The disappointing performance of Fadiel Adams

There is often something telling about the way politicians dress. A defiant and self-confident EFF asserts their separate and rebellious identity by wearing a completely separate uniform. The ANC demonstrate their sense of entitlement to govern by wearing expensive tailored suits and flambouyant designer dresses. The DA imitates the pseudo-casual style of European politicians, wearing the formal attire without the tie, with the sleeves rolled up, or with colourful socks, as if it is both familiar, and yet as nothing to them, but always comfortable with a Windsor knot or high heels if the moment calls for it. They signal that they consider themselves “above” politics, in a way.

But Adams feels uncomfortable. He wears suits, but resists tying his tie properly, as if the collar makes him claustrophobic. Yes, he is working class, but working class people around the country are perfectly comfortable dressing impeccably for Church. It is quite possible that this is just me reading silly nonsense into these things, and I probably am, but I find it hard not to feel a degree of sympathy for him. He clearly feels that, in some way, he doesn’t feel like he belongs.

Fadiel Adams was, despite his deficits, someone I once, to some extent, admired. Sure, his politics were a bit left-wing and theatrical for my taste, but he used to demonstrate a uniquely puritan approach to politics that is rare these days, and a noticeable quality of bravery. But he was always uncomfortable with power, and has long said he longs for someone else to come in and do the work in his place. But so far, there isn’t anyone. He isn’t at home in his own skin.

In late February 2020, when he was leader of the Gatvol Capetonian movement, Adams began a week-long hunger strike outside Parliament to protest the rampant gang violence and child murders on the Cape Flats., after the rape and murder of six-year-old Tazne van Wyk and another child shortly after. He demanded a direct meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa and urgent action against crime. Despite a pre-existing kidney condition, Adams camped with supporters, including future NCC secretary-general Sakeena Frenchman, vowing to eat only if Ramaphosa responded. By day five, he was dizzy and incoherent; an ambulance was called, but he refused treatment. On day seven, he was in a bit of a frail state, and his family and supporters convinced him to end the strike and hand a memorandum to Ramaphosa’s office.

While no presidential meeting occurred, the protest garnered massive media attention, amplified the Cape Flats crisis, and boosted Adams’ profile. It became a defining moment in his rise from activist to politician. His days in the GC were seen as a rough and messy populist approach to tackling a real issue that few seemed serious about, and it gained a lot of traction as a result. This was the Fadiel Adams people wanted to see – a man who completely eschewed factional battles and focused on issues pertinent to his people, who cared little for personal wellbeing, and avoided getting sucked into silly battles.

This contrasts well with Gayton McKenzie’s career, which has been bombastic and pushed a number of popular polices, even some good ones (if half-baked), but has been riddled with corruption scandals and shown persistent ties to the 26 gang, aside from the use of alcohol and intimidation on the campaign trail. His success remains an indictment of the state of our political system. Other leaders who have traditionally appealed to the Coloured base outside of the DA are limited to the bigoted and emotionally unstable Al-Jamaa, and the squishy sentimentalist GOOD party, who are effectively a little ANC but without testicles.

His focus on City corruption was noteworthy – his flagging of Malusi Booi’s involvement with the 28s gang in housing contracts was far-sighted, and Adams spoke up before anyone else, in 2019, four years before SAPS raided his office and Geordin Hill-Lewis feigned surprise for the cameras.

The National Coloured Congress, as it is called now, was originally founded as the Cape Coloured Congress in 2020. The rebranding in 2023 came with an abandonment of Cape independence as a policy, a much stauncher anti-white position, and a new commitment to Zimbabwean-style land seizure by the state. Previously, Adams and his party were rather narrowly focused on Coloured interests, but have since folded into the hopeless morass of national politics, where they have no hope of exerting meaningful influence over policy.

Leading up to this, there was a great deal of infighting, after a number of ANC members joined the party. There were also accusations of financial mismanagement, and some petty power struggles following the party’s modest success in the 2021 municipal elections, where it secured eight council seats In the Cape Town City Council. Several members accused the top brass of refusing financial audits, misusing funds, and engaging in “authoritarian” behavior. In May of 2021, Adams abruptly resigned as president of the CCC, citing sustained “character attacks” from an unnamed internal critic. Then, after “a loyal member” had urged him to stay, he changed his mind. Two days later, the party’s leadership held an emergency meeting and rejected his resignation.

