The ANC is in a leadership contest. Leaders are deep inside an election campaign. The contest's theme is the ANC's renewal, rebuilding, and unity. In pursuit of the theme and their leadership ambitions, contesting leaders have, by default, become magnets of one coalition/faction or another inside the ANC. Interesting nodes of influence in the ANC have been developing for a while, and these have divided the organisation. What is at stake, though, is the unity of the ANC as a political movement for it to complete whatever is left of its historic mission of emancipating black people in general and Africans in particular.
The President Ramaphosa-led ANC NEC, in its maiden January statement of 2018, took to reminding South Africans of the foundational reasons for the ANC's existence. The statement read ..."our organisation belongs to the people of South Africa, and we must safeguard and nurture it. The core ideal, which is the reason for the ANC’s existence, the creation of a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, prosperous and equitable society... ". In the same statement, the NEC statement submits that the ANC "recognised that the movement has become deeply divided through factionalism, patronage, corruption and competition for resources. Structures of the movement have been weakened, and the confidence of the people in the ANC has been eroded". Because of this, the ANC "decided that it should embark with immediate effect, on a far-reaching programme of organisation-building and renewal aimed at making it a more effective instrument of social and economic change".
For most of its history, the ANC has operated within a morality of executing a struggle against a system declared to be a crime against humanity. Its conditions of illegality created a sieve within which what would have been classified as malfeasance, patronage, corruption, and competition for resources could easily be condoned for one security consideration or another. The 1994 democratic breakthrough established a condition where the ANC is now a legal organisation contesting for political power and has the mandate to direct the resources distribution prowess of government as an agency of the state. Its cadres, including leadership, would have required a rigorous process of debriefing and reorientation to a context where they understand and live the reality that they are themselves in government.
In the absence of, or rather a not known, debriefing process to reorient its cadres- of the legality of the ANC, its elections-acquired status of being a governing party and thus the system, its position as a governing party within a constitutional democracy that has elevated the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law above all other derived mandates, and the expectation by the Constitution that the principle of majority rule is limited by the extent to which the will of that majority is in itself constitutional- the ANC has seen some of its factions developing around the questioning of what defines the new South Africanness. Save for its posture to being a ‘broad church’ and thus non-aligned to any -ism, the hold on the freedom charter as the basis of its programs has made the ANC one of the few lobbyist-intensive post-liberation struggle governing parties.
The vulnerability of the ANC to contexts that are argued only based on what works at a given material condition makes it an ‘up for the take’ political party as it has not defined its non-negotiables beyond the 1994 democratic breakthrough. The doctrinal shifts in -the land question, the role of state-owned entities in a developmental state economy, nationalisation of strategic sectors of the economy, and industrialisation based on state intervention in the beneficiation of mineral resources as the background of permanence in how South Africa manages its competitiveness- and many other aspects of ANCness defined during its definitions of what the new state would do, has redefined it as a policy flexible organisation available to the dominant logic, either paying or politically pressurising.
The arrival, therefore, of the one trillion rands, or more, in the form of a state budget into the power architecture of the ANC has redefined its sobriety on how to deal with what they historically believed is what will change society and the actual exigencies of being in government on behalf of all citizens, including those that have not, and will not, vote for the ANC. Thus, it can be argued that the ANC's governing partyness came with contestations for state power by ANC members to levels where various interests-defined coalitions/factions characterise the ANC.
The increasing tolerance of factionalism, patronage, corruption, and competition has now settled as a feature of ANC politicking. This has now reached a level where it collides with the dynamic of a better life for all as a liberation promise in the Constitution.
What might be happening is that 'far from fulfilling the will of the intended renewal, rebuilding, and unity through various changes, and a possible revolution or transformation within the governing party, some of those leading the charge have instead tried to fulfil only their own will to power.
The brute truth is that, as leader of society, particularly during the past decade and a half, the ANC may have, and unwittingly so, systematically compromised the capability of the country’s (democratic) institutions, undermined the rule of law, interfered to levels of almost eliminating constitutional checks and balances, hobbled the public broadcaster and colluded with a somewhat 'factional' independent media, and built a kleptocratic system that rewards cronies while sidelining critics.
In these tirades, there seemed to be no deep ideological soul-searching involved – just clear-eyed calculations about what it would require to win political power within the ANC and, ultimately, the country.
To deal with the systemic organisational challenges the ANC faces, its leadership decreed at its 54th National Conference renewal, rebuilding, and unity of the ANC as an overarching theme to guide it beyond all its rhetoric.
About Renewal, Rebuilding, and Unity.
Renewal is simply an instance of resuming something after an interruption. This means there would have been a process or system working correctly, and an interruption occurred to depths whereby the organisation required more renewal than transformation.
The choice of this concept in the theme announces to the world that the ANC's existential system has been interrupted and requires intervention so that it can be resumed. The character of the ANC has or should have, gone through transformation phases to make it a modern party contesting for political power whilst retaining its liberation movement obligations.
