The ANC was formed in 1912 as both a response to the exclusionary nature of the 1909 Convention that defined the borders of present day South Africa, and the rise of nationalism in Southern Africa. The founding fathers of the ANC sought to create a vehicle with which they would articulate both the aspirations and discontent of the African masses for their exclusion in an essentially whites only state and government.
The seeds of a nationalist project for the South African State was thus set, and incidentally crowned by the formation of a parallel whites only nationalist movement that was to conduct its narrow race based nationalist ‘struggle’ against British Colonialism through electoral politics. The exclusion of the ANC in the space of electoral politics became a key ingredient amongst a myriad to define the character of the ANC as we experience it today. In its early days the ANC sought to make known its ‘demands’, and sometimes ‘requests’ for self-determination and equality through deputations to both the British Monarch and its resident governor.
The ‘request’ character of the ANC started to experience cracks when a new generation of leaders started to question the potency of sending deputations. The institutional strength of the ANC was at the time of questioning so tight that these young and upcoming leaders decided to organise themselves as a structure of the ANC with a defined ‘independence and/or autonomy’; the ANC youth league. The character of the ANC would henceforth no longer be the exclusive domain of what was then viewed as the ‘adult’ ANC.
The cold war influenced geopolitical conditions around the World and the post 2nd World War human rights culture changed the manner in which politics would be conducted, thus redefining the ANC as an organisation. The global repudiation of Nazism and its surrogate ideological clones such as Apartheid called for a non-racial coalition against the exclusion of Africans in the government of decision-making centres of South Africa. The coalition grew into a liberation movement that organised itself outside the organisational borders of the ANC and thus opening the contestation for a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it to everybody that subscribed to the ideal.
This redefinition of forces for change culminated in the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955 and created an ideological platform upon which the legitimacy of the struggle against Apartheid would be justified. The methodological approach with which the charter was drawn galvanised the South African society along non-racial lines to define the collective demands of society about the future of South Africa. The strategic path of including onto the historic assignment of making the country a citizen-driven entity that must generate a better life for all did not only re-architecture the conduct of struggle but the ANC as a liberation movement.
The exigencies of mobilising all and sundry under the banner of the ANC created a condition where the ANC could no longer define itself along the ‘tides defining’ similar nationalist revolutions in the African continent. Whilst the ANC’s liberation struggle was about dislodging a coloniser that has declared its intent to be loyal to the colony and has established policies and ideological orientations that detach the colony from its colonial roots, its African equivalent had a coloniser that was inherently non-resident and thus loyal to a colonial flag. The ANC struggle would soon assume a character of defining itself in terms of phases along a continuum of ideological demands of the various constituencies it has mustered within the South Africa belongs to all who live in its umbrella.
It is this condition that continues to define the contestations for hegemony amongst the myriad of interests defining the ANC today. The liberation movement assumed a number of identities as it progressed towards its historic 1994 democratic breakthrough. Amongst its organising force within a historically white constituency, the ANC had the Black Sash, an organisation within which the current leader of the official opposition cut her political savvy and training. The multi-constituency character of the liberation movement before 1994 created from amongst its members various destinations towards the final ‘National Democratic Revolution’ destination, if any. Consequently, to some 1994 marked a final destination, whilst others are still in some form of ‘struggle’ that has not been adequately defined or redefined.
The reality of the ANC being a liberation movement that was reduced to a registered political party has over the past 16 years redefined its form and character, notwithstanding the ANC’s own denial of a changed character. The liberation appeal of the ANC remains a strategic path for all freedom loving South Africans to continue to embrace, and yet a difficult course to pursue within a traditional party politicking scenario. The politics of registered members and those of ideology embracing members have shifted the template within which ANC hegemony could be manufactured and/or farmed.
The 1994 democratic breakthrough has redefined the identity of the ANC as the party in government as well as a leader of the liberation movement. The opportunity costs of being a legal party are manifesting themselves in the form of communities identifying the instruments and institutions of government outside party political structures. It is still a political science conundrum to phantom how a society that has mechanisms to vote its mandate away from the ruling ANC chooses to’ fight from within’ with centre destructive consequences only to be costed by future generations.