By March 2022, a faction of regional leaders issued an open letter demanding his, Frenchman’s and several other officials’ resignations. The rebels, led by fundraising officer Donovan de Jager, accused the leadership of multiple code-of-conduct violations – failing to produce a post-election strategy, refusing to allow an independent financial audit, and engaging in unauthorized withdrawals from party accounts without receipts, as well as violating the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) by mishandling member data. The group also alleged intimidation tactics, with de Jager going so far as to lay a police case against Adams for alleged intimidation and slander. Adams and his loyalists announced a “purge” of inadequate leaders, getting several to resign voluntarily. Rebels complained of a lack of due process, but this went nowhere. After this rebellion, mediation attempts failed. Rebels threatened legal action if the leadership did not step down, but no lawsuits materialised.

It’s certainly possible that the expenditures were innocent, but at the very least it reveals a lack of professional and responsible conduct.

By mid-2022, the dissent had largely faded, a tranche of new arrivals from the ANC had settled into the party, including COSATU official Paul Bester.  Adams retained full control, as the party began it’s national pivot. Bester was quickly appointed Western Cape Provincial Secretary, which caused some controversy, as he is a white man. Adams defended the pivot away from Coloured identity politics, stating that the NCC was open to all races as long as they prioritized the interests of “the marginalized”. Bester himself was from an anti-Zuma faction of the ANC before he was expelled, which harmonises with Fadiel’s position on the Mkhwanazi saga.

While the party has had some success consolidating support locally, the national pivot has had mediocre results, with over 90% of the party’s votes unsurprisingly still being in the Western Cape. Of the Provincial vote, 95% is from the City. Policy-wise, the party pivoted hard. They began with a hyper-local, Coloured-specific platform rooted in its Gatvol Capetonian origins, demanding more resources for coloured communities, land restitution for victims of the Group Areas Act, debt write-offs, and opposition to BEE and affirmative action policies.

The manifesto changed only a little, but the changes are noticeable. In 2021, their platform included the abolition of racial classification, to allow for a merit-based hiring process and an end to the marginalisation of Coloured people through racial quotas. It included grievances over land invaders jumping the housing waiting lists, and concerns over corrupt gentrification processes in the City, as well as the abolition of the (admittedly terrible) CPUT college for the re-establishment of District 6 housing. They pushed for the death penalty for gangsters. At this time the party also had ambivalent attitudes towards Cape independence which were increasingly being sidelined.

In 2023, as part of the rebrand to NCC, they pivoted somewhat. While the ANC-style make-work schemes are promoted in both manifestos, the new one notably moved to embrace racial equity quotas, EFF-style land nationalisation, endorsement of the NHI, national integration of the MyCity bus services, a R10k minimum wage, and a renewable energy drive.

Adams has continued to highlight corruption scandals in the City of Cape Town and SAPS, but he has failed to be effective, and tends to be easily handled by Geordin Hill-Lewis in Council debates, when a bit of research and preparation could could land real punches. When hit with corruption allegations that lack detail and care, Hill-Lewis has countered with accusations of his own, including displaying a photo of Adams posing with a firearm, accusing him of possessing the firearm illegally.

Occasionally Adams remembers that demographics still matter to the Cape – in April, he faced a criminal injuria case in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court over racist comments made in May 2024 calling City Manager Lungelo Mbandazayo an “Eastern Cape import.” But at the same time, he has let the particular concerns of his people fade to the background in policy context, preferring to distract himself with an obsession with whiteness. Wanting to see past grievances addressed is entirely expected, and a normal impulse, but to achieve redress that his own people actually benefit from will require shedding some emotions.

