If it should, how can the ANC 2022 National Conference be a solution to South Africa's challenges? Let us talk.
Let us flirt with and/or court controversy for the sake of posterity. Guilty as charged, but write we will, so that the nation talks of its 'tribes' unhindered.
The standing of the ANC has taken a serious knock over the last 15 years, including 2021. The extensive coverage of and actual truths about corruption and state capture are in the main to be blamed for the state of affairs, but so is the ANC's own institutional challenges that are a manifestation of its ideological relationship with open democracy, human rights, and state power. As an organisation, it has managed its affairs in a centrist-to-commandist way, whilst advocating for a society not existent 'back-at-home'. It has embraced authoritarian leaders for diplomatic friends, and restricted its members to subject its unfair processes to 'extra-in-ANC' adjudication processes the ANC has professed to having respect of. It alienated its traditional human rights and open democracy allies for the convenience of out-of-principle new friendships. Its growing silence on actions by 'its friends' to undermine civil liberties in their countries, and how it has grown to become a defender of 'capital' at the emerging expense of a 'promised better life for all' has eroded much of its standing.
In service delivery terms, the derelict rail and passenger infrastructure that occurred under the ANC's watch as a governing party is the most 'public' of its failures to rescue whatever is left of its reputation with public transport dependent commuters, and the society in general. The demise of ESKOM as a reliable 'electricity supply commission' which has had a multiplier effect on the water pumping and purification infrastructure stands out as an immediate 'switch-for-light-to-no-avail' manifestation of gross systemic failures it presides over as a governing party. The arbitrary closure of state owned, linked and aligned supply side management of the core public services of health, basic education, and apprenticeship training through the closure of post-school colleges stands out as one of the reasons for the skills 'genocide' some of the policies it adopted had done. The list is growing on the failure side that in the shrinking good it has also done for society.
Restoring its standing as a 'once-upon-a-time' leader of society, will require a 'beyond-governing-party-incumbency' attitude etched on the surrendering of its leader of society role to 'civil society' bodies guided by a 'national interest' that goes beyond a focus of winning 'the prize of politics', government. This might include a deliberate release of its finest that are trapped in party politics for reasons that are of a civil society activism nature than what the ANC had morphed into being. The record of many of these activists, before being 'deployed' into government, speaks volumes of a capability 'choked' by their 'loyal membership to the ANC', which is in fact 'loyalty to what the liberation movement complex' led by the ANC stood for. The 'political-party-ANC' won elections to govern a state whose institutional structure still required the 'liberation-movement-ANC' for it to be recalibrated into an institutional edifice with which the socio-economic transformation promise of the 'liberation struggle' could be realised. The organisation of the South African State, its organised economic dominance establishments, and political economy value chains have remained in tact since 1994 to have attracted antagonism from the 'liberation-movement-ANC' towards a 'political-party-ANC'. The current factions, notwithstanding their 'other' reasons to exist, can arguably be pegged on this as one of the reasons responsible for concertising binaries defining it.
To date, as it happened when the ANC was a global model of what a non-racial cause beneficial to humanity can be imagined to be, the world is now watching in disappointment as it models how to slide to the bottom rungs of competitiveness, governance speaking. Despite the historical obligation to restore and build a front of like mindedness on how to create a South Africa promised by its Constitution, its leaders have a 'beyond-incumbency-attitude' moral obligation to establish a national value system whose competition for, should ignite a race to the top seen in comparable democracies in the world. Tackling the systemic passion to undermine authority, as a dividend of the 'anti-apartheid-struggle-system' and 'make-South-Africa-ungovernable' calls, which were then legitimate investments that needed to be made, will not only be correct but would give the ANC a moral authority to speak against the methods of political protest it has rewarded through affirmation of leaders that emerge from those ranks. The somewhat insurrectory posture of its 'liberation-movement-ANC' membership base, often used to delegitimise a national interest and Constitution driven 'political-party-ANC' leadership, might be procuring for a decisive dislodgement with it, lest the normative demands of governing a state will compromise its ability to be returned to political power.
