The northern Free State faction’s proficiency in establishing branches has been documented by historians and political commentators.
‘During this period the ANC in the province was dominated by northerners because of the party’s development in the north in as far as branches were concerned,’ historian Chitja Twala noted. ‘The situation was expected to change after 1994, when the ANC was seen expanding its support in Thaba Nchu [outside Bloemfontein] where it had little support. ’1
As the April 1994 election drew near, the northern faction’s branch-building started yielding results. Magashule, and not Lekota, now enjoyed the number-one spot on the ANC’s provincial list. This should have secured him the position of premier, but after the election, the national leadership appointed Lekota instead.
Although premiers are technically voted into power by each province’s own legislature, the ANC’s NEC decides who the candidates for the job will be. At the party’s 2007 national conference, the rules were altered to allow provinces to have a bigger say in the appointment of premiers.
Since 2007, each PEC may submit the names of three ‘cadres’ for the
role of premier to the NEC. But the final decision still lies with the NEC. 2 The job of premier is therefore a prerogative of whoever rules the roost at Luthuli House, the ANC’s headquarters. So it was that in 1994 Magashule was once again snubbed by the party’s senior leaders.
In an interview more than a decade later, Magashule reflected on the development. ‘I volunteered to step down in favour of an older person.
[Lekota] was not even on the provincial list. I enjoy working with the masses,’ he told the Mail & Guardian in 2005. 3
Some commentators have framed the move as a case of the national leadership imposing a political ‘outsider’ on the province in defiance of the people’s preference for the supposedly popular Magashule. In his book South African Politics Since 1994, Tom Lodge noted that although Lekota grew up in Kroonstad, he spent significant amounts of time outside the province before the first democratic election.4
While there may be some merit to this argument, it has its holes. After all, Magashule spent three years at the University of Fort Hare in the early 1980s before his years in ‘internal exile’ in Johannesburg and his eventual stint outside the country in the latter half of the decade. It is likely that the northern faction’s superior branch-building skills, which allowed it to dictate the Free State’s leadership preferences, played a bigger role in the portrayal of Magashule as the ‘popular choice’ than province-wide consensus or ground-level support.
According to some accounts, the national leadership asked Magashule to step aside because of Lekota’s seniority. But given Magashule’s track record in the struggle, which included rumours about financial misconduct, insubordination and bad discipline, one wonders whether the issue of seniority was foremost on everyone’s minds. It seems plausible that the ANC top brass decided to keep Magashule away
from the provincial throne simply because they thought he would be disastrous for the province. His conduct after the election certainly supports this theory.
Lekota’s short term as Free State premier was marred by the ongoing political feud between the opposing power blocs. Papi Kganare recalled how Magashule’s camp used ‘dirty tricks’ to undermine the premier at every opportunity. ‘Magashule and his faction were behind this idea that Lekota was against QwaQwa [the former homeland in the Free State’s eastern corner] because he wanted the province’s capital to be in Bloemfontein and not in QwaQwa,’ Kganare explained. ‘They were fuelling negative sentiments against Lekota in that part of the province.’
In November 1994, the Free State ANC finally held its first provincial elective conference as a unified province. It was held in QwaQwa, which did not bode well for the southern faction. Lekota, who may have been lulled into a false sense of security because of the support he enjoyed from the ANC’s national leadership, did not do much lobbying ahead of the conference. 5
The results were disastrous for the Lekota camp. Pat Matosa, one of Magashule’s allies from the north, defeated Lekota by seventy-three votes for the position of provincial chairperson, while Magashule became deputy chairperson. 6
There is an oft-repeated misconception that Magashule became chair in 1994, to the extent that this inaccuracy now stands as a commonly accepted fact when political journalists write about him. ‘As the longest-serving provincial party boss – he has held his position since 1994 – Magashule has served under all of SA’s four presidents, from Nelson Mandela to Jacob Zuma,’ wrote Marianne Merten in a 2012
edition of the Sunday Independent. 7 And in 2017, in the build-up to the ANC’s national elective conference at Nasrec, Sunday Times political scribe Qaanitah Hunter also wrote that Magashule had been the ‘ANC provincial chairman since 1994’. 8
There are no indications that Magashule has ever tried to state the true facts. And why would he? The inaccuracy is a useful footnote in the narrative that portrays Magashule as the province’s top dog since the advent of democracy.
Nevertheless, the ANC’s vision of having one person serve as both premier and party chairperson, which may have stemmed the tide of rival power blocs, was now in tatters. While Lekota held on to the province’s executive decision-making powers, Magashule and his faction now ran the party’s affairs.
Lekota made some efforts to accommodate the northerners in the provincial government. In 1994, Magashule was appointed as the Free State MEC for economic affairs and tourism in Lekota’s first cabinet.
But the fault lines in the province’s power dynamics ran deep, and any peace that this may have brought about was bound to be tentative and fragile.
