"O President My President…Our fearful trip has begun…The prize we sought is diminishing”, writes a South African Poet. The fearful trip in the poem points to a journey towards a failed state. This cry fits the current state of the nation too well as there is growing evidence of public sector dysfunctionality that meets criteria generally associated with a failed state, and fragile democracies. The resolve to renew and rebuild the ANC by the ANC has thus become one of its most legitimate and ambitious post-apartheid projects. This is in fact a necessity, if the ANC, is to define itself beyond just having been a liberation movement which history has positioned to lead the struggle that ultimately repudiation of the apartheidness of South Africa’s government system.
In its
accord with the then apartheid state’s governing elite and economic establishment,
the ANC, and based on the overwhelming voter mandate it got in 1994, committed
to amongst others,
“establishing a society based
on democratic values, social justice and human rights; laying the foundation
for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of
the people, and every citizen is equal before the law; improving the quality of
life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and building a
united, democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign
state in the family of nations”.
The
overarching context within which this commitment would operate drew its
legitimacy from its hegemonic statement that,
“South Africa belongs to all
who live in it, united in their diversity, and that no government can justly
claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people”.
A
non-negotiable social compact with South African citizens was thus cast on all sides
of the democratic dice; whatever way the ANC throws its democratic fortunes the
dice can only fall to show aspects of this contract.
Clearly
in its 27-year history, including its notable successes, the ANC has in recent
times degenerated into an organization that will no longer be able to build a
society wherein a better life for all that are hardworking is guaranteed. There
is, and arguably so, growing data and evidence of it deviating from the social
compact it established with society as codified in the country’s constitution. The
outbreak of the public sector-based corruption from within its ranks, and which
has become an unfortunate ‘vector of leadership legitimacy’ for some of its
members in all its factions, apart from this being without due regard to its (economic,
political and moral) implications to the country, is fast liquidating the ANCs leader
of society status. Yet never has there been such a recognition from amongst its
membership of the centrality of getting rid of the new demon of corruption, its
protagonists, and leaders that are found to have been corrupt themselves. This would
of course have to result in the establishing an in-ANC order that insulates the
ANC from continuously been seen as the epicenter of a party driven public
sector corruption.
This
recognition occurs at a time the imperative of renewal by the ANC is not only occasioned
by corruption, but also the growth of like-mindedness about South Africanness by
its cognitive elite, the economy managing establishment, and a coalescing youth
constituency whose imagination is beyond the narrow nationalist limitations of
an ideationally ageing cohort of leaders from within the ANC’s decision
influencing centers. The exigencies of weaving effective patterns of national
action against corruption as a threat to the growth and development of South
Africa have in this recognition process become necessary footnotes to any
social compact any political formation can have with the new and emerging
society. The changing character of the South African public as a component of a
global public whose relationship with the nation-state is no longer a matter of
national sovereignty, but one that is etched on the sovereignty of the
individual without due regard to geography.
What South
Africa is witnessing as a response to a Ramaphosian political vernacular about
and towards corruption, particularly the leadership inelegance that accompanied
the implementation of ANC resolutions whose objects are to fracture the in-ANC
template of corruption, has exposed the depth of the corruption cancer,
conscious or otherwise, from some amongst its leadership. The step-aside rule
resolution, as a key component of the new integrity management mechanism and anchored
on peer respect and review with voluntary submission to the mechanism by
stepping aside, remains the best self-regulatory mechanism to be introduced by
the ANC to meet is current challenges.
The
self-regulatory character of the integrity management mechanism is by design
intended to deal with issues of allegations, perceptions, vaguely reported
cases, entanglement into the prosecution procedures of the state, and most
profoundly the reputational damage such may have on the ANC. It provides a
regulated platform to interface the perceptual burdens of reported and alleged
corruption, including charging of ANC leaders with the collateral cost to its
governing party status. The mechanism, as it stands, lifts the leadership
obligation bar beyond the narrow “innocent until proven guilty cushion” that
has to date proven to have lowered the bar of societal expectations of its
leaders in matters of integrity and honesty with public power and its
accompanying resources. It is in fact the best instrument to strengthen through
action the ANCs “understanding of its values, ethics and morality, as well as
the demands that the people, the Constitution, and the rule of laws place on it
as an elected guardian of the state, and its resources.
