ANC’s ideological blindness

The ANC has painted SA into a disastrous corner. This was not out of malice but stupidity, a failure to get to grips with how the real world works.

Successful governments in the democratic world all function in the same basic way.

Every successful governing party has the ability, once in power, to adapt its ideals to reality.

In contrast, almost every recent failure of this government can be traced to it invariably choosing form over substance, posturing over results, and avoidance rather than sweating the hard yards.

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Take the successive waves of ugly xenophobia that have periodically swept the country and are right now simmering close to an explosion of violence.

The most recent trigger has been the West Rand gang rape of eight women, allegedly by a group of Lesotho men – so-called zama zamas – who enter South Africa illegally to mine.

In response, starting in Gauteng and spreading to other provinces, residents in mining communities have formed vigilante gangs to hunt down the zama zamas.

At least one has been killed and this week the police rescued another 19 from an angry mob.

The origins of the problem can be traced back to 1994, when the ANC took power for the first time.

One of its first actions was to switch off the daunting cordon of electric fences that kept illegal border crossings to a minimum and, instead, deliberately allowed them to fall into disrepair.

The result has been an explosion in illegal immigration. Our poorly trained and abominably led police force, already overwhelmed by homegrown criminality, simply can’t cope.

This week, the army was placed on standby because “SA is gradually deteriorating into unrest due to criminality”.

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This situation is entirely predictable and avoidable. The problem is one of the ANC’s own making.

Over almost three decades in power, one thing has always been a consistent point of pride for the ANC. It is not a mere political party.

It is a national liberation movement. It’s an important emotional distinction.

No matter how lofty their goals and storied their past, political parties that thrive are basically pragmatic entities.

Ideals are constantly being adapted in the face of changing circumstances. Not so the ANC’s national liberation movement.

It has a historically ordained mission to lead “the people”, kicking and screaming if necessary, to a Utopian promised land.

The party may have to, for now, tolerate competing political groupings but at heart, it views differing opinions as inherently illegitimate.

This egotism manifests itself in hilarious ways.

The ANC was recently enraged by ActionSA’s leader, Herman Mashaba, ridiculing the use of the term “comrade”, which he said had developed a new meaning.

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In SA, it now meant “thugs and thieves” and would be banned from use in ActionSA.

As self-styled owners of the “comrade” copyright, the ANC issued an angry statement, saying that this demonstrated the “fascist tendencies” in ActionSA.

It was the “unfortunate danger” of such “populist manoeuvres” that they would “deliberately mislead society and this must be rejected with the contempt it deserves”.

While all political parties and politicians are selfish creatures, operating in functional democracies keeps them vaguely honest.

They know that if they screw up too much, voters will turf them out.

That is a reality that the ANC has yet to face for, until now, the electorate has largely accepted the ANC’s liberation mythology.

But the party’s plunging popularity at the polls is a sign that voters may be moving beyond ideology to pragmatism.

They want political parties that do things, not liberation movements that dream about doing things.

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