An independent analyst says Supra Mahumapelo’s departure as premier of the North West doesn’t mean he’ll have any less power in the province.
Mahumapelo remains the ANC chairperson in North West.
Analyst Vukani Mde says: “He remains chair of the ANC in the province. That’s an incredibly powerful position, at least as powerful as the premier if not more so because the ANC sees itself as the strategic centre of power and therefore the government structures and deployees of the ANC report to the party.
“If Supra remains in the province, and his key allies remain in the government with their hands on the lever of the state in the province, then he can exercise influence and it would be great – he would exercise influence without the responsibilities of being in the state and being the public face of the government in the North West”, said Mde.
Adding to the oddness of the whole performance were the two stated reasons for his “early retirement”. That he did not want to be accused of using his position to defend himself from his political opponents who were involved in a “counter-revolution” in the province. The other stated reason was that there are corruption investigations underway there, and thus he didn’t want to be seen to be standing in the way of those either. It was not quite as strange as his earlier claim that there would be “the essence of absence of presence” from his position, but it was close.
In the end, though it is blindingly obvious that no matter what choice words are used, Mahumapelo left because he had no choice. Like Zuma before him, the balance of power was simply against him. It was also the result of a long process, one that made this decision inevitable. It is now becoming the modus operandi for the team behind President Cyril Ramaphosa that to remove opponents is to simply allow certain political processes to get moving, no matter how long they take.
Mahumapelo’s exit was inevitable the moment he blinked three weeks ago when he first hinted he would step down. Since then it has just been a matter of time.
While ANC deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte was at pains on Wednesday to say that the two “camps” that fought it out at Nasrec no longer existed and that their WhatsApp groups had been shut down, it is certain that those who backed Ramaphosa would have been pleased with this outcome.
Mahumapelo had been a strong backer of Zuma, to the extent that he had praised the Gupta family, and erected a statue of the former Number One in his province. Now he is gone from the local top government position and is surely less powerful now that he’s left only with the ANC position.
Source:eNCA