On podcasts, he will recall the “betrayal” of the older generation voting NP in the 1994 elections, but tellingly forgets how the ANC used and discarded Boesak when he objected to the use of racial quotas to sideline Coloured people – they aired scandals from his private life to destroy him in the wake of his criticisms of BEE and Employment Equity, which predominantly marginalise Coloured people. Much like Boesak, Adams has chosen to align with black supremacy out of spite, instead of playing realpolitik and seeking the proper self-interest of his people.

Nobody can expect him to get cuddly with whitey, but if he cannot learn to think strategically, he will watch opportunity slip away.

Overall his effectiveness is waning – generally firing off shots without aiming, and increasingly getting involved in national debates which have little effect on life in the Cape. I suspect his party will continue to grow a little, but I doubt it will be the landslide it could have been, had he focused on trying to bag more victories with housing and squatters’ rights reform , and attracting middle-class recruits who could handle the books, policies and council briefings more effectively.

Adams’ lack of coherent strategy, say, direct action campaigns combined with concrete policy demands, show that he is still at a stage where he just wants to be heard. The lack of focus on housing, and the inability to generate an effective protest strategy have also meant he is overtaken by the far more effective PA, whose victories in rural municipalities has allowed them to pluck a great deal of low-hanging fruit.

Fadiel Adams controls a powerful platform – one which could put Coloured people on the map, and gain substantial power and concessions for his people. But his policies and strategies are not focused any more than his tactics, and he is often distracted by national issues he has little influence over. His resentment of white people is also paradoxically making his advances against apartheid-era injustices less effective, since the actual institutional challenges and alignments of state power are completely different.

The most salient of which is Cape independence – this is the one policy position which has the potential to provide a concrete future for Coloured people, by giving them actual tangible power over their own future. It is a gateway to a vision of the future, one in which Coloured people are the deciding factor, and where white people, though numerous enough to hold our ground against being disenfranchised or dispossessed, could not dominate – the DA survives through fear of the ANC, and without that threat, they will wither back to the tiny sliver they occupied when they were called the DP.

Many Coloured nationalists are distrustful of the movement, because white people are overrepresented among the leadership. But this is natural – after all, the present system justifies itself as a rebuke of our presence in the country. The independence movement is also mostly white because white people are the ones who showed up – more of us are middle class, so it’s easier for us to find people with enough education and free time to do what it takes.

But we are not suffering nearly as much from the present system as Coloured people are, because we are relatively more affluent. More of us can afford to leave the country, and of those who choose to remain, more of us can afford private security, or at least to live in nice neighbourhoods. Coloured people face rigorous discrimination in the most competitive sectors of the labour market, have endured years of terrorisation by gangs who have received protection by SAPS since Zuma struck a deal with them in 2011, are robbed of housing opportunities by land invaders who vote against their favoured parties and bring at least as much crime with them as they find here, while draining public resources and contributing little-to-nothing in taxes. Their communities are being torn apart and they are being disenfranchised.

Many Coloured people have shown secession support, including traditional leaders, and in polling, Coloured people support independence at a far higher rate than white people, judging by the polls. But their leadership refuses to entertain the idea, whether out of resentment, or out of fear. They prefer to be “recognised”, to have a “seat at the table”, instead of recognising themselves, instead of setting the table for themselves. Who are we, who are the powers that be, that they have the moral authority to “recognise” anyone? You are here, this is your home.

But the three main Coloured leaders in this country choose to seek attention (Adams), looting opportunities (McKenzie) or cosy up to the establishment (de Lille). It is understandable that Coloured people feel torn between the various ideas floating around, almost all of which serve the interests of black or white people, who have dominated the political dialogue for a century. But now is the time to judge for yourselves, as the opportunity to decide your future will not last forever.

For the Coloured peoples, however they define themselves, it is not just an option, it is in fact the only possible option which could give them the ability to decide their own future instead of begging for scraps from majoritarian politicians or white elites, to whom they are but a marginal consideration. If the NCC continues in this vein, they will not be able to achieve much more than a few more seats, since their vision does not differ enough from the majoritarian status quo to pull any other party or legislative body in their direction.

If Fadiel decided to set his own place at the table, his would be a voice that would be impossible to ignore. He seems not to have realised the power he has in front of him. But perhaps, given his recent performance facing the challenges of serious professional politics, that is for the best.