Branch delegate purchase at conferences, manipulation of credentials at conferences to engineer election outcomes, funding of slates by the criminal underworld to create a better political environment for its existence, dearth of policy discourse at sub-national conferences, prerogative or arbitrary disbandment of organizational structures such as the woman's league, conferences that convene only to elect personalities to positions with no prospect of knowing what they represent, there appears to be little to no hope in bringing order into Africa's oldest liberation movement, the ANC. The often-depressing stories about what is happening inside the ANC paint a picture of anarchy, disarray, disorganization, and leadership decay in what is, arguably South Africa's dominant nexus of its politics and political economy. This does not only have grim implications for the ANC alone, but broader ones for the continent, SADC, the economy, and most decisively the stability of a fragile nation-state without a nation.
This reality has gotten to a level where any notion of order coming back in the ANC tends to be treated with skepticism. The entrenched behavioral patterns of doing politics that started long before the watershed Polokwane Conference, if the Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma report of the Tshwane regional conference of 199.. is factored in, have made it increasingly difficult to enforce any normative way of running the ANC. In fact, what does seem to be normative is fast growing into a violation of what is accepted as convention of in-ANC politics. Leaders that have projected themselves as paragons of unity, renewal, and normative politicking have to date been found to have been in large-scale operations against their political adversaries in ways that undermine the very norms and values they espouse. For instance, the ANC President a lead in the renewal process is endorsed in some provinces and regions by factions led by people at variance with the law, and some are awaiting arrest. Whilst these leaders pronounce their support of his anti-corruption-led renewal program, they headline narratives of corruption in their provinces. For skeptics, this is evidence that a normatively governed ANC does not have a chance to replace what it has settled on as acceptable politics.
However, skeptics operate in a world of instant gratification, most of them tend to ignore that building a normative context takes time, and in many ways requires the flushing out of a generation. Acts that undermine what is otherwise the correct thing to do, as the elevation to leadership of dubious individuals from all factions of the ANC, might appear to be weakening the normative thrust the new ANC is trying to birth, but it does not make the thrust irrelevant. The introduction of an integrity management system with which all acts that put the ANC into disrepute will be put through a voluntary process of self-subjecting yourself to an integrity commission has elevated societal norms and standards as benchmarks with which being ANC will also be measured. This can of course not happen unless the ANC itself has accepted that norms, subjective as they sometimes can be, create expectations about behavior that makes it possible to hold each other accountable". Normative contexts grow with time, they can have allies within a cesspool of the corruptible purely because of their appeal to accountability. Normative politicking will be disruptive, in the ANC it has demonstrated its power to refuse ideological manipulation. It took almost two decades for the ANC to subject its internal disciplinary outcomes to the adjudicative power of the state and dislodge from treating itself as an 'outside judicial reach voluntary organization that ran amok with rules that could not be evaluated in a court of law'.
Although being normative in the context of politics presents a challenge, international best practice has over time built norms to which the vocation of politics and political institutions could be subjected. The growing sensitivity of society to corruption by politicians has led to a number of norms, standards, and enforceable mechanisms being developed to assist in regulating the vocation of politics. As these norms become increasingly critical to reducing the risk that anarchy could pose to the normative governing of the ANC, there should always be a way in which society continues to be the ultimate method of deterrence.
Notwithstanding the simplistic conclusion that deterrence in the world and vocation of politics, integrity as a growing condition to be elected a leader has entrenched normativity as a benchmark for political parties to survive the growing impatience of society. Norms have not only become the new guardrails of an integrity climb in politics but have established a record in many professional establishments as a useful departure point to create a sustainable normative context that best survives on peer review and voluntary subjection by those involved. Chaotic and anarchy-dependent politics are costly to society and their economies. The best way is to make chaos a cardinal risk to the continuity and existential sustainability of an organization. The inseparability of economic growth and the normative index of those governing should be a non-negotiable when considerations of who should lead society are made. The domain of politics, which is inherently vulnerable to human infallibility, and a network of ever-competing interests, is hard to police and monitor.
In the domain of post-conflict politics, factionalism as a core catalyst of redefining liberation struggle promises and rhetoric can easily become one of the pillars in-liberation movement contestations are modeled around. In addition to claiming one historical heroism or another, especially in contexts where history in the struggle constitutes one of the premium criteria to being a public service mandarin or a node of influence the private sector can use and abuse to generate state procured business, the capacity to create and sustain a faction, including buying the loyalty of its members, is a new normal. Among the core characteristics of the new way of doing politics are the erosion of member relationships with the policy direction of the liberation movement, the establishment of social distance between the ANC and society, and the destruction of branches through the purchase of members (in order) to slow the interaction of the NEC with the basic units of the organization, and the elevation of tribalism and personality cults as criteria to select and mobilize for the form of the liberation movement at the dangerous expense of content that should drive politics and attendant interests, which are the currency of politics.
In social and political capital terms, the cost of in-ANC chaos to the continued accumulation of these capital forms is so high that some in leadership can easily be classified as not only being liabilities, but their continued membership is becoming collateral damage to the historical value of the ANC cannot afford to keep them. As such individuals continue to be the faces of the organization where their methods of succeeding fall through the cracks of the integrity management systems and mechanisms that the ANC has put in place to manage those putting it into disrepute, their threat to the continued existential significance of the ANC as a leader of society is mounting. The integration of the capacity of the normativity guarding institutions of the state with political criminality, including political exposure-based criminality by members of the ANC has to date been the most effective deterrence. Whilst this deterrence has in certain circumstances muddied the strategic role the criminal justice system can play in weeding out criminality in the name of politics, the preventative role this play has to date met the benchmarks envisaged by the integrity management system to the extent that political exposure-based criminality is now migrating into bands of acceptable limits.
The released organizational renewal document of the ANC
needs to therefore address itself to the strategic intervention of defending
forward the liberation movement through setting up stricter criteria for
members to access political positions in both governments (the prize of
politics) and in-ANC positions (the bankable political capital to advance
towards the prize of politics). There should be the persistent engagement of
members with the integrity management system or mechanism notwithstanding its
glaring imperfections in respect of the integrity policing members.
For as long as there is disruption of patterns of anarchy and chaos, diversion from
the vocation of politics those that are in it for the perceived largesse, and
the withdrawal of membership for the incorrigible or reputation costly members,
there will be sufficient deterrence to resuscitate the moral high ground the
movement once had. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️Just vulavuling makwerhu
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