Former Deputy State President David Mabuza who served under President Cyril Ramaphosa in his first term of office has died on Thursday last week at Sandton Hospital. He was sixty-four. Mabuza’s death was announced by the state-owned News media South African Broadcasting Corp (SABC). Mabuza rose to the Deputy Presidency after overcoming a succession of graft scandals. The former teacher turned politician emerged as a key power broker in the governing African National Congress (ANC) by signing up tens of thousands of new members in the rural eastern Mpumalanga region, where he was the party’s chair and provincial premier. He persuaded his fellow Colleagues in his home province to back Ramaphosa’s successful bid for the ANC leadership in late 2017, while securing the position of Deputy President for himself. When Ramaphosa was sworn in as State President in February 2018 after the ANC forced then incumbent Jacob Zuma to step down, Mabuza became Ramaphosa’s deputy.
Widely known by his initials DD, David Dabede Mabuza was born on 25 Augustus 1960, and worked as a schoolteacher before entering politics. He became the premier of Mpumalanga in 2009 and faced numerous allegations that he helped to rig state tenders and had his opponents silenced and even assassinated. Mabuza was one of Zuma’s staunchest allies during his almost nine-year rule and helped him fend off calls to resign after he was accused of abusing state funds and breaking his oath of office.
Mabuza initially backed former African Union chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Zuma’s ex-wife and favoured successor, to take over the party leadership in 2017 before switching his support to Ramaphosa shortly before the vote. After the 2019 elections, Mabuza delayed being sworn in as a lawmaker – a prerequisite for him to be reappointed as deputy president – while he fended off allegations from the ANC’s integrity committee that he had brought the party into disrepute. He was later cleared of wrongdoing and reassumed his post.
Mabuza is a political survivor who knows the ropes of deception and manipulation through and through. He was a key supporter in Zuma’s own political machinations and played the role of a loyalist. Zuma was able to remain at the helm of the ANC and the country due to the support he received from the ‘premier league’ faction of which Mabuza was a leader. However due to the pressure from the public and civil society groups which culminated in the Zuma Must fall# mantra of the late twenty tens the premier league and the ‘Radical Economic Transformation’ (RET) factions’ grip on power became tenuous at best.
Mabuza and the premier league soon realized the divisions within the party among the delegates and realizing there could be a split in the votes switched sides and handed Ramaphosa the presidency. He hoped his path to the Union Buildings as a future President would be secured. However, Ramaphosa and his own group of loyalists, reformists or other wise had other ideas. But how did Mabuza follow this path of deception from Nelspruit, Mpumalanga to Pretoria?
A teacher by profession, Mabuza perfected the art of power politics once the ANC came to power and when provinces became fiefdoms for regional politicians. With unprecedented access to provincial fiscal capital, he, along with the Free State’s Ace Magashule and the North West’s Supra Mahumapelo, turned this capital to power and the three became what was known as the Premier League of the ANC. Because constituencies in the ANC are crafted by how many branches are built at ward, regional, district and provincial structures, the more you blow up branches and sign-ups, the greater your power.
Mabuza clicked to this and ballooned the relative ANC backwater province to its second largest after KwaZulu-Natal, thus propelling himself into a national power-broker position in the party. He was reverentially called “DD” by his comrades who were in awe of his money, power and tactics as a different culture gripped the ANC once it fell victim to the sins of power and incumbency.
Mabuza can be said to symbolize all that went wrong with the ANC post 1994 and following Nelson Mandela’s presidency when Thabo Mbeki took the reins. Mabuza and his compatriots saw politics and state business as an arena in which the survival of the fittest took place. In other words, as far as a province like Mpumalanga where Mabuza was Premier was concerned if you were an insider who spoke out (whistle blower) you were discredited and left for destitute or you were killed. Mabuza and Magashule are said to have run their respective provinces like mob bosses.
Mabuza is said to have used the anarchy he was instrumental in creating in Mpumalanga as a ladder to climb to the province’s premiership and there after to the Deputy Presidency of both the ruling party and the country. In the end he fell out with the changing tide and was replaced with incumbent Paul Mashatile.
Article written by:
Yacoob Cassim
Journalist at Radio Al Ansaar
