It was an already heavy, busy day on Wednesday. We at Daily Maverick had worked on several important stories, some of which went deep into the heart of State Capture, like Marianne Thamm’s review of an explosive report by Ivor Chipkin on just how deep our hole of corruption and thuggery is.

There was also, finally, an official confirmation of ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule’s suspension, which had been predicted in Ferial Haffajee’s story from Tuesday night. It definitely got us all going at extra speed for late afternoon. The chatter on our internal groups turned into a crescendo, however, as we realised that there was another item appearing on the horizon: a highly improbable, and yet somehow not surprising, act of defiance by Magashule. We’re not going to quote extensively from it, but it is linked below this paragraph if you want to go through it again:

Our team has many hundreds of years of collective experience in journalism, and life, but we’ve never come across such a tortured argument wrapped in a layer of desperation and tied with a glitzy ribbon of nonsense.

It says enough of how deeply the ANC has sunk that, at first, nobody was able to establish if this statement was real or not. No official release, just an apparent leak to what could be renamed “RET Central” – otherwise known as Independent Media.

Now, one has to forgive us for needing to confirm the veracity of the statement that “‘Ace suspends CR” and that the letter itself actually exists. Both sides in this transaction, Magashule and Independent Media, are known for lying recklessly and profusely.

As many on the other side of the ANC aisle claimed that it was not real and that a bunch of propaganda thugs were pushing the fake narrative to once again test the waters for Magashule (see previous case), we left it there until there was finally an official response – and therefore confirmation – that the newly suspended secretary-general of South Africa’s governing party had decided that he would, in turn, suspend the president of the same party, and also the president of South Africa.

As it was in October 2020 with the “news” about Magashule’s “arrest”, there was some social media activity that looked suspiciously preplanned and whose persuasive quality appeared past its due date. Most of those who posted were anonymous, and the majority were just sorta enthusiastic, in a delusional kind of way. 

One of the Twitter posts, from #AceForPresident (@ComradeMDU) grabbed our attention:

“… Now we are waiting to the #ANCNEC to collapse on weekend. Ramaphosa will not be allowed to address the NEC members. They will demand Gwede Mantashe remove him…”

(It was followed by a couple of fire emojis, presumably implying that RET forces will be on fire this coming weekend.)

The post, one of many with similar messages, was essentially the same type of snippets of insanity that were swirling in the US after Donald Trump lost his re-election bid to Joe Biden. The same detailed nonsense that looks designed to increase people’s anger and bitterness when predicted events do not happen – as happened on 6 January when a not-so-small army of angry Trump followers stormed the US Capitol.

All this aside, it struck us how desperate, and badly executed, the whole affair appeared to be. Magashule’s letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa was based on a fantasy that the newly suspended secretary-general can actually suspend the party’s president, who was never charged with anything. The logic was astonishing, the delivery was incompetent and the results were hilarious.

If Magashule hoped to instil fear in infidels like us, he failed. We can’t publish the language used, but complimentary in its nature it was not.

If he hoped he would get a wild, supportive reaction within the party and from members willing to put forward their real identities, apart from a few of his Free State disciples, he failed dismally.

If he planned to start an intraparty revolt that would somehow split everyone to such an extent that he would be asked to return triumphantly… nope, it doesn’t look like that. What did happen, was that there was much consternation and gnashing of teeth. Love, admiration and siding with the Great Leader until death do us part? Nope, nothing.

So, what was this bizarre episode all about? We honestly are not sure, and suspect that not even the people around Ace Magashule have thought this thing through. This includes Magashule himself, who tweeted an image of himself playing the first move in a chess game, presumably expecting to be a player for many more moves. (Someone take away his Netflix password, please.)

This letter is being written late at night and it is entirely possible that today (Thursday) every front page of every newspaper in the Independent stable will be plastered with the “Ace kicks CR into touch”-type story. But their cumulative impact has been badly diminished since Iqbal Survé took over the already ailing print media giant and ran it into the ground, with the intended damage to the perceived enemies never materialising over the past eight years.

So, the effect of this “Ace kicks CR into touch” exercise, if it was planned at all, is decidedly limited, but not everything can be explained away by incompetence. Magashule’s biggest problem lies in the nature of his issues, and the fact that it is exceedingly difficult to defend the indefensible. 

He’s been doing exactly that, defending the indefensible, with great success for years, but fate and his own machinations have finally caught up with him. He’s in a court case that appears to be solidly put together, and it is rumoured that there are at least three more sets of charges coming his way. The suspension from his power perch will inevitably result in the loss of many “friends” and collaborators; every day he spends away from Luthuli House is a day his enemies can use to ensure he never returns to party leadership.

His back is solidly against a very hard and cold wall.

Even the thought of this frigid, dark and lonely winter coming his way must be deleterious to his fighting spirit and ability to lash back at his opponents. This latest attempt had nothing of that power to harm back. It was just… pathetic, an act of deep panic. And while it might have won him two hours of attention by the media, it lost him a whole lot more. Possibly his ANC career. 

One thing Ace Magashule has possibly learnt from this event: Panic’s just another word for nothing left to lose. DM