The 55th ANC National Conference is less than thirty days from happening. The in-ANC coalitions battle lines are drawn, branches have made their nomination choices, delegates are known, the venue is soon to be quarantined, and the ANC won't be the same come thanksgiving time. The conference is billed to be about renewal, rebuilding, and unity. Rules of engagement, written and otherwise, are spelt out. Resolutions to be discussed and adopted are ready for final processing. Constitutional amendments submitted in good time are prepared for processing. For all intents and purposes, the in-ANC democratic heritage is on display and churning lessons for learners. Funded interests are at play to tweak the process in favour of policy positions and individuals they prefer as leaders of the ANC to prevail.
As these battles for the soul of the ANC unfold, it is clear that the technology of contest is growing in complexity as no delegate is far enough not to be influenced. The brittle nature of the ANC's ideological stance on fundamental economic issues has made candidates for the Presidency avoid campaigning on the content of what they stand for but more on what they will not do. The muted and yet loudly critical ideological conflicts defining in-ANC coalitions, or factions, can get out of control on the conference floor as the 'arrogance of numbers' take over. The likelihood of a conference floor generated revolution with new and most diminutive expected permutations of leadership and resolutions happening cannot be ruled out. The possibility of the conference taking a life of its own and a willed trajectory that might politically redefine the ANC is emerging and moving ahead on its own volition would not be far-fetched.
The 52nd National Conference in Polokwane may be a helpful guide for what lies on the horizon. Given the character of that leadership contestation, the complacency of the then incumbents, and the fallibility of the then-charging candidates. It would have defied the scientific rules of political inertia if the outcome had come out differently. If Thabo Mbeki won the contest the outcome may have led to the ANC's biggest split.
Notwithstanding, there are still delegates, and back bench members behind the scenes, that are guardians of the ANCs leader of society character. Whatever ructions and disruptions, the conference will follow a pattern, including phases in which the overall contestations are well managed. It is interesting that in the likelihood any anarchy abruptly emerges in the process, the in-ANC systems have a tolerance and way of channelling it to comply with its democratic centralism character built over decades.
The leader of the society brigade, the software behind the ANC's ideational prowess over the years, has been preparing for this historic scenario more diligently and they are now ascending as the movement's custodians and content force to be reckoned with. The fog of less pragmatic and ideologically etched notions of transformation is made thicker by the bullying dominance of speed and reliability of social media. This fog is not only natural to the factionalism it is maintaining, but is fast obscuring the foundational purposes of just being ANC. Those that are wrong inside the ANC are becoming good examples of what a renewed and rebuilt ANC should not have as its leaders.
As the contest intensifies, it becomes clearer which areas are emerging as policy elephants in the room. The in-ANC ideation processing systems have succeeded in veering off the path of liberation promise policymaking, and as a result, amongst others, these questions loom large,
If the ANC would be honest about the historical significance of ESKOM in South Africa's economy and how critical ESKOM still is in any imagination of economic growth, a unique and dedicated commission on the Electricity Supply Industry would be at the conference. The inextricable linkages between the coal belt, general engineering, logistics, and industrialisation with electricity supply should preoccupy any economic discussion at the conference,
If the ANC were honest about the significance of state-owned enterprises and sectors that are strategic to South Africa's growth, the portfolio of assets under the Department of Public Enterprises would receive special attention at the conference without reversing the now-known pragmatic demands of policy-making. National Security as an industry propeller should be elevated into a political economy matter deserving of the in-ANC resolution, even at framework levels,
If the ANC is honest about youth unemployment and crime prevention, including national security, military conscription cannot be avoided any further by its conferences. National Security sensitisation and the enhancement of patriotism are a direct function of youth 'conscription' to national service, and the military dimension of this aspect has been at the forefront.
In this vortex of renewal, rebuilding, and unity, the economic freedom in our lifetime platoon is entering the leadership echelons of the ANC where it matters, the branches. This platoon, whose more profound policy wishes have for the last ten years been ventilated at platforms of the EFF, and by default, finding themselves muted inside or by the ANC, has never been so unambiguous about its Gallagher Estates ANCYL Conference Resolutions demands. As this platoon takes control of the reigns of in-ANC power structures and increases the loudness of the economic freedom in our lifetime noise inside the ANC, the resultant messaging becomes a nurturant and permissive consensus within the ANC and South African society.
With the call for a social compact becoming the next big thing after the ANC Conference, the economic freedom in our lifetime platoon has occupied the hegemonic strategic space and, by default, relegated the CODESA cohort, or political freedom in our lifetime platoons to their volunteered area of being veterans. Notwithstanding the ambiguity of the content of economic freedom in our lifetime, its craftily suppressed variant of radical economic transformation remains a strand from which its thesis could be summarised into programmatic demands in the syntax of the Freedom Charter.
It is a given fact that the demographic character of South Africa's economic exclusion is free political capital for any astute politician to exploit either way. Although the ANC has the political capital to incubate economic freedom in our lifetime as its programmatic point of departure, its deficiencies as an institution of leadership, a function of its ruinous implementation dysfunctionalities as a governing party, have been its most significant liability. Concomitant in the rise to this economic freedom in our lifetime policy trajectory has been the rise of an ideology-less South African middle class which is averse to any conflagration they perceive might come out of the economic transformation outcomes of EFOT. This is because to be middle class, your rise into it is part of the indebtedness the economy you find yourself in is about.
The established rule of seeking consensus out of conflictual situations defining our South Africanness is one virtue of the economic freedom in our lifetime, and 'we cannot be victims of the sins of our fathers' responding platoons do not have a sufficient supply of. To this effect, a cocktail of political and economic capital escalating into a conflict is served. A cycle of events, most of which created permissible consensuses to battle it out, fortunately still inside the courts, has only served to escalate demands that do not deliver economic freedom to all platoons. This might be because the economic freedom of the other is seen as the suppression of the economic freedom of the other. Instead of defining a higher vision of common economic freedom in our lifetime, all can work towards, their convergence has been in a whirlpool of tensions that became a pretext for an escalatory spiral reminiscent of its apartheid-era versions.
With encumbrances associated with the upcoming 55th Conference that I have, it will be a good idea to deal with the issues of what is to be done as part of the collective. With that being said, the patience that characterised the CODESA Cohort might be in less supply for the economic freedom in our lifetime platoon. As success in the litigation space by those perceived to be defenders of the status quo validates incorrect theories that the post-1994 constitutional dispensation and the rule of law are hostile to economic transformation, the complexity of wanting economic freedom inclusively can also validate the importance of social compacting beyond the exigencies of our now.
Truth is, the economic freedom in our lifetime platoon is convening at NASREC this DECEMBER 2022. Unless they are bought out of their declared generational mission, what we see and read might be the conference outcome that can come out to nought, and a new program of renewal, rebuilding, and unity might emerge. The muted voice of elders, with former presidents and disillusioned former leaders of the ANC as its proxy, is a worrying absence in the emerging configuration of the actual human delegate mix going to the conference.
While the novelty of the conference moment might be the momentum we need to change things, the emerging leader of society order, with the visible radicality accompanying it, should be harnessed into a permissive consensus to compact as a society and nation. If we are indeed in a crisis, it is a leadership crisis. CUT!!!
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