What happened at NASREC 2.0 might be a serious message to ANC activists. My Take.

      In August 2022, I wrote, "The ANC tradition connotes a set of deeply rooted, historically conditioned attitudes about the nature of the movement, the role of the ANC in society and the polity, the authentic organization and operation of the human emancipation system it represents, about the way ANCness is or should be continuously renewed, made, and applied. The ANCs tradition, which carries more its practice of being an organizational system than its inherent ideology, is one of its greatest assets within which its political and social capital is embedded. The organization's choices of cohesion, cooperation, collaboration, faction establishing, unification, confrontation, or recalibration, are significantly impacted by the existence or otherwise, as well as the nature of its tradition, or if you like heritage".

In 2017, I also wrote, "Heritage is an embodiment of a past we wish to take into our future without losing the benefits of a changing present. It defines not only a sense of belonging but also makes the past a form of the present and an abstraction of what a future will look like with us as a presence of the past which is a present we live in now. Like its adjunct tradition, it creates and reorders our background of permanence. It assists us in transmitting the merits of the past to modern-day originality. Such a background anchors the values with which a society can be normed. 

The ANC conference, as South Africa's single event that makes it possible for society to ‘rethink the dispersion of history in the form of the same, is a heritage site for its members and observers of how a democratic process unfolds. It displays how far the will of its members can be respected, manipulated, and/or disregarded. This display is a layer that sediments upon others constituting a heritage that has enabled members to pursue the endless search for its original values without discontinuity.

The Heritage character of the Conference is one element of ANCness that has made it go through most of its challenges over the years. It has, in fact, become a convention for ANC members to almost, and in a faith-based manner, subject all doubts about their organization to its Conference. At these conferences, the ANC congregates every five years to find itself, refine its strategic pathways, define new policy trajectories, reconfirm its strategy and tactics and elect new leaders from amongst its members in good standing new leadership. Treated like a pilgrimage for its polyvalent ideologues to create a consensus without a glueing ideology, the Conference has become mythical and somewhat ‘spiritualized’.

Mirroring its origination conference in 1912, it invites into the ANC's 'sacred’ space, euphemistically called the festival of ideas, various sectors of society to enrich its continuum of ‘prayers’ for and about the future. Unlike their religious equivalents, these prayers are expected to guide how to develop policies in the state it aspires to always rule, the ultimate prize of successful ANCness. In the multi-party democratic context of South Africa, where the ontological position of the ANC is under constant review by a society that wants to claim portions of its glorious history of fighting all forms of chauvinism, with racism as its apex of enemies, its conferences have become a form of privileged shelter for the sovereignty of its consciousness as a liberation movement.

As a conglomerate of political orientations on how best South Africa can be governed, its Heritage includes being accorded the status of leader of society. Whilst this status accentuates/ed one of its prayer items, it, and for some time, earned it through conduct and the leadership it produced. The various conditions and epochs it went through became its capacity-building process. It did not only become a leading institution but itself an institution of leadership. Members would still have their steps ordered by internal practices that have grown into virtual artefacts defining its Heritage.

However, Heritage can also be defeatist and decadent, trapping institutional vibrancy in absolute attitudes and outmoded -isms. The currency it uses to defeat a society is nostalgia and, at best, mythology. Because of its sacred character, it is often difficult to challenge the conference heritage, albeit with flaws and weaknesses. This risk of Heritage has engulfed the ANC conferencing process. The quality of leadership and prayer items proposed at its five-yearly pilgrimage gathering, the Conference, is of such a quality that they are being uncontested publicly, creating a sub-culture of one-way communication its leaders have taken advantage of.

The ultimate change this pilgrimage is known to have been consistent about is a leadership change. As part of the conferencing Heritage, selecting such has been anchored in branches. Being a historically elite and middle-class formation, the assumption of a class-nuanced character of society became the assurance for the quality of individuals sent to contest. The deferral of the enfranchising dream by various non-black regimes called for new methods of petitioning powers that are on society's demands. These new methods also define heroism in the ANC and thus open avenues for new standards for meritorious leadership. These standards grew within the process leading up to the Conference as a heritage and did not change it.

Assumptions of quality would therefore be nuanced outside the traditional modes of social class and criteria changed outside what the ‘historical dominant middle class’ had hermetically sealed themselves into. This Heritage also occurred in conditions of illegality whose variable influence churned an unconscious pecking order not traditional to the ANC’s historical self. Merit, as known in the Heritage, changed, and the template of being ANC was altered. A new breed of merit concretized out of the template whilst the Heritage of the Conference stayed static". 

The above provides a context within which this rendition navigates the question of what message or messages should be heard and understood from the leadership selection outcomes of the 55th Conference of the African National Congress. Apart from its rich Heritage of institutionalising the centrality of its membership base, as represented by branch delegates, the ANC has successfully crafted its place and value as the nexus of all political and political-economic life of South Africa. The proverbial statement that "when the ANC sneezes, the whole of (South) Africa catches a cold" applies, positively or otherwise, to practically most facets of (South) Africanness. 

