No, this is not a clickbait headline or hysterical attempt to further upset long-suffering, law-abiding South Africans, already carrying the yoke of a decade of misgovernance and state capture.
It is hard to figure out what exactly is happening in the ANC, allegedly led by a freelance president working full-time as a cattle farmer. Over the past few weeks, I listened, watched and eavesdropped. This is what I saw.
In December, Cyril Ramaphosa was re-elected ANC president by a sizeable margin. But the biggest victor of Nasrec 2 was not Ramaphosa, but Paul Mashatile.
Mashatile was not Ramaphosa's preferred candidate to take over from DD Mabuza as party deputy president. And, until the last minute, Ramaphosa didn't announce his preferred candidate.
So it was left to Ramaphosa's campaigners to determine who would be the governing party's number-two. Mabuza's term and purpose had clearly run its course, and it was now up to the leading faction in the ANC to come up with the name of a person who could succeed Ramaphosa in 2027.
This is how things work in the ANC; the deputy becomes the president when the incumbent has finished his two terms (all ANC presidents have been men).
So, the Ramaphosa cabal came up with the very uninspiring name of Oscar Mabuyane, Eastern Cape premier, as their preferred candidate for deputy president.
But they had a problem; Ronald Lamola, the young justice minister, had been running his own campaign and wanted to be the preferred deputy for Ramaphosa's slate.
Literally, until the last minute at the conference, the Ramaphosa faction was fighting over who should be on the ballot. Eventually, they couldn't convince either Mabuyane or Lamola to withdraw, which split the Ramaphosa vote in two.
This opened the way for Mashatile to win with 2 178 votes versus Mabuyane's 1 858. Lamola scored only 315 votes.
It was a very significant moment at Nasrec that may have gotten lost in all the noise of Ramaphosa's re-election. Mashatile ran his campaign, funded by his own donors, independently from Ramaphosa's. He was not the president's preferred choice for deputy.
This partly explains the hiatus that prevented Ramaphosa from appointing his new Cabinet. The president, apparently, cannot stand Mashatile and has struggled to bring himself so far as to appoint Mashatile to the second-highest office in the land.
I'm told the president doesn't trust Mashatile as far as he can throw him. For a good reason, probably. As MEC and later premier of Gauteng, Mashatile was best known for surrounding himself with a coterie of friends who were deployed to all the government agencies under his control.
This brotherhood later became known as the Alex Mafia.
Although he was never formally charged with or accused of corruption, the pattern of benefitting friends was there for all to see.
After a few quiet years in Jacob Zuma's slipstream, first as deputy minister, then minister of arts and culture, and then back to Gauteng as housing MEC, Mashatile made a comeback onto the national scene as treasurer-general on Ramaphosa's slate in 2017.
When Ace Magashule was suspended, and Jessie Duarte died, Mashatile assumed control of Luthuli House's entire C-suite. He used the time well to build his profile and campaign and has the ANC deputy president T-shirt to show for it.
Hugely ambitious
It is no secret in ANC circles that Mashatile is hugely ambitious and sees himself as the party's president and, by extension, the country before or after the 2024 election.
He is 61 years old and has no appetite to wait until 2029, when Ramaphosa's second term as head of state technically ends, to take over the Union Buildings.
To achieve this, he needs Ramaphosa out. So, what is his plan?
In the wake of the Section 189 panel's findings against Ramaphosa on the Phala Phala matter, Mashatile was lobbying hard for Ramaphosa's removal before Nasrec 2. He failed, but his attempts were clearly noted.
In light of last week's dismissal by the Constitutional Court of Ramaphosa's efforts to set aside the report, Mashatile will have a fresh impetus to get rid of Ramaphosa, even before next year's watershed election.
Coupled with Ramaphosa's lackadaisical approach to the Presidency, to the chagrin of his staunch backers, Mashatile may find fertile ground for Ramaphosa to vacate his office before the year is over.
So where do Julius Malema and the EFF fit in? Another reason for Ramaphosa's dislike of Mashatile, I'm told, is his willingness to bring the EFF into the national government. So far, Ramaphosa has resisted any deals with the EFF and is apparently not in favour of what is currently happening in Gauteng.
In fact, at the same time when the EFF stormed Ramaphosa's stage during the State of the Nation Address, the party was in coalition talks with their ANC comrades in Gauteng.
If you have followed local politics closely since the beginning of the year, you would have noticed the ANC and EFF have formed a coalition to take back the metropolitan municipalities in Gauteng. First, they took Johannesburg; last week, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni is next.
The blueprint is to give the mayorship to a small party and share the spoils of the city's fiscus and city departments between the ANC and EFF.
I have very strong reason to believe this timing, shortly after Mashatile became ANC deputy president, is no coincidence. Remember what Malema told News24 in August last year? "I think he [Mashatile] can make a very good leader in his own right. He can be a better leader than Cyril Ramaphosa."
In the same interview, Malema berated Ramaphosa for "hating" black people.
I strongly suspect that these Gauteng city deals with the EFF are not only engineered by Gauteng ANC leaders like Panyaza Lesufi, Lebogang Maile and TK Nciza but ultimately with Mashatile's approval.
The national plan, I'm told, is for Mashatile, as president, to bring in Malema as his deputy and formally introduce the EFF to the national government as the ANC's coalition partner. The EFF is expected to achieve between 10% and 13% nationally and push the ANC above 50%.
What will Malema, who is funded by a confessed cigarette smuggler, and the EFF in the national government look like? In 2021, the EFF gave us some clues when it gave the ANC a list of 10 demands to enter into city coalitions: nationalise the mines, formalise expropriation without compensation, nationalise the Reserve Bank and remove "Die Stem" from the national anthem.
Last year, the Human Rights Commission found that Malema committed hate speech when he told his followers in the Western Cape: "You must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that, at some point, there must be killing because the killing is part of a revolutionary act."
Mashatile is not a radical fascist like Malema, but his ambition to ascend may blind his common sense.
When Zuma fired finance minister Nhlanhla Nene in December 2015, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange lost R150 billion in value. Malema in the national government will make that look like a school picnic.
Malema has always said he wanted to be president. Maybe it's time for those who believe in democracy, non-racialism, the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution to start taking him and his enablers seriously.
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