To get into a proper renewal mode, the ANC should start by being honest as to what of itself has been interrupted, why it was interrupted, how it is interrupted when it was interrupted, and by whom it was interrupted. To think you are interrupted can be a function of not understanding expectations of the new phase of existence, it can be the lack of clearly defined ideological posture to discipline your policy choices despite being obligated to the instructing dialectics, and/or a doctrinal shift that has not been sufficiently canvassed with those that are following because of the original doctrines.
At the time, the choice of renewal as a thematic area to define its way of doing business was made, predominating the ANCs challenges, and arguably what might have been diagnosed as an interruption was corruption and state capture. While these are symptomatic of bigger undercurrents that might have occasioned such malfeasance, an attempt was not made to get to the bottom of this interruption in its systemic character.
Engaging with interruptions and interrupters has pitted former comrades against each other based on what it is that they think is being interrupted. Fundamental to recalibrating the templates of socioeconomic and economic dominance is how the ANC interrupts how these templates ensure power that delays the creation of a National Democratic Society.
How the ANC goes about interrupting templates of dominance has, on the contrary, interrupted the ANC, thus occasioning a renewal process. Trapped in the cocoon of clarifying what (radical) economic transformation and/or (radical) socioeconomic transformation is, the ANC has been unable to burst into the subsequent phases of dealing with the templates of dominance that have choked the developmental potential of South Africa.
Rebuilding is, according to the dictionary, building something again after it has been damaged or destroyed. According to the dictionary, rebuilding is A natural path to engaging with this thematic area: finding where and what resources are available to rebuild the ANC.
Rebuilding assumes the existence of knowledge about what was structurally in place. What existed will generally be the base template of what needs to be rebuilt. In structural terms, it would be essential to find the ANC's points of stability to start the rebuilding process.
In searching for these points of stability or foundations from which rebuilding could commence, there might be a long and somewhat painful process of going through the rubble that collapses with what you are rebuilding.
Rubble left too long might have developed into permanent structures requiring a need to break it apart as you work to get to the foundations from which rebuilding can start.
Rubble can, in the case of the ANC, be the quality of its membership post-1994 and how capable that quality is to engage with the changing demands of the leader of society character of the ANC.
Rubble can be the ideological choices inherent in its broad church constituencies still defining the ANC as more of an alliance that an emboldened ideological unit ready to risk what it believes is the solution to the development of South Africa devoid of settlement encumbrances that came with the new constitutional democracy.
Rubble can be the untoward behaviours of its leadership when engaging with the temptations of state power and negative private sector incentives to manipulate state procurement towards corruption and patronage.
Rubble can be a political economy of corruption that has settled to levels where it has hierarchies and a bureaucratic machine that sustains it as part of the regular business with the government.
Rubble can be the high ethical obligations many in the leadership of the ANC were not ready to deal with and thus became prey to predatory corrupters looking to repurpose the public purse for self-aggrandisement.
Clearing this rubble to start rebuilding has become one of the challenges facing the ANC. Like any system operating in institutions that are a human construct, the capacity of rubble to recombine with systems designed to get rid of it should not be undermined.
As an organic outcome of what would have collapsed, part of the rubble can rise through the ranks of the ANC, professing to be its rebuilders, yet using the quality of being rubble to execute a different expectation of quality once the ANC is rebuilt.
The actual template or design of what a rebuilt ANC should look like has assumptions of competencies its leadership and membership should have beyond those of its supporters. Members of the ANC must know what the ANC is all about and what it seeks to achieve for and on behalf of society.
Such knowledge should include understanding the context within which the ANC operates to achieve its objectives. Cardinal to this knowledgeability will always be the understanding of the Constitution as the template upon which a new society will be built.
True South Africanness will be difficult to find outside of the values defining South Africa, and these are unless otherwise revisited, codified in its Constitution. The brute truth is our subjective conditions will determine how we want the new South Africanness to be. Still, it will always be the legality and legitimacy of our subjective demands that will regulate how we enrol each other along the path of rebuilding our society.
Unity is defined as the quality or state of being one. In an institution that has professed its character as a broad church, unity might be relevant if it means "a combination or ordering of parts in the execution of programs that are in the National Interest that constitutes a whole or promotes an undivided total effect. As an institution of leadership or leader of society, it will be the complex whole of the ANC; its resulting singleness of effect or symmetry and consistency of form and character will manifest the unity of our diverse nature as a society and democracy requires.
Unity as a thematic area the ANC has chosen assumes the existence of divisions and diversities among its members. The vectors of race, creed, sex, class, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and, lately, various forms of crass have defined South Africa for so long that to some within the ANC, carrying some of the labels is a form of power mobilisation. Unity also assumes ideological differences so acute that a tendency disguised as a faction develops within the ANC to levels where some cannot exist outside the dictates of the tendencies defining various factions in the ANC.
The pursuit of unity will always be an ongoing process, as the true nature of a vibrant organisation lies in its ability to adapt to new conditions. Some of these conditions might define the spaces within which it is easy to be divided. For instance, how a society runs its economy will always require new approaches to discipline entry to opportunities occasioned by technology and innovation no Ideological choice could have anticipated. Unity can be a victim of growth and development. CUT!!! 🤷🏿♂️
Comments
Post a Comment