Why Chikane has been largely absent from the ANC’s election campaign

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Opens in new windowOpens in new windowOpens in new windowOpens in new windowEnter fullscreen mode displaying this image.ExpandANC veteran Rev Frank Chikane. Picture: Freddy Mavunda/Business Day Story audio is generated using AI

ANC veteran Rev Frank Chikane has hardly done any campaigning for the party in Johannesburg — where he is supposed to be one of its three mayoral candidates — because the ANC has not confirmed his candidacy in writing or given him an undertaking his name will be included in its list of prospective proportional representation (PR) councillors.

With a little more than a week to go before the November 4 local elections, Chikane — touted by many in the party as the best candidate to go toe-to-toe with the DA’s Helen Zille for the Johannesburg mayoral chain — has been conspicuously absent from ANC campaigns in the hotly contested city.

In August, the ANC’s national office bearers — including President Cyril Ramaphosa — controversially changed the party’s decision to name its mayoral candidates ahead of the elections, opting instead to announce all those who had been interviewed as candidates for such posts. For Johannesburg, the party then said Chikane, current mayor Dada Morero and ANC Johannesburg regional chair Loyiso Masuku would be the faces for its campaign.

But whereas Morero and Masuku have been involved in numerous door-to-door campaigns in various communities around the city and participated in a number of public debates on behalf of the ANC, Chikane has been largely a no-show.

Why can’t he just do door-to-door [campaigning] as a normal member and be seen to be busy at least?” — anonymous ANC leader

It has now emerged the struggle veteran, who also served as director-general in the Presidency during Thabo Mbeki’s tenure, told the party he would first have to resign from several company boards he serves on before going all out with campaigning as its mayoral candidate, and that he could not do this without written confirmation of his candidacy from Luthuli House.

According to an ANC national executive committee (NEC) member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Chikane has written to the party asking its secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, to confirm in writing that his name will be included on the party’s PR list of candidate councillors for Johannesburg, and that he will eventually be named as the ANC’s mayoral candidate.

Despite having been named in a publicised event attended by Ramaphosa and other leaders as one of the three mayoral candidates, Chikane’s name was left off the final lists of candidates submitted to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) in what the ANC claimed was an “error” that would be corrected when a window to amend the lists officially opened just after election day.

However, others in the ANC believe he is a victim of factional fighting in the highest echelons of the party, where some officials are battling to retain Morero and others want Masuku to take over if the ANC wins the elections in Johannesburg.

Since it emerged Chikane had been left off the list, he has attended one election-related public ANC event — an ANC Women’s League gathering in Ivory Park, a township and residential suburb in Midrand bordering Tembisa.

After the Sunday Times asked the party why Chikane was not participating in its campaign programme, it was announced he would be sharing the stage with acting police minister Firoz Cachalia at a dinner event last night.

Several ANC sources said Chikane has insisted he will first have to resign from the company boards he sits on before joining the campaign trail.

Since leaving the government in 2009, he has held board positions at Thebe Investment Corporation, Kagiso Trust and the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

He is currently the chair of Kagiso Tiso Holdings, a black-owned and managed investment company that wholly owns Kagiso Media, where he also serves as a director.

Kagiso Media owns Jacaranda FM, East Coast Radio, Urban Brew Studios, Juta and Company, and Mediamark, and also holds shares in Kaya FM, Gagasi FM, OFM and Heart FM.

“Look, my understanding is that he has told both the SG [secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula] and the Johannesburg leadership that [the party’s] failing to confirm him as [its] mayoral candidate [has] meant he cannot wilfully resign from the boards he currently sits on. So he can’t be campaigning for the ANC while he is still on those boards. That’s his answer,” said a highly placed ANC leader this week.

“Remember, everyone expected him to be announced as our mayoral candidate, but we obviously took a different route. Now his problem is that he cannot be out there campaigning as a mayoral candidate when he still sits on these boards. That would be a serious conflict [of interest].”

However, this reasoning has been questioned by other ANC leaders.

“Why can’t he just do door-to-door [campaigning] as a normal member and be seen to be busy at least?” asked one party leader. “He is basically telling us, ‘If you guys don’t confirm me [as a mayoral candidate], don’t count me [in the campaign].’ I don’t know how we are going to explain all this [to Johannesburg residents].”

Chikane this week declined to comment when the Sunday Times approached him via WhatsApp and in person at the launch of the Africa and African Diaspora Conference he will be hosting next week.

ANC Johannesburg regional secretary Sasabona Manganye said “it would not be entirely accurate” to say Chikane had been completely absent from the party’s election campaign.

“We are unable to comment on that simply because we can have engagements with him whenever we need to,” said Manganye. “He’s able to avail himself, but we can’t tell [you] the reasons why, because if I can show you the deployment from the [ANC] Veterans’ League [AVL], he is one of the people the [AVL] itself has deployed to Johannesburg. He’s not expected to campaign simply because he is a nominee — no, he’s also a leader of the [AVL], and for us we did not necessarily treat him as a nominee.”

But an NEC member blamed the debacle on the party’s national officials, saying the “top seven” made “a mistake” when they opted not to name mayoral candidates.

“The ANC should have been bold and announced the mayoral candidates so that people know who the [proposed] mayor is,” the NEC source said. “When [the party campaigns], people [need to] know that the person who’s going to be their mayor is ethical, committed and incorruptible … Now they don’t know who that candidate will be.

“So it is a mistake that was [made], and it should be rectified soon, because people don’t know who their candidate is.”

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