Twala documented how ‘the aggrieved northerners led by Matosa and Magashule made life difficult for Lekota and accused him of ruling the Free State illegitimately’.9 According to Twala, a year after the first provincial cabinet was constituted, the political cold war escalated to open warfare when Lekota first suspended housing MEC and Magashule ally Vax Mayekiso over a dodgy property deal. Mayekiso had allegedly used his position as MEC to put pressure on and threaten the owner of a fuel station in Welkom to sell his business. It had then emerged that Mayekiso’s wife had a stake in the deal.
Magashule was next in the firing line. In June 1996, Lekota axed him when
he
reshuffled
his
cabinet,
accusing
Magashule
of
‘insubordination’. When Matosa and other northerners threatened to institute a vote of no confidence in Lekota in the provincial legislature, the ANC’s national leadership was forced to intervene. Steve Tshwete helped the two factions find some common ground, and Lekota subsequently reinstated Magashule. 10 However, he was appointed as MEC for transport, a move that was seen as a demotion. 11
It became increasingly clear that Lekota had initially fired Magashule over something more dubious than mere insubordination. In July, the same month in which Magashule was reinstated, Lekota drew attention to some questionable dealings at the Department of Economic Affairs and Tourism. Under Magashule’s watch, the department had secretly set up two Section 21 or non-profit companies without approval from the executive council or the provincial treasury. The two entities, called the Free State Investment and Promotion Agency and the Free State Tourism Company, had received nearly R6 million from Magashule’s department. A report by the Free State’s director-general found that the agencies had made questionable loans to staff members and had also splurged some of the money on trips abroad and even on pub lunches and CDs.12 Lekota suspended five senior officials in Magashule’s former department, three of whom belonged to Magashule’s ANC
branch. 13 This further fuelled tensions between the two camps.
Magashule’s own fingerprints were on some of the dodgy dealings involving the department and its agencies. It was alleged that he had played a role in questionable loans granted by th
e Free State Development Corporation to companies associated with or linked to him. The FDC is the state-owned entity that would later absorb the
functions of the Free State Investment and Promotion Agency after the latter was closed. The loans were made to funeral parlours, a pharmacy and a car dealership, among other businesses, and Magashule apparently approved the transactions himself. 14
Lekota appointed Peter Goldhawk, a chartered accountant who had helped establish accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers’ forensic unit, to probe the allegations. The Goldhawk report was released towards the end of 1996, and it made some scathing findings. The FDC had made ‘irregular’ loans totalling about R3 million without following proper procedure, the report found. 15 Goldhawk could not find any evidence that Magashule or anyone close to him had benefited from the loans, but he did conclude that the former MEC had unlawfully interfered in the decision-making processes of the FDC
board. 16
In August 1996, the Mail & Guardian reported that police were investigating some of the allegations around the Department of Economic Affairs and Tourism. Magashule’s alleged ‘fraud’ formed part of their probe. 17
Kganare and a former member of Magashule’s camp said there was much more going on at Magashule’s department than what came out in the media at the time. ‘When Ace was MEC, he awarded a tender for cleaning services to a company that would have massively overcharged government,’ Kganare claimed. ‘We’re talking about paying R200 for a one-kilogram box of Omo washing powder, R100 for a bar of soap that costs R6.’ He said that the businessman would have made a 500 per cent profit through the deal, and that it was someone connected to Magashule. ‘This was the start of Ace’s looting,’ Kganare observed.
‘Terror [Lekota] picked up that Ace was issuing instructions for
companies to get paid by the Department of Economic Affairs, and it was unclear what some of these payments were for,’ the former member of the Magashule camp told me. ‘In some of the cases there were huge amounts involved.’
The auditor-general’s (AG’s) subsequent report on the department’s affairs, released at the end of 1996, pegged the unauthorised expenditure at almost R8 million and further validated suspicions about Magashule’s handling of public funds. ‘The contents of this report clearly document substantial disregard for due process and proper procedure by individuals in positions of public trust. It is clear that the interests of the taxpayer and that of good governance have not been served in this instance,’ acting AG J.A.J. Loots said in his report. 18
In June the following year, the province’s public accounts committee concluded an investigation that shed further light on the financial improprieties involving Magashule. The FDC loans granted on Magashule’s insistence were paid without obtaining securities from the various recipients, and no repayments had been made, the committee found. It also identified ‘irregularities’ in the awarding of a contract for cleaning products and recommended that legal action be taken against the supplier in question.19 This appears to be the same contract referred to by Kganare.
Lekota, meanwhile, kept upping the ante in his ongoing assault on the northerners. He was accused of leading a witch-hunt driven by political motivations. There is probably some merit to this view, but it is not like the northerners made it difficult for their enemies to find dirt on them.
Lodge has documented how Lekota appeared on radio shows to inform the public about Magashule’s alleged corruption. He also aired
the dirty laundry of some of Magashule’s allies, including an incident in which Matosa allegedly pointed a firearm at a traffic official after being stopped for reckless driving. 20
But Lekota’s tactic backfired on him. His attacks over the airwaves were viewed as a step too far by the ANC’s national leadership, which has always preferred resolving its conflicts internally and as quietly as possible. In November 1996, Lekota and his cabinet were asked to resign. The national leadership tasked a ‘caretaker committee’ headed by then labour minister Tito Mboweni to take over the reins in the conflict-ridden province. 21 The ANC also disbanded the PEC chaired by Matosa.
