7.4 Engaging with the ANC caucus

‘Caucus’, Mandela told the ANC MPs, ‘is the main engine for our parliamentary work’.³⁰⁰ He was reminding them of their responsibilities, as he had done at the very first caucus meeting, when he told them, ‘You are now the government’.³⁰¹ From that premise followed certain obligations which he would emphasise in caucus meetings he attended from time to time.

Despite not being a Member of Parliament, Mandela was always invited to ANC caucus meetings. He attended quite frequently, especially in the early days. But he would also make his influence felt indirectly through the presiding officers, caucus chairperson, chief whip and others who were very senior members of the movement. These included, in the first batch after the 1994 elections, Frene Ginwala as speaker, Govan Mbeki as Senate president, Makhenkesi Stofile as chief whip and Mendi Msimang as caucus chair.

In the first years, when many of his close colleagues and former prison mates in the ANC leadership were Members of Parliament, he would caucus issues with them and they would guide caucus meeting discussion. When it seemed necessary he would himself remind members of the ANC’s policy positions.³⁰²

Whenever he did go to caucus meetings he was received with enthusiasm. Sometimes he would just sit and listen, and perhaps make contributions and give guidance.³⁰³ When he did address the caucus more formally, it was generally at the level of broad direction and approach rather than detailed issues, reminders of the roles and responsibilities of ANC members of parliament in the transition and transformation of the country.³⁰⁴

But there were also times when he brought his influence to bear on specific issues, either by lobbying close colleagues or by direct intervention in caucus.

Notes Mandela wrote for a caucus meeting in February 1996, almost two years into the new Parliament, exemplify his interventions. In the background were concerns about ANC attendance and conduct in Parliament³⁰⁵ and tensions with other parties arising from the fact that the GNU’s multi-party ethos was not always replicated in Parliament.³⁰⁶

Later in August of the same year he spoke to the caucus at a moment when it there was a good deal of unhappiness among its members about a range of issues, including relations with the ANC headquarters, and processes for election to parliamentary office and appointment as committee chairs which, some felt, were shaped by favouritism and factionalism. The issue of appointments was a continuous one, given the high turnover of MPs during the first democratic parliament – more than a quarter of the 400 original members of the National Assembly had left by the end of the first session in 1999. Many who had left, including many senior leaders, had been redeployed by the ANC, into government and public institutions, and in some cases individuals left to join the private sector. Only half of the original portfolio committee chairpersons remained.³⁰⁸

The tone of Mandela’s notes for the meeting, fixed on collective discipline, was one of encouragement.

He was referring to moments at which groups had formed within the ANC and had either broken away or been expelled, such as the so-called Africanists in the late 1950s and the Group of Eight in the 1970s.