The 2021 Municipal Elections are in full force, and political parties are contesting for the support of South Africans in their 278 municipalities. The contest is in fact in 8 Metropolitan Municipalities, 44 District Municipalities, and 226 Local Municipalities. At a granular level the contest is for well over 4 000 municipal wards. Nothing comes this closest to negotiating a space into the political soul of the South African nation like municipal elections.
Municipal elections have in most societies been the cradle of political leadership. The content and context of South Africa's 2021 municipal elections has for the ANC become an opportunity to have a conversation with itself through messages it communicates to society. The ANC Issued a manifesto that asks society to give it a chance to continue governing as well as correcting itself into a 'leader of society' it had once been.
I was invited to a conversation with professionals, academics, and business persons through the institution of its past president, President Thabo Mbeki, by the ANC, on October 21,2021. This was hosted by the PBF. I went in as a representative of the BPI Foundation, a solidarity platform with the object of pooling ideas with which South Africa could be advanced. The conversation was part of the ANC campaign process, albeit have taken a trajectory of 'we are talking'. This is my reflection of the experience.
In this conversation with professionals and business people, ANC former President Thabo spoke of an ANC that required rebuilding and remaking. He alluded to the consequential review of the ANC as not only an organisational necessity, but a condition of it being 'too big in South Africa for South Africans to let it fail'. Thematic to Mbeki's talk was the rebuilding of the ANC into an organisation whose operations should be understood as the pulse of the political and ethical pulse of the government it is at the centre of its governing.
President Mbeki decried the decline in quality of members of the ANC that swelled its ranks when it transitioned into a political party contesting for formal governing party status. He outlined how the issued ANC municipal elections manifesto addresses its nation issues of social compacting as a condition precedent to fulfilling what it is promising. To this effect he shared his experience of a ready to engage private sector which is limited by the capability issues within government at all spheres of government for its commitments to be realised in society.
Juxtaposed against the continuous acknowledgment of institutional fissures of the ANC by President Ramaphosa and NEC members, the Mbeki message like others is in essence the beginning of a in-ANC conversation in the continuum of 'elections' it is going through. The season of being elected into the centre of political influence in South Africa starts at being elected into its regional, provincial and national structures. The regional leadership contests have a direst bearing to how its constitutes the core of its local government deployees, whilst the provincial and national is consequential to the provincial and national governing of the country. These in-party elections, occur throughout the life of the party, and do not seem to be synchronised enough to allow for a breathing space between in-ANC elections and in-government elections.
This mix-up and its political careerism implications has in fact 'blurred' the party and state boundaries to levels where patronage grew into the crank shaft moving its bigger problem of corruption and state capture. The strife to make state resources an economy of those in politics has further led to the introduction of concepts that are already addressed by the nature and character of the ANC, and the South African state it influenced the creation of. The consensus that is emerging from within the ANC, in this conversation it is busy with itself, is that 'the dream that is delivered' by the country's Constitution is sufficient enough to instruct state wide planning and implementation processes to 'radically or otherwise' transform anything that is not consistent with what the Constitution expects of its organs of state.
Refreshing in this conversation with itself whilst requesting a mandate to continue governing, is the emerging honesty about its real capacity issues. The ANC has used these elections to deal with its competence gaps. Whilst it has historically focussed of how 'an anti-apartheid activist' you were, it has now upped the ante of your knowledgeability about (the requirements of) the task your given, the skills (you have acquired or have) to do the job, and the attributes you have as a person. This honesty has started to permeate its leadership choices in a manner that sheds from amongst those that have ambitions to lead without anyone having to point out.
The honesty was also crowned by President Mbeki's commitments he made to certain of the professionals that he will be following up with ministries that could benefit from issues raised in the conversation. President Mbeki has, and through the commitments he made, positioned for attention the role that Foundations of Former heads of state can play in facilitating conversations in society by and for those that are in conversation with themselves about society. This honesty might well be an outlet with which the 'ears into the mind' of the governing elite could be accessed outside the loyalty to and adversarial contexts.
As this conversation is propelling the self-renewal process within the ANC, it has started to interrogate the institutional design and operational edifice of the ANC in relation to the tasks of building a South Africa written into its national constitution. The way in which the ANC appoints its leaders, the spatial relationship of its in-ANC regional representation to its national structures as a substrate of the spatial political economy representation demands imposed by the country's constitution, and the glaring federating character which the election determined political jurisdictions the Constitution imposes on South Africa. This interrogation, if not properly managed, might play into the regional rigidities of tribalism and other latent chauvinisms finding expression as part of the conversation with self.
As the municipal elections come to a close, the open conversations that went into the open might be muted by the reset to default buttons the ANC has seemingly devised to manage itself between elections. The 'closing of ranks' prowess of its leadership, once elected, has muted most of its internal fissures whose impact have undermined our national constitution because 'society as members to its vision' is closed to the outside by 'members to it as an organisation'. It is this element of ANCness that President Mbeki has spoken about at the Gauteng interaction with professionals, academics, and business persons. In closing the interaction President Mbeki shared a story about his experience with the ANC office in the Western Cape. The effect of the story is that as we rebuild, review, and remake the ANC, we should do so with people that know the ANC and are its members in a true sense of what 'in good standing' really mean.
The interaction was vintage Mbeki in presentation. The platitudes were those that appealed to the cognitive of ANC membership as it corrected the attributional of its collective. Thank you President Mbeki for foregrounding the need for the conversation. We awaiting the THABO Mbeki ANC Gauteng Lecture as promised by Premier Makhura, and imbue upon the leadership to make it an annual institution beyond today.
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela
👂Ears will hear.
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