THE rumours have been swirling. Defence Minister Terror Lekota is said to have led the drive to start a new party in opposition to the Zuma-led ANC. There are enough embittered former Mbeki loyalists about to add logs to such a fire were it to be started.
But indications are that Mbeki himself is charting a course within the ANC.
The fact that he opted to accede to the ANC’s demand that he quit and handed in his resignation suggests that he is not using this moment to drive home divisions so much as to win sympathy by playing party loyalist.
Mbeki did, many years ago, in an interview with Patrick Bulger that the time would come when the ANC would split into two parties, one of centrists and another to the left. The article caused a massive stir at the time and Mbeki never repeated this prediction. But it is clearly part of his vision of how South Africa’s politics could unfold and mature.
Perhaps the key matter is whether or not the Zuma-led ANC decides to plot a fresh economic policy path which would suggest it has sold out to its left allies in Cosatu and the SACP.
Such a move would raise the prospect of a genuine as opposed to personality-based cleavage.
But that moment of ideological cleavage is still some way down the line. And Zuma must be all-to-aware of the danger of selling out to the left at the expense of the booming black middle classes who are highly influential stake-holders in the party.
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