In fact, the ANC, as a construct, has modelled itself as an organisation determined to transform any existing order to shape society in its own image without creating any new chauvinism or crass. At least in its founding documents, it has defined itself as an advocate of universal human rights, democratic practice, the rule of law, supremacy of the Constitution, separation of powers, independence of the judicial authority, the pursuit of a mixed economic system, non-racialism, and non-sexism. As a result, it has fulfilled its social functions as a political party. Firstly, it has been able to carry through time the structures and systems within which the idea of liberation stayed a permanent feature of South Africanness. Secondly, it has managed to insert as normality the common liberation interests of society into the general behaviour of all who live in South Africa. Lastly, through the Heritage it crafted over time, it has established possible futures for society in accordance with its norms, standards, theories, values, and polyvalent purposes within the limits of the nation's interests.  

The above has been instructive in how it groomed its leadership at all levels. The accumulation of experience in what defines the character of the ANC has, unfortunately, been an outcome of knowing what the opposite has been and, thus, an exercise in the theory of what it represents. Custodians of principles undergirding its true character have lived a life of knowing what they did not want and generally imagining what they actually wanted. Invariably this made those that embraced what the ANC professed to be standing for, even if they had little to no experience of it, meet the grade set by the theory of a new and imagined order. In its early years as a governing party, the ANC struggled to define South Africa's national interests succinctly, as it inherited a state without a nation in its strictest sense. Various rituals and symbols known to describe nations were manufactured and paraded, and these were later undermined by the lack of trust in a new future. The consequence has been an unfortunate and real retreat to tribal, racial, and class enclaves that defined spaces within which 'trust of a special type' would be nurturant to various elite consensuses. 

The force of tradition in connoting a set of deeply rooted, historically conditioned attributes about the nature or imagination of society from a tribal perspective, the role of that tradition in society and the polity, and how that instructs proper organisation and operation of a political formation, and about how such traditions should be embraced as belonging to all, has been gradually compromising the unity ideal of the liberation movement. The ANC's inherent tribalism, how certain tribes and ethnic groups shaped its historical evolution, its undefined end state of the National Democratic Revolution, and its true understanding of the 'National' in the African Congress, is an underappreciated factors in the way the new 'National Democratic Order' is being constructed. And because of this, how individual members interpret their internal environment is often reflected in how they understand themselves within social enclaves defined by common cultural backgrounds, experiences they have or had with the ANC's centre over time, and their converging models of crafting survival pathways. The institutionalisation of difference as a strategy of racial colonisation and Apartheid, which has been honoured where the need to culturally self-determine was by any standards correct, left institutional traces that instructed spatial development initiatives and defined some of these enclaves as pseudo-national expression centres. Some are culturally so dominant that a better appreciation of their influence might have to start instructing how the arrangement to govern South Africa are structured. Without a sophisticated strategy to manage this challenge, the country is undergoing a process where it becomes nurturant to enclaves of consensuses about the leadership of South Africa and its political formations.

These consensuses started to create cracks within the ANC as leadership legitimation began to include the protection of interests outside what the liberation promise has defined as a strategic nation-building path for South Africa. In the economic sphere, we have noticed how the investment profile of South Africa's liquid financial assets grew. This remains the most visible indicator of trust and belief in the job-creating sectors of the growing economy. The juniorisation of domestic direct investment in the economy in favour of foreign direct investment started to determine the cadence of job-creating initiatives. Consequently, a bulged social wage system traps society in 30-day consumption circles instead of investments that create self-reliance. Leaders that resonated with this distortion of a functioning economy got legitimised and presented as magnets of FDI. The leadership question in the ANC got inextricably linked to the capacity to make the state a 'capable construct' that manages the system to its status quo efficiencies. 

In the political space, where elites are brought together by their mutual respect or affinity, which flows from sharing in the co-fraternity of power, whatever guarantees access to power can easily generate consensus for its use, despite the dire consequences it might have on organisational cohesion. As the fragility of the organisation succumbs to such consensuses, elites tend to package themselves as a cartel of anxiety by either parading numerical strength at voting booths or using historical roles of past elites from their own. Notwithstanding, the brute truth is as their confidence wanes at the alter of differently conceptualised strategies to neutralise the anxieties paraded, the cartel quickly degenerates into a mere category of tendencies with little to no effect on the emerging consensus. As the consensus collapses, power follows the dominant consensus and propagandizing becomes less crucial, and managing of new power arrangements becomes crucial. The space for chauvinism generally shrinks at the sight of elite conversion from narrow ethnic, tribal, or tendencies towards a leader of society brigade and class.

