Gangster State

role of premier to the NEC. But the final decision still lies with the
NEC.^2 The job of premier is therefore a prerogative of whoever rules
the roost at Luthuli House, the ANC’s headquarters. So it was that in
1994 Magashule was once again snubbed by the party’s senior leaders.
In an interview more than a decade later, Magashule reflected on the
development. ‘I volunteered to step down in favour of an older person.
[Lekota] was not even on the provincial list. I enjoy working with the
masses,’ he told the Mail & Guardian in 2005.^3
Some commentators have framed the move as a case of the national
leadership imposing a political ‘outsider’ on the province in defiance of
the people’s preference for the supposedly popular Magashule. In his
book South African Politics Since 1994 , Tom Lodge noted that
although Lekota grew up in Kroonstad, he spent significant amounts of
time outside the province before the first democratic election.^4
While there may be some merit to this argument, it has its holes. After
all, Magashule spent three years at the University of Fort Hare in the
early 1980 s before his years in ‘internal exile’ in Johannesburg and his
eventual stint outside the country in the latter half of the decade. It is
likely that the northern faction’s superior branch-building skills, which
allowed it to dictate the Free State’s leadership preferences, played a
bigger role in the portrayal of Magashule as the ‘popular choice’ than
province-wide consensus or ground-level support.
According to some accounts, the national leadership asked Magashule
to step aside because of Lekota’s seniority. But given Magashule’s
track record in the struggle, which included rumours about financial
misconduct, insubordination and bad discipline, one wonders whether
the issue of seniority was foremost on everyone’s minds. It seems
plausible that the ANC top brass decided to keep Magashule away