An election year of uncertainties. Will the nation thrive without its once loved 'tribe', only the 'tribe' can answer. An analysis

    The 2017 in-ANC elections outcome, to date the most marginal  post-1994 or as a governing party, changed how the ANC relates to and with its members, policies, and the society it once had a legitimate claim to being its leader. The outcome has sharpened the use of words such as 'factionalism, factions, sell-out, counter-revolutionary,, neoliberal, white monopoly capital, radical economic transformation, and insurrection in most in-ANC discourse. The use of terms in an organisation is the best representation of its emotional state, how members develop a nomenclature is a function of where the organisation is and can in future be. This has also drawn attention to the decay or absence of both person-in-front and collective leadership in the ANC. The 2021 Municipal Elections, which exposed the depth of disgruntlement in the ANC by the influential urban voter at South Africa's strategic economic nodal points, confounded hope that the ANC-as-an-institution could rise up to the  national leadership challenge. Whilst President Ramaphosa has declared, though hubristically premature, the importance of a national social compact to ignite economic growth, the intensity of in-ANC factionalism propelled by the upcoming 2022 elective conferences including its national, has underlined the uncertainty of man-in-front and institutional leadership of the country. Investment speaking, 2022 makes South Africa a destination of hit and run investors, most of whom will ignite volatility in its currency markets.

The leadership gap at all levels of the liberation movement has revealed the messiness of how leading a sophisticated economy such as that South Africa has, evolves commensurate with the maturity of the leaders it abrogates the various executive authority to preside over state affairs. The COVID19 pandemic, conveniently thrown around as the reason why the promise of a private sector friendly presidency could not start a growth trajectory, remains one of the lost opportunities to have started a health outcomes based or driven service delivery reform program that could have pulled all-in-the-economy towards a growth focussed national disaster management plan. Despite efforts of institutionalising integrity management mechanisms to stem the tide of corruption within the liberation movement, it would seem the overall number of corruption cases by those in leadership at all levels, is overwhelming, and may have overburdened the leadership function few that are 'proverbially clean' could cope with. Breakthrough actions by the ANC NEC to deal with those in leadership, euphemistically called 'big fishes', are undermined by either a 'faction-based' selection criteria of those that must be investigated, or a resources compromised criminal justice machinery. The crash at prosecution of cases, and the inside-society anger posture of judgements have had a further impact on the honest broker status of the criminal justice system, and by extension compromising the authority of the President as head of state.

The allocated five year view, based on political term of office, of how political parties return to normalcy has in the ANC grown murkier. The evolution of its factions has proved to be more difficult to predict than you would find in similar organisations or contexts. The interests that create its factions do not seem to be following political science pathways of ideology, ethnicity, or regional regiditism. We are more and more seeing a mixture of disguised gangsterism, rent seeking, members of members, politics as a low barriers to entry vocation, and other nefarious criteria based factionalism, finding nativity in the ANC. Like in most 'gangster state dubbed democracies' South Africa has become vulnerable to the criminal element driven politics, the good is in some branches a stranger. The high number of political assassinations at the local government level, as well as the control of certain ANC branches by criminals, has not only brought to the fore new breeds of politicians but is breeding anarchy specialists society might have to contend with when 'good persons' would have deserted not only the ANC, but the political space. 

The leadership void at various levels of the ANC has followed a different pattern with the emergence of a highly sophisticated branch leadership imposition through member-of-member activists that vote for a drilled and paid for slate being entrenched. The protection that the ANC constitution should have provided, is now a victim of its openness as occasioned by the overreach of its '(all) the people shall govern', a concept that assumes many a variable to be inside 'the people'. The track record of ANC branch capture and by extension gradual deployment into its higher echelons breeds of leadership that are an abstraction of a concretising general, does not seem to be offering any guidance on how the next national elective conference can end the leadership crises, save for the evangelical 'eye of the needle' document that might not have even been read by the new breeds and creeds.

Beyond the demands of expertise, knowledge, and attributes by our constitutional democracy, there will be an added expectation of the current leaders to display intellectual humility that will make delegates at the various conferences to remember that it is no longer about individuals but the nation. With all our discontents about him, President Ramaphosa's challenges as ANC leader have brought this matter to our sharpest of attentions. As a tribe, the ANC might have to choose if it is there for the nation to thrive, or whether the nation can thrive without it? The time to answer this question and review how leaders are elected into the ANC has arrived. The 2024 National Elections will be consequential for South Africa and its geopolitical significance, beyond a supplier of the rainbow nation rhetoric. CUT!!!

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🤷🏿‍♂️Be ngisho nje