The inherent risks of this phenomena to the South African democratic experiment is that the ANC’s internal challenges that are traceable to its growing inability to redefine its character in conditions of legality will erode its strategic position as the context of all liberation aspirations of society. The political party aspirations of individual members of the ANC are clearly becoming conflictual to the liberation assignment of the ANC as a liberation movement. Party political machinery has historically been a financeable activity and thus vulnerable to paying interests as opposed to liberation movement interests.
In its pronouncement to build a developmental state, the ANC identifies the strategic orientation of such a state as being one that is premised on people oriented and people driven change; and has the capacity to lead in the definition of a common national agenda and in mobilizing all of society to take part in its implementation. The supplication of these attributes assumes a South Africa that has transcended its historical past with no guilt and victory liabilities often associated with post-liberation nation-building assignments.
The notional nature of the South African democratic experiment has within it elements of an electoral democracy which creates opportunities for all governance tendencies to prevail depending on their capacity to garner sufficient electoral support. Whereas the South African democratisation process has firmly positioned the ANC as the nexus of political life in South Africa, it has made it the most vulnerable liberation movement in so far as completing its stated claim to the ultimate hegemon. Unless the ANC redefines itself, modernises its processes and operates as a 21st century political party ready to open itself to a neo-liberalised electioneering culture it risks imploding from within with internal deployment wars resembling what would otherwise have become an open contestation.
Electoral democracy has the propensity to create its own ‘cadres’ with ‘own’ agendas. The contest for leadership of the ANC as a political party is fast outpacing its traditional contest for its leadership as a liberation movement. The growing impatience with its ‘broad church’ character by the last cohort of the born enslaved and the first cohort of born frees is indicative of the declining liberation movement appeal of the ANC. The celebrity leader that has emerged from amongst these cohorts, anchored by redefined landscapes of interests by the older generation, is fast disavowing the known character of the ANC.
The 100 year brand of the ANC is what seems to be keeping the home fires burning. The assault on the integrity of current leaders of the ANC as not being worthy of what past leaders of the ANC stood for is a manifestation of a shifting moral high ground of the ANC as the context of South African liberation politics. The battle for the soul of South Africa’s liberation struggle history is intensifying with erstwhile white liberals claiming and redefining certain of the established truths about ANC history. The position of Apartheid as the grand design to perpetuate race inequality in South Africa is fast being replaced by a ‘post-Mandela’ ANC being responsible for hardships experienced by Black people.
Characteristic of a registered political party that wants to garner political support in the next election, the ANC has bought into the narrative of cosmetic race relations as defined by the voting behaviour of minorities. The engineering of election results statistics to entrench a particular hegemon was only challenged by the seemingly notorious Julius Malema when he exposed that most minorities did not vote the ANC even at our claimed highest peak of race relations, the Mandela era. The liberation appeal of the ANC is clearly finding maverick expressions outside its ‘controlled’ discourse. The ‘service delivery’ protests that have decorated the post-Mbeki ANC have now become new sites of uncoordinated display of a growing discontent at the apparent demise of the ANC’s liberation movement appeal at the altar of wealth and power aggrandisement.
In these conditions the great question to answer remains ‘has the liberation movement adapted enough to operate within conditions of legality with it being the custodian of rule of law bases living’. In an attempt to answer this question the movement may have to go on a rigorous review process that re-engineers its processes to be tolerable of both its internal oppositionalist constituencies and the electorally defined opposition. Calls for the party leadership succession discourse to be opened should be seen as a critical process entrenching the general democratisation assignment the ANC has abrogated to itself for the last century.
