Among the emerging narratives and takeaways about the upcoming ANC 55th National Conference is the growing distinction between members of the ANC, who are its guardians and those that are its custodians. To keep an organisation under custodianship is not the same as giving it the guardianship it requires. The custodian of the ANC is fast emerging to be its legacy as both a liberation movement and a leader of society. Its guardian(s) is equally emerging to be the form, character, and quality of its membership.
The recent integrity challenges the ANC went through as an institution or organisation have tested its resilience as an institution more than it has done to its members as its individual components. How it responds to challenges of corruption, state capture, the members of members phenomenon, and the general protection of its reputation has been a function of its institutional wisdom. In its 110-year history, 30 have been characterised by the ANC being a governing party with a constitutional democracy system.
In the period it conducted its struggle for the emancipation of South Africans from apartheid, the ANC imagined a post-apartheid South Africa with a power matrix which prioritises the prerogative wishes of an elected majority. This power matrix would have been possible in a dispensation where Parliament is supreme in governing. In constructing a post-apartheid state, the ANC and its negotiating partners at CODESA, on the contrary, adopted a constitutional dispensation that defined South Africa as a test site of freedom with the Constitution as the supreme law of the country. The rule of law has, in this arrangement, been entrenched.
The ANC has for a while been getting used to the rule of law principle, and fortunately for South Africa, it also started to allow the resolution of its internal disputes to be subjected to the judicial authority of the state it governs. This doctrinal shift has enabled current jurisprudence, with its discontents, to start enjoying the political legitimacy of being part of the liberation promise the Constitution provides. The highest epoch of this development has been embracing being at variance with the country's law enforcement agencies to part-determine the ANCs definition of putting the organisation into disrepute. The promulgation of anti-corruption legislation, acceding to international standards on corruption, reviewing its member integrity management systems, and preparedness to cooperate with findings of chapter nine institutions and judicial commissions of inquiry all constitute how far the ANC has subjected itself as an institution to the rule of law and supremacy of the Constitution.
As a liberation movement, the ANC has been able to bring its social and political capital into congruence with what the Constitution expects of its citizens, corporate or otherwise. Through such actions, the ANC has worked its leader of society status and liberation movement legacy into an institutional mechanism through which it has become a custodian of the liberation promise defined in the country's constitution.
What we saw unfolding in the last six weeks before its 55th National Conference as the ANC was dealing with the matter of the theft of foreign currency-denominated cash at the President's PhalaPhala farm was the culmination of the built-in institutional wisdom of the ANC within the rule of law context it has embraced. Of significance was how the PhalaPhala matter was allowed to be informed and directed by findings of established institutional arrangements the ANC has subjected itself to.
Firstly, the hierarchies defined by the ANCs own Constitution were given space to manage various ventilation of the matter and allow leadership at every phase of ventilation to filter what is appropriate for disposal by the next level.
Secondly, in processing, reports from institutions of the state established to inform the process were allowed to be part of the evidence instructing how the ANC interacts with the matter. The Judge Ngcobo-led panel report, with its discontents, irrespective of it being reviewed by the President as the subject of the report, was served on the various structures of the ANC and was filtered through its decision-making processes. That the ANC took a decision to instruct its caucus to process the matter in the way it has decided, correctly or otherwise, does not take away that its structures engaged with the process as the rule of law and supremacy of the country's institutions dictated.
Thirdly, the ANC, in providing reasons for how it arrived at the decision not to act as the dominant public opinion on the matter would have expected, cited a need for the process to allow other institutions dealing with this matter to finalise their processes and report on way forward for the ANC to be guided as an institution how to react or respond.
Fourthly, as this decision was finalised to be pending other reports, the ANC's own Integrity Committee, acting within what has been provided as the organisation's member integrity management system, issued a report that sat at the ANC's NEC for consideration. The contents of the report were of such a nature that the outgoing NEC members decided that the matter be presented to the National Conference as the highest decision-making body to finalise. What has not been clear from the NEC is the extent to which the integrity committee has pronounced on PhalaPhala and put the ANC into disrepute.
As an institution, the ANC, acting as a unit, has demonstrated its capability to be a custodian of instruments, standards, and mechanisms put in place to lead society. This has been done in a context whose political neutrality was compromised, as the ANC acted with all risks associated with it losing appeal from the electorate.
In respect of ANC members being guardians of the liberation promise in the Constitution, it is clear that the actions of its members deployed in its name at several public offices have put the ANC into disrepute. Included amongst those that have found themselves to be at variance with the law and expectations of integrity are those society has celebrated as beacons of hope that through them, models of what defines a national value system will be paraded. As the ANC was purging from amongst its members those that burdened its reputation and that of the country, as well as what the South African democracy represents, members and leaders of the ANC have been found wanting in demonstrating that they can be worthy guardians of the value system that should accompany the liberation promise in the Constitution. The ANC's eye of the needle document outlines what being a member of the ANC befitting to wear the cloak of 'leader of society' is and requires.
The decision by the NEC to subject the PhalaPhala matter to the 55th National Conference should be welcomed as it will put the whole of the ANC to the test. Talking to and about corruption might have come to the end, but the era of acting on it as a National Conference Resolution matter has arrived. The staked are high.
If any of those that are subjected to the integrity of the ANC are in any way near being classified as its guardians, calling it a day might absolve them of the damage they have thus far inflicted on the ANC. Most organisations dislike the idea of looking like they have failed their followers, but if they really think about it, the only way not to believe you are failing as an institution is to take those daring unencumbered decisions than to fail, not trying. As they say, "taking responsibility for the mess that you have plunged the ANC as leader of society and doing what is necessary to correct the situation is a sign of a great leader". CUT!!!🤷🏿♂️
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