To regain its lost standing, and hegemony over its 'liberation-movement-ANC' objects, most of whom are in effect a civil society domain, the ANC must address its institutional issues in relation to it being a political party stuffed with career politicians hell bent on laying their hands on government as a dominant agency of the State. That would mean having a genuine conversation about how it selects leadership into all its strategic centres, how it surrenders the promise of the Freedom Charter into the space of competition for political hegemony in South Africa, how it elevates the South Africa citizenry as the focus constituency through which procurement of votes to access control of government as an agency of the State, how it restores its credibility as a custodian of not only good government thinking but good government, and how it deals with the disproportionate impact of its lapses as a governing party and those that it has inherited from the reality of South Africa's political past. Acting in this direction would make the ANC capable of developing a restoration of South Africa agenda which will draw its credibility from the accumulated political capital it still has left. Should the ANC succeed in building a 'beyond-incumbency-tradition' as an attribute defining all that lead it, it will take the diminishing opportunity to advance the cause of 'building a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations'.
ANC members are first South Africans
As South Africans, members of the ANC should know that they belong to a common South African citizenship which equally entitles all citizens rights, privileges and benefits that could be accrued by being such. Central to this citizenship is the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law. In this respect, the Constitution promises all citizens the right of equality before it, and by implication the right to question any authority exercised on citizens which is not derived from the Constitution. Amongst such 'authorities' is the authority of constitutions, regulations, and codes that are written for voluntary associations whose 'domicilium citandi et executandi' is in the Republic of South Africa which is one, sovereign state. As a fiat the ANC Constitution is subject to the supremacy of the country's Constitution, which makes being a citizen of South Africa the ultimate frontier with which all rights could be defined, protected and fought for.
As citizens of the Republic, we should be cognisant of our diversities that are perpetually disciplined by our founding values of 'human dignity, the achievement of equality, and the advancement of human rights and freedoms', as well as 'non-racialism and non-sexism'. This should be transposed into our historical past with the sole intent of recalibrating any ancestry that is not consistent with what we have agreed are values to undergird how we imagine all that will be in our future. With such a foundation our real and deep 'partisan differences' will find filters that are algorithmic to our new and adopted constitutional values, for posterity's sake.
At the turn of South Africa's democratic future in 1994, voter participation numbers were indicative of how society was ready and prepared to invest its trust through votes in those that campaigned to govern. This level of confidence, notwithstanding its Mandela leadership dividend character, was confirmatory to the Mmotlane et al assertion that 'social trust acts as a foundation for cooperation, and contributes to social integration (cohesion), harmony, and stability (social order) amongst people. In their rendition, they argue that social trust is at 'the centre of issues pertaining to human happiness, optimism, well being, health economic prosperity, education, welfare, and participation in community and civil society. It is the decline in society's participation in the 'formal' civil society activity of voting since 1994 that have a concomitancy of relation with the decline in standing of the ANC-the-political-party, which shouts the question, 'if it should, how can the ANC 2022 National Conference be a solution to South Africa's challenges?
The substrate character of the-liberation-movement-ANC politics in predominantly African social base communities is to date the glue that still sustains the otherwise fragile democracy the the-political-party-ANC is governing. It is my submission that these different ANCs are not yet distinguishable to the majority of its voters, whence the 'liberation-movement-ANC' rituals are kept in tact, despite them being at the cost of the social cohesion demands of our democracy, and the stability requirements of the pragmatic economic trajectory adopted by the 'political-party-ANC'. Given that the currency of politics is interests, and the interest of development is sustainable human advancement, the tension between those that pursue these interests with a party political construct has polarised the political environment to levels where the structural change of templates of dominance is factionalised into who stops 'socio-economic transformation' and who advances it. To be a member of the ANC has historically been equated to an activist of social justice wherever it was suffocated or denied, the extent to which the 'for and against RET' factional fault lines are defined, might have already put into disrepute the social justice element of being an ANC member.