True to its Heritage, the ANC started to feel the tremors of the growing discontent about the economy's structure from its basic organisational units and branches. The discontent started questioning the templates of economic dominance and proposed (radical) transformation pathways through which the economy could be repurposed to serve the poor. The natural divide between reforming and transforming the system found factional labels within the liberation movement. This was so acute that differences in how to change the economy became more important than why and what is to be transformed. Proximity to state power would mean that those who wanted to transform the economy gradually understood why the templates of dominance cannot be tampered with unless there is a readiness to go through an imaginary valley of economic hardships. Notwithstanding that the ANC lived up to its Heritage, the branches' will prevailed. Leaders were elected, and seven men and women ascended to leadership positions in one of Africa's oldest and most influential political formations. 

What, then, should we make from the outcome 

In the parlance of a platform participant on the BPI Foundation chat group, one observer submits, "President Ramaphosa's hand is strengthened somewhat, and he will know very clearly that going to the next election doing more of the same is not an option...the opportunity for true renewal is a two-year window. Considering that voting loosely follows preferred candidates' slates, all ministers not on the ANC NEC list have been given an unofficial vote of no confidence by their own party and must be reshuffled". In the same platform, another rendition observes, "the bulk of the older leaders have been rested basically. You see a bulk of the 45-55 as elders, so it is quite refreshing, and surprisingly COSATU is not represented at all. The SACP is represented by middle age members but would have expected the SACP GS and the President of COSATU to have been elected". 

Despite the inuendoes by the two esteemed BPIans, what is clear from the outcomes of NASREC 2.0 is that the old is shrinking, and the elders are packaged to their rightful spaces where they will be consulted without having the option to make the final determination of way forward. The ANC is not only shedding its skin but is getting out of its struggle nostalgia cocoon and will be facing South Africa's problems for what they are and not what created them to be. Fresh from masterminding the reopening of the Naledi-to-Johannesburg and Soshanguve-to-Pretoria railway lines, the new Secretary General of the ANC, Fikile Mbalula, brings the vibrancy of getting things done unless he joins many that inspired hope and nothing happened. 

The Composition of the NEC, including the top 7 officials, reflects men and women who have had a direct and lived experience of Apartheid at its zenith. They have been in township schools, bush universities, BaNtu nursing colleges that were closed, BaNtu teachers training colleges that were closed, slept in four-roomed houses which were bigger than the RDP houses, went to shows at township community halls that are bastions of drug dealing, and understand the liberatory value of electricity to societies that had access to it since 1990. This NEC has men and women that have a relationship with the true meaning of discrimination and have direct reports of racism experienced by their children who might be good at whatever but never made the grade to be recognised as such. There are stories this NEC can share and relate to, which will make it non-sensical for them not to be deliberate in dealing with the structural templates of human domination on another, otherwise also called apartheid spatial hangovers.

Without vitiating any other key challenge this NEC should focus upon, their mandate has the following message. 

1. The anti-graft and state capture mandate that President Ramaphosa has been championing has the support of his political party. 
2. The economic policy direction he had started has arguably been endorsed, notwithstanding the high levels of unemployment, massive deindustrialisation, and worrying levels of poverty and inequality. 
3. The energy sovereignty and security policies Ramaphosa has embarked upon have received endorsement from Conference. The coal mining-dependent towns would have to face the consequences of the alternative energy policy decision a Ramaphosa ANC will be championing. 
4. Leadership endorsement has also sent another clear message against regionalism, mainly when it reflects ethnic tendencies. The 55th National Conference elected the most cosmopolitan top 7 leaders of the ANC. 
5. The Conference has brought together many generations of ANC within the top 7 officials. There are two former secretaries of the most significant trade union movement, a former UDF PWV operative, an AZASO activist and student leader, a former secretary general and President of the ANC youth league, and two formidable women's league activists who both served in its NEC. 
6. In terms of depth and knowledge of what the ANC stands for, the current top 7 does not only have knowledge as a resource but claims considerable lived experience and man-years inside the ANC and the Mass Democratic Movement. 

Except for reflecting on the individuals that ascended, the new leadership have the following immediate strategic challenges to deal with if the ANC wants to retain an otherwise declining electoral support. 

1. They must stop load-shedding, and giving good reasons why it continues will no longer help. As the new is introduced, coal-fired power stations that are mothballed should be brought back to life.
2. They must re-establish the election machinery to resuscitate discouraged activists that see no value in working for an ANC that does not create jobs and other opportunities.
3. They must manage the impact of the conference outcomes on regionalism and ethnicity. The urban concentration of the top seven needs a strategy to demonstrate that it was the will of branches through delegates and not exclusion.
4. The unemployment rate needs attention. The President must call on the private sector to play ball, and the investment strike must now end. 
5. Decisions on all first-term summits must be implemented. South Africa needs to work again. 
6. Whilst the unity of the ANC is essential, it cannot happen unless it is premised on its renewal and rebuilding. A united old ANC with current tendencies is what South Africa does not want. 

Interesting days ahead. The new still has the old, yet the old sees itself as the new. Continuity has thrived. CUT!!!👍🏿