16 to 20 December 2017 saw most South Africans and political pundits closely observing the African National Congress’s 54th National Conference at Nasrec. There were plenty of international observers and local and foreign press who were closely tracking the ANC top brass and branch delegates as they jostled for political power and position. From all accounts the air was thick with anticipation and high with suspicion. Former student activist, member of the then Mitchells Plain Student Congress (Mipsco) and now ANC member in good standing, Oscar van Heerden, once again found himself doing duty as a scribe at the National Conference in Nasrec. What he witnessed in the period leading up to Conference and then the five days of high drama at Nasrec make for an enthralling and heart-stopping insider’s view in his book Two Minutes to Midnight: How the ANC survived Nasrec 2017. Van Heerden’s observations will lay bare a governing party that is at war with itself and at the heart of this struggle is deception, corruption and power-hungry politicians flexing their muscles. Factional in-fighting, money in bags exchanging hands in the dead of night, spies on duty and a political party in the clutches of state capture are some of political moves that Van Heerden witnesses, and now shares in his book. Van Heerden’s assertion after the first two days of Conference is that the Cyril Ramaphosa camp, also known as CR17, did not stand a chance of winning. To him they seemed disorganised, at times not understanding the modalities of election politics at Conference, and had arrived at the gun fight with a knife. How then did the tide turn against the obvious pro-Jacob Zuma camp to favour CR17? What really happened behind closed doors? Allow Van Heerden to tell you the story of how the ANC survived Nasrec.

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