As it turns 100 in 2012 the ANC should enter its 100th year being confident that it has at the least addressed the following;
• redefined its broad church stance to suit the born free constituency
• projecting itself as a South African political party ready to embrace the entire South African history; including its unpallatables
• bequeathing some of its liberation movement unfinished business to society at large thus allowing itself space to be a governing party contributing to the movement’s ideals
• creating an environment where its foundational principles as enshrined in the freedom charter are a national assignment as opposed to being narrowed to being an ANC mission
Thank you
The seeds of a nationalist project for the South African State was thus set, and incidentally crowned by the formation of a parallel whites only nationalist movement that was to conduct its narrow race based nationalist ‘struggle’ against British Colonialism through electoral politics. The exclusion of the ANC in the space of electoral politics became a key ingredient amongst a myriad to define the character of the ANC as we experience it today. In its early days the ANC sought to make known its ‘demands’, and sometimes ‘requests’ for self-determination and equality through deputations to both the British Monarch and its resident governor.
The ‘request’ character of the ANC started to experience cracks when a new generation of leaders started to question the potency of sending deputations. The institutional strength of the ANC was at the time of questioning so tight that these young and upcoming leaders decided to organise themselves as a structure of the ANC with a defined ‘independence and/or autonomy’; the ANC youth league. The character of the ANC would henceforth no longer be the exclusive domain of what was then viewed as the ‘adult’ ANC.
The cold war influenced geopolitical conditions around the World and the post 2nd World War human rights culture changed the manner in which politics would be conducted, thus redefining the ANC as an organisation. The global repudiation of Nazism and its surrogate ideological clones such as Apartheid called for a non-racial coalition against the exclusion of Africans in the government of decision-making centres of South Africa. The coalition grew into a liberation movement that organised itself outside the organisational borders of the ANC and thus opening the contestation for a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it to everybody that subscribed to the ideal.
This redefinition of forces for change culminated in the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955 and created an ideological platform upon which the legitimacy of the struggle against Apartheid would be justified. The methodological approach with which the charter was drawn galvanised the South African society along non-racial lines to define the collective demands of society about the future of South Africa. The strategic path of including onto the historic assignment of making the country a citizen-driven entity that must generate a better life for all did not only re-architecture the conduct of struggle but the ANC as a liberation movement.
The exigencies of mobilising all and sundry under the banner of the ANC created a condition where the ANC could no longer define itself along the ‘tides defining’ similar nationalist revolutions in the African continent. Whilst the ANC’s liberation struggle was about dislodging a coloniser that has declared its intent to be loyal to the colony and has established policies and ideological orientations that detach the colony from its colonial roots, its African equivalent had a coloniser that was inherently non-resident and thus loyal to a colonial flag. The ANC struggle would soon assume a character of defining itself in terms of phases along a continuum of ideological demands of the various constituencies it has mustered within the South Africa belongs to all who live in its umbrella.
It is this condition that continues to define the contestations for hegemony amongst the myriad of interests defining the ANC today. The liberation movement assumed a number of identities as it progressed towards its historic 1994 democratic breakthrough. Amongst its organising force within a historically white constituency, the ANC had the Black Sash, an organisation within which the current leader of the official opposition cut her political savvy and training. The multi-constituency character of the liberation movement before 1994 created from amongst its members various destinations towards the final ‘National Democratic Revolution’ destination, if any. Consequently, to some 1994 marked a final destination, whilst others are still in some form of ‘struggle’ that has not been adequately defined or redefined.
The reality of the ANC being a liberation movement that was reduced to a registered political party has over the past 16 years redefined its form and character, notwithstanding the ANC’s own denial of a changed character. The liberation appeal of the ANC remains a strategic path for all freedom loving South Africans to continue to embrace, and yet a difficult course to pursue within a traditional party politicking scenario. The politics of registered members and those of ideology embracing members have shifted the template within which ANC hegemony could be manufactured and/or farmed.
The 1994 democratic breakthrough has redefined the identity of the ANC as the party in government as well as a leader of the liberation movement. The opportunity costs of being a legal party are manifesting themselves in the form of communities identifying the instruments and institutions of government outside party political structures. It is still a political science conundrum to phantom how a society that has mechanisms to vote its mandate away from the ruling ANC chooses to’ fight from within’ with centre destructive consequences only to be costed by future generations.
