The ANC national executive committee (NEC) meets next weekend on the eve of two events that may well reshape the party and the government it leads.

Government’s midyear lekgotla convenes the week after the NEC meeting, and there have been indications since the beginning of this year that great changes may be announced with regard to the ongoing process to overhaul the state to beef up delivery, and what government intends to do to lower the costs of doing business in SA. These are aims alluded to by President Thabo Mbeki in his February state of the nation address.

Than, on July 31, ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma goes on trial for corruption in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, in a case that threatens to blow government’s multibillion-rand arms deal wide open and may yet settle the raging succession battle in the ANC.

While the top officials have yet to meet and finalise an agenda for next weekend’s NEC meeting, it seems likely that both issues — the arms deal and the Zuma case — will exercise the minds of the ANC’s top brass.

Meetings of the NEC traditionally also receive an organisational overview from the secretary- general. If Kgalema Motlanthe is pressed for time and feels the need to condense the state of the ANC down to one word, he would have to declare it “dysfunctional”.

Rarely has the ANC found itself so at odds with itself and its closest allies. But most disconcerting for those who follow the ANC is that the worst is probably yet to come. It could begin with Zuma’s second turn as an accused person later this month, if indeed the trial gets off the ground in time.

If, as some have argued, Zuma’s corruption trial is the result of a political fallout inside the party and not neutral investigations by the authorities, then the ANC is probably in bigger trouble than Zuma.

Any supposed conspirator against Zuma must surely have anticipated that the fallout from the trial would not destroy Zuma alone. Any corruption trial involving the country’s former number two, accused of improperly benefiting from the biggest defence procurement process in SA’s history, will by definition reach into every corner of government and the ruling party. Two media revelations this month will have brought this home and could shape the NEC’s discussion of the Zuma trial — if it has the stomach for a discussion.

Firstly, German media reported that a “senior South African politician” was the recipient of a R132m bribe that paved the way for the German frigate consortium. It has also emerged in the local media that Mbeki, while deputy president and chairman of the cabinet’s procurement subcommittee, allegedly met representatives of French arms company Thales, which was then bidding to provide battle software for the Navy’s new corvettes. These revelations have put the lie to government’s explanation — accepted wholeheartedly by the ANC — that the arms deal’s “primary contracts” were above reproach and that no significant government official is implicated in any wrongdoing.

Even if Zuma’s trial does not go ahead later this month, and there are indications that it will not, the headache does not go away for the NEC. In fact, it worsens.

Judging by the state of readiness of the National Prosecuting Authority, it seems likely that Zuma’s trial could be a shadow hanging over the ANC’s July 2007 policy conference and even its elective national conference in December of that year. ANC leaders surely were breathing easier while there was still a possibility that the “Zuma matter”, as some coyly described it, would be concluded one way or the other when the rank and file gather for the 52nd national conference.

Can the ANC live with Zuma accepting nomination for the ANC presidency with a court case still to be concluded? If not, what rules or arguments can be invoked to persuade him not to? How and at what cost? None of these questions would arise in the increasingly unlikely event of the trial being concluded before December next year. Even a united NEC would struggle to navigate the choppy waters of the Zuma trial. But it is common cause that the current NEC is split down the middle and watches helplessly as the ANC tears itself apart.

With almost every cabinet minister also an NEC member, the executive will also be mindful of possible big changes that could result from the cabinet lekgotla later this month. For some time now great developments have been spoken about as if they were around the corner. But whenever the time comes for government to deliver on these, we have tended to see more pomp than substance.

The recent minor reshuffle of the cabinet, occasioned by the death of an elderly minister, was a case in point. Another example are mooted changes to SA’s supposedly “inflexible” labour law regime. A series of discussions between labour, government and the private sector have been a virtual non-starter, attended mainly by junior delegations, with government showing no stomach to fight with labour over the issue.

It also seems likely that the earlier haste on the part of government to consider “restructuring” SA’s provinces is gone. Provincial government has spawned an entire network of regional fiefdoms and useful patronage systems. In the main these have worked in favour of Mbeki, the man with the power to dispense patronage. Given the tightrope he is treading in the party, Mbeki will not easily dismantle this network.

For anyone wishing to know what direction ANC provinces are likely to take, the provincial general council currently under way in KwaZulu-Natal would be a good start. The contrast between the power of patronage and grassroots mobilisation could not be more acute than in a province that is a Zuma stronghold, but presided over by an Mbeki-aligned premier.

If the few NEC meetings since the firing of Zuma last June are anything to go by, it seems fair to say ANC leaders have neither the will nor unity of purpose required to confront these challenges.

Since that fateful day, each NEC has looked either like a support group for those who claim to be under siege from imaginary enemies, or just too divided to give guidance to a rudderless ANC.

With acknowledgements to Karima Brown, Vukani Mde and The Weekender.