For almost three decades since the unbanning of the ANC and the release of its foremost branded leader, Nelson Mandela, the ANC-as-leader-of-society has had a characterization of it being an indispensable institution of leadership with little to no competitor in determining to content of South Africa's transformation agenda. There was also societal consensus, mainly driven by the 'displayed' quality of leadership by the persons-in-front of the ANC and the institution of leadership it had projected itself to be, which at some point it indeed was. Right about its fifteenth year after its unbanning and more specifically since its departure from many a convention of leadership selection and succession management, consensus of it being an institution of leadership had started to collapse. Instead we saw a growing chorus of voices, and ideations, that advocated for the creation of alternative clouds of ideation to position the country in such a way that it is less dependent on the ANC as the substrate of reason in matters national transformation and nation building.
These were the beginnings of advocating for a strategy of restraint where the nation started to focus on the liberation promises as codified in the county's constitution, and through the values it espouses as per the consensus of the cohort of leadership that still presided over the ANC, and other parties, as institutions of leadership in the 90's. The focus of the new consensus, and interestingly this would also be observable internal to the ANC itself as most of its thinkers deserted its thinking spaces to create think tanks as safer alternative spaces of ideation, grew into being about 'national interest'.
In this new trajectory the ANC was favored by the circumstance of its growing failure to create a capable state and the growing threat of corruption and its adjunct state capture to be decisive on its posture of being a bystander as an institution when persons as organs of the liberation movement were wrecking its almost 120 year reputation. Even the leftist of its members that historically advocated for a state-led transformation program of nation building, or in appropriate nomenclature a 'national democratic society', started to question the excesses that came with the unbridled exercise of executive authorities, and the degree of arbitrariness that characterized government, to levels where the left started to sound right in economic thinking.
The departure of thinkers from the ANC moved most of what would have been solutions to its growing woes to the province of academic journals, knowledge translation spaces of seminars and conferences, and public lectures attended by a cognitive elite that shared potent knowledge amongst itself to a level it started being a form of informed ignorance about the true context of an emerging context. The absence or otherwise of content in many an interaction of ascending members of the ANC started to show itself in the growth of rhetoric as the currency of political engagement in its sub-national conferences with the collapse of the policy review prowess of its policy conferences as evidence of decay. The institutional leadership status of the ANC got usurped by radio talk shows, opinion pieces of sponsored and/or organic analysts, and the rise of 'individuals' as pivots of a distorted ANCness merely because of a manufactured stalwartism designed to truncate the ANCs heritage of keeping in touch with the true needs of its constituency.
As an institution of leadership, the ANC used to fulfil its tasks (research, cadre selection and training, instruction or teaching, communication and informing, etc.) as a liberation movement within an institutional framework. This of course was underpinned by a respectable administrative center whose capability could at some point in history be packaged as a 'ready to govern' value proposition. The ANC, then, existed only to the extent that it could be institutionalised, and its policies could thus be concrete in it as an institution. In fact, the quality that the ANC ever was and still could be is only expressible in it being an institution. As a construct of politics, and thus a conduit for the reconciliation of conflicting interests of members, which might include the compromising of its institutional prowess if it obfuscates unbridled pursuit of those interests, its corporate resiliencies should be calibrated to sense institutional dysfunctions earlier than what it is. Efficient institutional leadership attracts permanent tensions with anarchy, or anarchism.
In its leadership of society through the transition to a new constitutional dispensation, the ANC chose a path of keeping the state in tact as it rearranged how government as its active agent will repurpose it to create a 'national democratic society'. Whilst, and arguably so, the liberation struggle momentum was getting into higher insurrection gears, the logic of creating a new nation with restraint also took root amongst the political elite. The possibilities of exercising power by then protagonists during the anti-apartheid struggle were filtered through a process that foregrounded the long term limitations of victory or defeat in such a possible war.
In its current state, the ANC is in a process of self discovery as to how it reconciles itself with the conditions of legality it has established as a pathway to establishing a 'national democratic society'. Its nomenclature insists on a 'national democratic revolution' that is still in progress and process, and thus require optimizations. The search for scapegoats, rationale, and reasons why it is unable to utilize the Constitution as a transformation tool to advance the NDR might position the NDR as being anti-the-Constitution and thus anti-statist. The resurgence of the restraint substrate of leadership as represented by a Ramaphosa Presidency, with all its discontents, should be calibrated to ride on those aspects of creating a 'national democratic society' through the constitutionalism which society has accepted as dished out by the ANC in the not so distant past. The moment of national influence is in the Ramaphosa country Presidential term, if the surveys are anything to go by. The consistent polling of Ramaphosa's support as being above that of the ANC, requires a cohort of leadership that would step forward and calibrate around him what aspects of the 'NDR' could be advanced during this phase without antagonizing those that believe in his restrained approach to what his organization believes in.
The fact that 'monopoly capital' is comfortable with his leadership and approach to transformation, which by the way there is no evidence he is not, should indicate to the ANC that there is a viable consensus, a path forward his restraint can achieve the most important of its transformation goals, and alienate the fewest members of the coalition against a march to a 'national democratic society', and in that vortex win new converts out of the remaining pragmatic lot. This phase of our path to a better future is not new, save for it being constrained by the insatiable appetite by some within the ANC for power. It is until members of the ANC start seeing the ANC as an institution of leadership its members as well as leaders come into it to nuance, and not change, the direction it has always defined for itself, then leave it or die as selves, the ANC might not turn its destructive path. This they should embrace knowing that even the best of institutions are apt to deteriorate and become distorted. The very ability of the ANC to have translated societal discontent and grievances into the construct of a Constitution might have impoverished its intellectual vitality as it basked in the glory of achievement, and could have at the same time created an air of not only finality of innovation, but arrogance of believing too much in self. What the ANC should try to muster as part of its arsenal to renewal and rebuilding, is how it interacts with the individuals it has produced as the best amongst its cadres. How does it recognize the power of individual networks and the social capital they bring into its credibility as a now aspirant reclaimer of its declining leader of society position. The Ramaphosa episode of leadership is an opportunity to calibrate a process of working on the vitality that the social capital of an individual brings to an organization. Unfortunately for the ANC, it is the type of person-in-front that you present to society that will provide the best opportunity for people to know you entire value proposition to them. Worst still, it will be the passion at which that person operates that will built the integrity of your value proposition.
Whilst it might be hard to formulate the attitude of the ANC on many a political matter, its objects of a 'national democratic society' should steer clear from its emerging extremes. Properly constructed and institutionalised, its attitude to its role, albeit declining, as leader of society, if indeed true, should tolerate individual eccentricities, and be receptive, as it did with Mandela, and maybe failed with Tutu, to mega-personalities, manufactured or real, as a way of providing ground for a convergence of extremes. There must be a sense of rank and merit in the ANC. Personalities in the ANC, and Ramaphosa, Magashule, Lindiwe Sisulu, Zweli Mkhize, David Mabuza, Paul Mashatile, the 101 Veterans, and many others have an established interdependence with the ANC. Their polarity will never be without tension. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️A ndzo twa swa mugqhivela
🤷🏿♂️Se ndzi gqhiverhile makwerhu
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