The political war for the soul of the ANC is indeed a never-ending one. In an in-ANC election year, the contest to be in charge of the hegemonic power that comes with being in its leadership intensifies. Where the first battle is going to be is a conundrum whose resolution unfolds as the actual date of the conference gets closer. However, the Ethekwini region, and because of its membership size, has for a while emerged as a decisive primary en route to the national conference.
The outcome of the 2022 Regional Conference of the ANC in Ethekwini will unleash a barrage of commentary on the seriousness of the ANC to deal with the perceived corruption within its ranks. Already some analysts have started to resign their commentaries into ideational spaces that seek to isolate the ANC as a serious partner in the global struggle against political elite-led corruption. The Ramaphosa war against corruption might have suffered a serious blow. The question, therefore, is 'what does the outcome actually mean beyond the repudiation of the ANC's own integrity management system and the national pursuit to attract into government less tainted leaders'.
The election of corruption charged Zandile Gumede to the position of chairperson of Ethekwini region is an emphatic rejection of the step aside rule adopted by the ANC. That she accepted the nomination from being outside the conference paints a scenario where other leaders who have stepped aside could be nominated and elected into senior positions. Technically stepping aside does not constitute suspension or dismissal, it would appear being 'aside' does not strip a person of his/her privileges associated with being a member of the ANC, save to exercise leadership roles when aside. In fact, the step aside rule has no bearing on the ANC Constitution, unless the Conference decides otherwise.
Whilst the Zandile Gumede election evokes anti-corruption emotions in society, it is also a symbolic show of commitment to 'radical economic transformation' by those that claimed her as its advocate. The doctrinal shifts within the ANC of economic transformation are also on trial by one of its biggest regions in the country. The post-2017 elite consensus on economic reform, which included the wholesale or disposal of state-owned entities is also being put on notice as the domino effect of this victory will start to permeate into other regions.
Whilst radical economic transformation has been relegated into an in-ANC factional tendency and not its policy, this outcome will recenter it as a policy position. In policy terms, this outcome will be a seismic event that will be profoundly consequential to the ANC as we have started to experience it. Notwithstanding that it will neither reshape the in-Constitution liberal order South Africa is in nor signal an ideological review by the governing party, it will shake the fundamentals of politicking. Far from consolidating the RET 'forces', the victory might have underscored the fundamental incoherence of the ANC's broad church economic policies when there is no one God to worship. In any case, the future of how South Africa will ultimately look has decisively left the domain of influence by the ANC only but is certainly shifting into the domains of civil society movements, ANC conference resolutions will in the not so distant future be an input into an otherwise unfolding revolution underway.
As the illusions of 'zumarising' or 'corruptionerising' radical economic transformation is being liquidated within the delegate to conferences cohorts of ANC members, the opprobrium heaped on the outcome of the Ethekwini conference has not been universal. The varied similar lines of voting and candidate selection in other regions and provinces of the ANC indicate how strong a substrate to the new direction South Africa should take is radical economic transformation. Attempts at dismissing the KZN embrace of RET as an identity vote matter will backfire at the December conference in the same way 'third termists' wanted to hide their intentions behind the yet-to-be-proven charges on Jacob Zuma in Polokwane.
Given that the center of political gravity has shifted into matters of the political economy, the radical economic transformation agenda has found traction in the Ethekwini outcome. The economic disputes and the dilemma of the liberation movement failing to address the 'national grievance' issue of land, as well as joblessness engulfing the youth have made government the prize of politics to be the economy. Radicalization of any change or transformation is snowballing into an issue South Africa's politics will have to find answers to, and unfortunately for us, these answers must come from those that engineered the commanding heights of the economy sways from social responsibility.
What the ANC should take as a lesson from the KZN outcome is that South Africa's criminal justice system has not yet demonstrated its ability to be blind to color and creed. This anomaly can be abused to rationalize criminality in politics. It is political to argue why gross private sector corruption attracts out-of-court settlements at worst, and at best acquittal, yet ANC politicians lose the court of public opinion before the chronically inevitable. The publicness of weaknesses in the criminal justice system has warped the ethical foundations our democracy needs. Society finds itself having to deal with the correctness of wrongness because justice is seen not be just. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️A ndzo ti hleketela bathong
Yours is an organisation that has managed to guarantee gender equality in its corrupt nature. For society at large, when their mothers are the ones doing and defending wrongness, their worst fate is inevitable.
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