It
should be noted that at the time the integrity mechanism was introduced in
Mangaung, the ANC was conscious of the innocent until proven guilty provisions
of the constitution, but not its cushion implications for those in leadership,
and how as a ‘cushion’ it has provided convenient sieves within which its
leadership could abdicate the responsibility to shape a value system expected
of them by South Africans. The continuous use of the “cushion” has not only
disabled its internal disciplinary processes, which are by far elaborate on how
to deal with ‘proven guilty issues’, and yet fail to be a mechanism to obligate
members of the ANC, and in particular its leaders, to model a value system
benefitting of governing party leadership. The consequences that this abusable
provision has on the custodianship imposed on political leaders and appointed
officials in the bureaucracy by societal expectations goes beyond the narrow
office limitations to incumbents but is wide enough to create a thieving nation.
As a new
frontier, amongst others, to unlock development and re-ignite investor
confidence in the leadership of South Africa, the Ramaphosian anti-corruption
drive, undergirded by the new in-ANC integrity mechanism, provides an
unambiguous and aggressive process that elevates society as a victim of
corruption by the unscrupulous amongst those entrusted to run the state. The
drive simply requires those reported, found, alleged, and charged for
malfeasance and corruption to face the consequences of their actions outside of
the protection of the institutional persons they may have become as a result of
their ANC membership or relationship. This, as the integrity mechanism is now
demonstrating, has in fact made the consequences of corruption to an individual
affair with its consequences been personal, instead of an almost acceded to demand
by some within the ANC’s ranks to make consequences of corruption a collective
affair.
Without
vitiating the ‘somewhat’ legitimacy attracting arguments that the integrity
mechanism gives unrestricted power to organs of state, as institutions or
individuals, particularly in the criminal justice system, and a generally ‘hostile-to-ANC-majoritarian-status’
media, to effect regime change; the alternative of not having this mechanism would
be the beginning of the proverbial ‘fearful trip’ to a failed state end. The manipulation
of state organs, as the State Capture inquiry has shown, for political ends and
in-ANC factional contestations remains the risk to the beyond reproach
calibration of the integrity management mechanism provided for in ANC
resolutions. The truism that interests are the currency of politics and thus
defines behaviors of all that are in politics will in this instance be the constant
variable that regulates and mitigates the risks of abusing the integrity
mechanism.
In a
context where the ‘innocent until proven guilty cushion’ has generated such an
unhappy citizenry, as well as it having impacted to service delivery, the capacity
of the state to show capabilities in restoring South Africa into a hub of
development in the continent cannot be de-linked to the skills and moral
quality of the leaders its party-political architecture deploys into executive
authority positions. Political parties as primal bases from which government is
established cannot be left outside the integrity complex that define South
Africa’s value system and global competitiveness. It is for this, and other
reasons that the famous Nelson Mandela statement is paraphrased to the effect
that
“there comes a time comes in
the life of any nation when there remain only two choices - submit or fight.
That time has now come to South Africa. The ANC should not submit, and it has no
choice but to hit back by all means in its power in defense of South Africa,
its people, its future, and the freedoms it has contracted with society to
defend”.
In the
stead of apartheid colonialism, the Ramaphosian anti-corruption drive places
corruption and its adjunct, State Capture. This is according to Ramaphosa, a
mission of the ANC as important as that of transforming the templates of
race-based economic domination. But how can the ANC be a catalyst in dealing
with this mission.
(to be
continued)
Volume
2 of this series of the theme, will look at the structure of the ANC as an
organization. In the article the ANC as a system of policy generation for South
Africa, how its decision centers are representative of its membership, how its
structure undergirds the structure of the South African State in as far as its
capacity to carry aspirations of all everywhere in the country, as well as its
support to the electoral system can help it to rescue itself from itself will
be discussed.
Comments
Post a Comment