The structure of the ANC should, if it is an organisation of members that are first South African citizens, be changed to reflect the character of the country constitutional obligations its members find themselves under. The Constitution establishes political jurisdictions whose power is regionally procured and thus vulnerable to regional rigidities obtaining therein. The democratic representation and affinity entrenched by the 'experience' of the proximity of their voter power, should as a matter of urgency be matched in how that regional indexing of power is reflected in the highest echelons of the ANC itself. The institutionalisation of regional representation, if embraced, will make ANC policy discourse spaces to assume a spatial character whose impact might permeate into public policy and the policy prowess of the State Budget in the 'recalibration of templates of socio-economic dominance', a legacy the ANC has a historical date with for its destruction. Should the ANC adopt an approach that plugs into the structural demands of the Constitution, the leadership contestation issues would resolve themselves through regional competitions to send the best to national, and recall the worst in the event the democracy factory churns out faulty products. The process, if repeated in provinces, will create an army of seasoned leaders, whose leadership experience and complexity will matter more than the 'nefarious' criteria society has been subjected to its collective impact, and on slates that even undermine observable regional merit.
This approach will dovetail with other scientific demarcation processes that define wards, towns, regions, and provinces. Included in such criteria will be the natural cohesion building elements of jurisdictions as well as the economic viability realities defining to 'regional expectations' as defined by capable representatives to national structures. Transition to a constituency based voting system would be natural to the extent such a criteria is defined with regional consent. The spatial service delivery challenges will have regional champions that are in the national sphere of policy influence, provincial and regional. The 'diaspora' model of rural representation will be displaced by 'on-site-representation' into the NEC.
The attuning of ANC structures to the realities of the Constitution should, if properly thought through, bring into control the 'Prime Minister' role of the Minister of Finance into a ANC top six or whatever construct. The political capital that should underpin this appointment should be institutionalised into the in-ANC power dynamic and follow the new design of ensuring rising through the ranks. The new faction to emerge will in this case be meritocracy as a system operating with less and less of the human element. The ANC as an institution will live and lead those that enter it until they leave it.
Questions for further discourse
As members act as South Africans before they are ANC, and because of its structural design, the ANC will find it natural to discuss answers to the following questions;
- how it surrenders the promise of the Freedom Charter into the space of competition for political hegemony in South Africa,
- how it elevates the South Africa citizenry as the focus constituency through which procurement of votes to access control of government as an agency of the State is dependent,
- how it restores its credibility as a custodian of not only good government thinking, but good government as a practice,
- how it deals with the disproportionate impact of its lapses as a governing party and those that it has inherited from the reality of South Africa's political past, and
- how it fast tracks national division of revenue to be spatial in practice and character, thus making regional or district development a fundable policy trajectory.
The breath of work facing the 2022 ANC conference may seem overwhelming, but it will be the resolve to enter a 'beyond-incumbency-attitude' thinking chamber that would lighten the numerous challenges the conference should deal with. This will not be the first time the ANC is faced with such a drastic policy cross road. The experience of Morogoro and similar conferences should be a heritage resource out of which its legacies of wisdom could be summoned without vitiating the prowess of new knowledge gained as the 'political-party-ANC'. The spirit that propelled its ability to emerge out of deep crises with practical and consequential reform should sent current members into a future they can only insure with their 'skins in the present game'.
What should be supreme in dealing with this rescue mission is the acknowledgement of 'new interests' that have become 'cryptic' as the currency of in-ANC politics. Standards to 'accommodate' the co-existence of 'human interests' and 'interests of humanity' in a polity do exist and have been implemented in 'matured' and 'comparable' democracies. The 'profession' of being in politics has arrived, and this can only mean the unfair expectation of professionals in politics not to be careerists must be dropped as a 'value', disguised in the rubbish statement of 'I will serve where some magic hand in the organisation leads me'. The new ANC must nurture competition to lead, and adopt it as a filtration mechanism to weed out clandestine campaigning the propels 'leadership gangs' marauding as custodians of an 'underground value system' for an 'open society' country.
This rendition is a product of a Sunday afternoon reminiscing of the ANC.
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela
🤷🏽♂️Be ngisho nje
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