pull up at the fence and dispatch Zuma lapdogs at the ANN7 studio, which was conveniently placed as close to the entrance as possible. Lord forbid that the likes of Speaker of the House, Baleke Mbete, or Free State Premier, Ace Magashule, should have to walk through the grounds and encounter the unwashed masses that constituted their own party’s membership. Magashule even took the opportunity to co-host a show on the Gupta-owned station, looping the “news” in on itself in ever-tightening coils of bullshit. This isn’t sniping, but a reflection on the over-arching problem with the very idea of a policy conference in a country run by whips and secretaries-general, and the inevitable majoritarianism that results from voting not for individual members of Parliament, but for parties: 4,000 people, their decisions either accepted or ignored by an elite plenary, decide the fate of 55-million – a process that resembles democracy in the same way that unicycle resembles a Porsche 911 Turbo.

* * *

As if one required any more proof of this fact, President Zuma was on hand to provide it. His opening speech will now be remembered for his attack on the “so-called stalwarts” – a reference to the 101 ANC Stalwarts, who called for a boycott of the conference in the face of what they deemed a leadership crisis – and his articulation of the many inconveniences inherent in governing under the terms of a Constitution, including judges. (He hates those guys.) In both cases, Zuma spoke extemporaneously, but there was one other case in which he went off-script: he twice read the section referring to service delivery protests that turn violent. “This is very important,” he said, the second time, “We do not condone violent protests as people can make their voices heard in a peaceful manner, protected by the Constitution. In fact, the view of the ANC is that damage to state property in particular must be categorised as a serious offence punishable by a long-term sentence.”

His contention is, of course, nonsense: in any capitalist/authoritarian system, only those at the top of the pyramid can “make their voices heard”. It was nevertheless a telling over-emphasis, and it served to remind those in attendance that what is decided in Nasrec doesn’t stay in Nasrec – it becomes the law of the land.

In a real country, nobody outside the wonkosphere would care about a political party’s policy-creation proposals – figure your shit out, show us what you’ve got come election time, and we’ll comparison shop. But until opposition parties prove that they’re mature institutions that can actually win votes rather than sop up the ANC’s losses, the alliance remains the only game in town. And so a dysfunctional system corrals journalists into an icy pen in order to monitor WhatsApp groups, drink sludge, and try to decipher the electronic hieroglyphs for signs of who shall rule us next.

* * *

Which brings us to the battle for White Monopoly Capital.

On day three, the ANC comms team organised – and I use the term loosely – an excursion beyond the chicken-fenced environs of the concentration camp. We were going to visit Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was set to tour the convention centre.

We were going into the Forbidden City.

After a fight to get through the security line – call it Survivor: Nasrec – we were shoved onto golf carts or poured into minivans, and driven in purdah-like exclusion to the conference centre. Through the Forbidden City we trundled, at 3km per hour, through throngs of chatting delegates and clothing stalls. Then, into the greater hangar-like main hall. The experience was baffling: the first person I came face to face with was a stern weather-worn Boer manning a booth for something called Feedgrow Farms-In-A-Box. (Don’t ask.) Alongside him, there was a chintzy historical display featuring Mandela in military fatigues; a stage stocked with Nissan luxury vehicles (Cyril would later rev the engine of a black GTR, contributing to the inanest photo-op in history); a totally flash Multichoice infotainment area with a raised Miami-style cocaine lounge; a booth selling drones (!!!); many booths selling ANC branded clothing, and of course, a VIP room. The trade show was managed by the Progressive Business Forum, which reminds us that the ANC is, first and foremost, a business, and a big one – not the biggest in South Africa in terms of revenue, but certainly the most diverse in terms of its interests.

When he showed up, Ramaphosa looked hale and confident. Events, it seemed, were going the deputy president’s way. According to insiders, what had tipped the balance of power in his favour was not so much the surprise existence of sympathetic delegates in Premier League provinces such as Mpumalanga, although that certainly helped, but rather the morons at the Youth League and the Women’s League, who had overplayed their hands by releasing their slates for the top leadership about a month ago. A nod for the vastly loathed Magashule as Secretary-General was a turning point for many. A source told me that “people hated Ace’s inclusion, and that has destabilised some people, who were just like, ‘Fuck you, we’re going with Cyril’.”

Mantashe’s diagnostic report was accepted as a discussion document – interpreted by the wonks as a win for Cyril. Folks were speaking of radical socio-economic transformation, rather than radical economic transformation – interpreted, again, as a win for Cyril. And word would leak out the following day that in the economic commission, things were tipping towards Mantashe’s preferred designation of Monopoly Capital, rather than White Monopoly Capital.

These ancient Soviet-style semantic battles are so pathetic as to be laughable, even if the contestation within the commissions is basically life and death. We all know that the economy, a massively complex beast, remains largely untransformed and deeply unfair. But this wasn’t about the economy – it was about language as a proxy for leadership contestation.

“The ANC is a living organism,” said Ramaphosa, unconvincingly. “We understand that we have a deep responsibility with regard to guiding both society, and government.” About 10 minutes before making that statement, the deputy president had strapped on a pair of virtual reality goggles at the Multichoice booth. Apparently, he felt quite dizzy after the experience.

There is no word on what alternate universe confronted Ramaphosa on the other side of reality, because he was whisked off before answering a single question. If we were looking for tiny moments of nuanced symbolism, this was the most perfect – a fake press conference in a fake policy conference in a fake democracy. DM

Photo: South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma gestures during his opening address at the African National Congress 5th National Policy Conference at the Nasrec Expo Centre in Soweto, South Africa June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko