Zukile Majova
The run-up to the 2021 local government elections has unleashed a new version of Deputy President David Mabuza.
For the last four years, he has shied away from public engagements amid rumours of serious illness, but no man suffering ill-health has ever executed such a busy schedule.
He seems to be using the local elections to get ready for the biggest fight of all: an attempt to get the top job in the ANC and therefore the country.
DD, as Mabuza is widely known, has concentrated his charm offensive on winning back Tshwane Metro and securing overwhelming victory in his home province of Mpumalanga.
Earlier this month, scores of supporters in Ward 100 in Tshwane flooded his campaign bakkie as he distributed T-shirts and other ANC regalia.
It was in Mamelodi in Tshwane where Mabuza declared his interest in getting a second term as deputy president, but insisted that it was up to the people.
“It will be the decision of the people,” he told a large crowd of the ANC faithful.
“If they say I must run, I will run. If they say, ‘no, we have another candidate,’ I will accept it.”
- During a walkabout in Ward 89, Thorn Tree Mall in Tshwane, the ANC deputy president played an age-old political trick: he approached a mother with her little boy, picked up the boy and carried him around in his arms.
- Last Saturday, he led a door-to-door campaign at Ward 15 in Osizweni in Newcastle where he wrapped a gogo in a large ANC kanga while listening attentively to concerns of ordinary folks.
What should concern South Africans though is Mabuza’s open declaration that he would be available to take a second term as deputy president when the ANC holds its elective conference next year.
Leading an ANC campaign that wins the capital for the ANC would go a long way to pave Mabuza’s path to the highest office in the land.
Until now, Mabuza’s name and ambition have been mentioned in hushed terms with some concerned about his alleged involvement in numerous criminal activities.
Over the last decade, Mabuza built his political network in Mpumalanga, making the province the second biggest in the last ANC elective conference at Nasrec in 2017.
At that conference, Mabuza ditched the Jacob Zuma faction to become the kingmaker which ultimately earned him the position of deputy president.
