Tradition, says novelist GK Chesterton, is a democracy of the dead in which the vote is given to our ancestors. Some in the African National Congress (ANC) would do well to consider this observation.

For "tradition" is what the ANC Youth League and those close to Deputy President Jacob Zuma invoke in their bid to have Zuma become both SA's and the ANC's next president.

They tell us it has always been the "tradition" of the ANC that the party's deputy president becomes president. It should not change with Zuma, they say.

But what "tradition" are they referring to? Or are Zuma's supporters inventing a tradition to suit their aims?

A quick examination of the ANC's history will show that the party, formed in 1912, did not have a deputy president until 1958, when Oliver Tambo was appointed Chief Albert Luthuli's deputy.

Tambo became the ANC's acting president on the death of Luthuli in 1967, and remained in that position until he was appointed president in 1977. The post of deputy president was abolished, and the ANC did not have a second-in-command until after its unbanning in 1990.

The post of ANC deputy president was, in the words of a member of the party's national executive committee, "revived quite hurriedly" after the ANC's unbanning to accommodate Nelson Mandela, who had a massive following, but no formal position.

It is important to note, the executive committee member says, that the post was revived by the committee, not by the ANC's national conference, which is the party's highest decision-making body and is held every five years.

Tambo suffered a debilitating stroke in the late 1980s, and was receiving treatment in Sweden at the time of the ANC's unbanning.

Mandela was elected ANC president in Bloemfontein in 1994, with Thabo Mbeki as his deputy. Mandela succeeded Tambo as ANC president in 1994; Mbeki replaced Mandela as president in 1997.

But it would be stretching it to call this a "tradition". The choices that have been made since 1990 have been largely contingent.

It is, of course, true that the ANC is an old organisation with its own traditions, peculiarities and rituals. But having a deputy president automatically become president when the incumbent steps down is not one of them.

The youth league and other Zuma supporters are doing nothing more than inventing a tradition to serve their aims.

I do not mean to fault Zuma's backers for inventing a tradition. Humans are always inventing all sorts of traditions. What I want to show is that the invention of tradition is not necessarily an innocent act. It can be deeply cynical.

Historian Eric Hobsbawm, who, with Terence Ranger, coined the term "invented tradition", says these "normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past…. However, insofar as there is such reference to a historic past, the peculiarity of ‘invented' traditions is that the continuity with it is largely fictitious."

Hobsbawm says invented traditions serve to symbolise social cohesion, legitimate social hierarchies and socialise people into particular practices.

Could Zuma's supporters be trying to do the same? Could they be trying to create a certain expectation among ANC members and ordinary South Africans? Do they want people to assume that Zuma's ascendancy to the presidency of the country and the ANC is automatic?

We cannot tell the ANC who to have as president — only the party's members can decide that. We can vote for a party whose leader we think best represents our interests and aspirations. But we do not vote tradition.

It is too early to say if Zuma is done for by the Schabir Shaik trial. But it is not too late to tell Zuma's allies that if they want their man to lead the ANC and SA they will have to do better than throw invented traditions in our faces.

Tradition, Chesterton says, is not only a democracy of the dead, it also refuses to submit to the will of the living. But that is exactly how we want it, isn't it? After all, it is the living who must decide how we govern ourselves.

With acknowledgements to Jacob Dlamini and the Business Day.