The inherent risks of this phenomena to the South African democratic experiment is that the ANC’s internal challenges that are traceable to its growing inability to redefine its character in conditions of legality will erode its strategic position as the context of all liberation aspirations of society. The political party aspirations of individual members of the ANC are clearly becoming conflictual to the liberation assignment of the ANC as a liberation movement. Party political machinery has historically been a financeable activity and thus vulnerable to paying interests as opposed to liberation movement interests.
In its pronouncement to build a developmental state, the ANC identifies the strategic orientation of such a state as being one that is premised on people oriented and people driven change; and has the capacity to lead in the definition of a common national agenda and in mobilizing all of society to take part in its implementation. The supplication of these attributes assumes a South Africa that has transcended its historical past with no guilt and victory liabilities often associated with post-liberation nation-building assignments.
The notional nature of the South African democratic experiment has within it elements of an electoral democracy which creates opportunities for all governance tendencies to prevail depending on their capacity to garner sufficient electoral support. Whereas the South African democratisation process has firmly positioned the ANC as the nexus of political life in South Africa, it has made it the most vulnerable liberation movement in so far as completing its stated claim to the ultimate hegemon. Unless the ANC redefines itself, modernises its processes and operates as a 21st century political party ready to open itself to a neo-liberalised electioneering culture it risks imploding from within with internal deployment wars resembling what would otherwise have become an open contestation.
Electoral democracy has the propensity to create its own ‘cadres’ with ‘own’ agendas. The contest for leadership of the ANC as a political party is fast outpacing its traditional contest for its leadership as a liberation movement. The growing impatience with its ‘broad church’ character by the last cohort of the born enslaved and the first cohort of born frees is indicative of the declining liberation movement appeal of the ANC. The celebrity leader that has emerged from amongst these cohorts, anchored by redefined landscapes of interests by the older generation, is fast disavowing the known character of the ANC.
The 100 year brand of the ANC is what seems to be keeping the home fires burning. The assault on the integrity of current leaders of the ANC as not being worthy of what past leaders of the ANC stood for is a manifestation of a shifting moral high ground of the ANC as the context of South African liberation politics. The battle for the soul of South Africa’s liberation struggle history is intensifying with erstwhile white liberals claiming and redefining certain of the established truths about ANC history. The position of Apartheid as the grand design to perpetuate race inequality in South Africa is fast being replaced by a ‘post-Mandela’ ANC being responsible for hardships experienced by Black people.
Characteristic of a registered political party that wants to garner political support in the next election, the ANC has bought into the narrative of cosmetic race relations as defined by the voting behaviour of minorities. The engineering of election results statistics to entrench a particular hegemon was only challenged by the seemingly notorious Julius Malema when he exposed that most minorities did not vote the ANC even at our claimed highest peak of race relations, the Mandela era. The liberation appeal of the ANC is clearly finding maverick expressions outside its ‘controlled’ discourse. The ‘service delivery’ protests that have decorated the post-Mbeki ANC have now become new sites of uncoordinated display of a growing discontent at the apparent demise of the ANC’s liberation movement appeal at the altar of wealth and power aggrandisement.
In these conditions the great question to answer remains ‘has the liberation movement adapted enough to operate within conditions of legality with it being the custodian of rule of law bases living’. In an attempt to answer this question the movement may have to go on a rigorous review process that re-engineers its processes to be tolerable of both its internal oppositionalist constituencies and the electorally defined opposition. Calls for the party leadership succession discourse to be opened should be seen as a critical process entrenching the general democratisation assignment the ANC has abrogated to itself for the last century.
As it turns 100 in 2012 the ANC should enter its 100th year being confident that it has at the least addressed the following;
• redefined its broad church stance to suit the born free constituency
• projecting itself as a South African political party ready to embrace the entire South African history; including its unpallatables
• bequeathing some of its liberation movement unfinished business to society at large thus allowing itself space to be a governing party contributing to the movement’s ideals
• creating an environment where its foundational principles as enshrined in the freedom charter are a national assignment as opposed to being narrowed to being an ANC mission
Thank you
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