To some, the move was seen as a serious censure levelled at Lekota and his camp. This may be true to some extent. Mandela and his fellow party leaders would not have been happy with how the Free State had degenerated into a political war zone under Lekota’s watch. However, some of those who were present when the matter came to a head within the ANC’s top leadership structures say Mandela saved the bulk of his wrath for the Magashule faction.
Before a meeting at Shell House, the ANC’s head office at the time, Mandela summoned the foremost individuals from both sides of the divide to his residence in Cape Town. Among those in attendance were Magashule, Matosa, Mayekiso, Lekota and Gregory Nthatisi.
Apparently Mandela was especially furious about how the northern camp had undermined Lekota’s authority as premier. ‘Mandela told Pat
[Matosa] that he was showing bad leadership as chairperson by not taking responsibility for the infighting, and for allowing himself to be influenced by others,’ said one source who attended the meeting. This person believes the latter remark was a reference to Magashule, who
was viewed by some as the true power behind Matosa.
In public, Mandela tried to be as diplomatic about the crisis as he could. ‘Of course, healthy competition between individuals for election posts is a natural part of any democratic organisation,’ he said at an ANC gathering in November 1996, in reference to the fighting in the Free State. ‘But when personal competition starts to absorb all one’s energies, when political programmes are forgotten and when solid grassroots work is neglected, then matters become very serious. ’22
To help quash hostilities, the national leadership decided to redeploy Lekota to Cape Town, where, in February 1997, he became chairperson of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP). 23 Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, then board chair of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), was appointed as the Free State’s new premier.24
Because the ANC had also dissolved the Free State PEC, a special elective conference was convened in February 1997. It was held in Welkom, a stronghold for the northern camp, but by now the national leadership’s interventions had weakened Magashule’s faction. Lodge described the event as a ‘sullen’ affair, 25 and one can understand why Free State party members would have been less than enthusiastic, given the lashing that both factions had recently received from their political seniors.
The national leadership, which hoped to finally achieve its ideal of having the positions of chair and premier reside in one person, nominated Matsepe-Casaburri to lead the party in the province. But Zingile Dingane, a Lekota ally, comfortably beat Matsepe-Casaburri to become the new chair. The conference was a resounding victory for the southerners, who won practically all the positions up for grabs and
thereby retook control of the ANC in the Free State. 26 However, their dominance would be short-lived, as would Matsepe-Casaburri’s stint as premier.
Magashule, meanwhile, was supposed to become an ordinary member of Parliament (MP), but he was set adrift in political limbo pending the outcome of the probes into his former department’s affairs. He was effectively cast into the political wilderness, and it was up to the ANC’s top leadership to decide his fate.
In June 1997, the ANC’s National Working Committee (NWC) held a meeting to discuss the findings of the reports compiled by the AG and the public accounts committee. Among those present were Mandela, ANC chairperson Jacob Zuma and acting secretary-general Cheryl Carolus. Despite the AG’s grave assessment of Magashule’s conduct and evidence of his reckless approach to the management of public monies, as highlighted by the public accounts committee, the NWC
gave him a free pass. They maintained that Magashule had not been found guilty of any impropriety and announced that he would take up his seat in Parliament when it reconvened in August that year. 27
The ANC’s national conference at the end of 19
97 brought about changes to the organisation’s constitution, some of which affected the mechanics of the provincial structures. As a result, the Free State and some other provinces had to convene fresh provincial conferences in 1998.
In August 1998, the party’s provincial membership gathered at the Central University of Technology in Bloemfontein. This time, Magashule was elected as the ANC’s new chair in the province. 28
Matsepe-Casaburri did not even secure a nomination from the branches.
Lodge attributed the Magashule camp’s victory to renewed branch-level organisation in northern towns like Sasolburg, in the goldfields around Welkom and in far-flung QwaQwa. 29 But the northern faction’s consolidation of its branch-level support base was accompanied by rumours of voting irregularities. 30
According to sources involved in the party’s provincial structures back then, there were indications that some branches in the northern region had made use of ‘ghost members’ to increase the number of delegates the north could send to the conference. ‘We found that there were members in a branch in Welkom who were fully paid up, but when we checked, they were people who had been dead for a long time,’ said one source.
According to this former ANC leader, they managed to track down a woman whose dead son had signed the attendance register for a branch meeting during which delegates were elected to attend the provincial conference. ‘This old lady told us that if her dead son was still haunting branch meetings, he could at least pop in at home to greet his parents,’ he told me.
Although banished to Cape Town, Magashule could now start reclaiming the levers of power his faction had lost under Lekota and Matsepe-Casaburri. The new PEC ensured that Lekota’s foes, including Mayekiso, were once again appointed to the Free State’s executive council.31
Come 1999, Magashule must have felt sure that the time had finally come for him to be appointed premier. After all, he was the ruling party’s chairperson in the Free State, and the ANC had been very clear that it desired one person to lead both the provincial party and government. His supporters had been calling him the ‘premier in
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