ANC’s conscience is dead

A visitor from another planet would be really convinced there is a real process of introspection going on in the ANC. The ruling party has been “getting rid of corruption”.

The president started off with an impassioned plea in a letter to the party faithful imploring them to “draw a line in the sand, act decisively and demonstrate clear political will” in the battle against corruption. Within days of Cyril Ramaphosa’s letter, corruption-accused former eThekwini mayor Zandile Gumede was sworn in as a member of the KwaZulu-Natal provincial legislature.

In Gauteng, influential party members like Bandile Masusku were asked to step aside while corruption allegations against them are still being investigated – but KZN does the exact opposite. It is this that make the president’s pledge to deal with graft ring hollow.

His letter to the organisation invokes the spirit of Albert Luthuli and Anton Lembede: it goes into detail of how this moment is as important as the historical Morogoro conference for the former liberation movement. Either Ramaphosa knows something that the rest of the population does not about the collective conscience of the people he’s appealing to or he is deliberately playing dumb, saying what the country wants to hear.

It is no mistake that the likes of Gumede can have charges of being involved in tender corruption worth hundreds of millions of rands, but still get appointed to an influential public position. This speaks to the collective conscience of the organisation that the president is appealing to: it no longer exists. In fact, it has been replaced by one that is not afraid to spit in the face of the voters who put the ruling party in power. And there is no way the president does not know this.

For the president’s anti-corruption drive to work, he will have to push through the same structures that ratified the decision to redeploy Gumede. And no, she did not slip through the cracks and wiggled her way to the KZN provincial legislature, there were deliberate decisions taken at national and provincial levels to have her appointed.

The leaders of the faction who see no harm in pushing through decisions like that are the people the president wants the country to believe will have their consciences moved by a heartfelt plea in a letter.

The truth of the matter is that in the past quarter of a century the ruling party has allowed the rot to set in so deep that it has not only become part of the accepted way of doing things, it has become part of the bricks and mortar that are the building blocks of the organisation. A simple letter to the members will not set things right.

It might trigger a little bit of soul-searching in the hearts of those that care deeply about serving the people who elected them, but will not stop the rot. The president is an astute man who knows that the only way to get rid of corruption in South Africa will mean having some of his comrades in orange overalls.

The character of the organisation cannot be reformed because the people perpetuating the culture of corruption are within the organisation. Instead of writing heartfelt appeals to the organisation as a whole, the president should be asking the National Prosecuting Authority why corruption prosecutions are taking so long.

Sydney Majoko.

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.