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ANC Renewal is a strategic and existential imperative. Reflections.

Dear Principal, David Makhura 


An intense process to renew Africa's oldest political movement and arguably the nexus of political life in South Africa, the ANC, is underway. Its membership and leadership is expected to be determined in altering its habits which have morphed into values its supporters might have internalised. 


While its various internal factions and ideological coalitions established around post-liberation interests are all singing renewal hymns and saying prayers, they are all projecting a commitment to entrench a value system that might be detached to many it has recruited. 


Thematically, the ANC is a movement whose fairest evaluation can at best be reduced to how non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, united, and prosperous it has made South Africa to be. These represent the enduring end-state of the liberation struggle it gallantly led; creating a national democratic society. 


Renewal should be about protecting society, through a capable leader of society brigade, against the erosion of the liberation gains entrenched in the South African Constitution as the legal expression of what the ANC has historically stood for. 


The South African Constitution is the foremost legal convergence point of all of the ANC's monumental policy documents that defined its anti colonial and anti apartheid struggle and history. It is now illegal to conduct yourself in all manner of behaviours the ANC has been able to demonstrate it was not in the interest of the human race. By making human rights, an innovation the ANC adopted at its 1923 National Conference, the cornerstone of the democratic and constitutional order, a template of freedom, social and economic justice, the rule of law, and human dignity was set as part of the higher firmament and objective we should all aspire toward. 


In its quest to institutionalise the renewal program as an individual member obligation, the ANC chose the route of a massive political education. This program will be anchored on its cadres as the core substrate, then its activists, the next layer will be all its sub-million registered members. The logic is to ensure that in each of the ... municipal ward-based branches, it develops cadres and activists who will be its rear guard leaders of society brigades.


In political education terms its cadres, and the model targets members of the veterans league and its advanced revolutionaries, will anchor branches as the first experience or touch points of society about the ANC. Its members, the ANC has now accepted, will now have play the new role of being its on the ground role models. Through them society must know what it means and takes to be a member of the ANC. 


The axiomatic point of departure for the renewal process is that the habits, negative or positive, of ANC leaders become the values of the organisation. It will depend on the conduct of leaders for a practice code of conduct to find its way to its membership as an undergirding sub-context for genuine renewal. The innovation of the member integrity management system, notably how it liquidated the "innocent until proven guilty" cover which failed to address the collateral of putting the organisation into disrepute, is one of the organisation renewal technologies the ANC has introduced to declare its distaste for what has landed it in the integrity deficit it is. 


Consequently, the political education intervention is ambitiously based on five foundational programmes that will be augmented by a series of contextual and phase of the National Democratic Revolution sensitive Master Classes. Significantly, the political education foundation program would have made the highest grade if its impact can account for improvements in the five pillars defining the essence of being ANC; non-racialism, non-sexism, democracy, unity, and the prosperity of society. Equal to the task is the ability of the programme to articulate where in the NDR journey is the ANC, and if any what is outstanding. The NDR is in facile terms described as a process of struggle to transfer power to "we the people", such power is political, economic, and social control. The political school has the obligation to articulate if power has moved since 1994, if so why is the power underperforming.


The five modules are aptly chosen. The challenge with them might be an overemphasis on the history of the struggle without drawing the necessary threads of that history to articulate the current challenges. The program should at best leave any attendee with how the new information is important for the five pillars defining ANCness; or maybe a dedicated Master Class program should be developed to create the linkages. The fundamental question however is if it is a political education program, what are the politics it is focussing upon. The risk on emphasis on history might lend it onto a terrain of being a subtle political campaigning tool for those it accentuates as main characters in the struggle story. 


Notwithstanding the teething challenges of renewing by first re-olding or historicising, the logistical character, form, and style of the foundation program presents and opportunity for the ANC to dialogue with itself in a learning environment and experience. It is logic


What the program should, and as a matter of urgency, do, is to have a targeted approach to various sectors who might be exponential than branches. The chaplaincy should customise the program for the religious sector. Even at that granular level, the Christian constituency, which the ANC needs to create a safe space for them to believe it is not anti their God, should have a targeted program, presented by Christian Comrades. The same should apply to other religious beliefs and faith communities. This sectorialisation must be rolled out to strategic sectors that have influence where it matters for the ANC renewal programme to be known. For instance;


  1. Workers
  2. Organised Business 
  3. Black Management Forums
  4. Professional Associations 
  5. Faith Based Communities 
  6. Traditional Leaders 
  7. Naturalised Foreign Nationals 
  8. Constituencies that have Historically been Hostile to the ANC
  9. Patriotic Bourgeoisie Organised Formations 
  10. Sports Bodies and Personalities 


It is true that the basic unit of organisation for the ANC is the branch. It is also true that the ANC relates with its membership through the branches. It is however, and inconveniently so, true that not every member of the ANC want to interact with the ANC through the Branch. Elite theory confirms that the middle class is class fragile, and those that access them master this reality. This applies to closed professional groups and sectors. The basic unities of a controlled us can only be elevated to a bigger us as ANC members. The political program should not be shy to venture into this, otherwise it will tickbox those the ANC currently have and not reach those that are not where the program is delivered. 


These are my preliminary thoughts after attending the Train the Trainers Course. 


Dr FM Lucky Mathebula 

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