The ANC’s ‘eye of the needle’ looks quite big

The party's own leadership policy document must be gathering dust somewhere if the sheer scale of corruption is anything to go by.

ANC top six: Jessie Duarte, Ace Magashule, Gwede Mantashe, Cyril Ramaphosa, David Mabuza and Paul Mashatile. Picture: Gallo Images

My late grandmother, makhulu Anna, had a passion for hand sewing.

As a young boy with a sharper eyesight than her, it was not unusual for makhulu to call for help with putting the thread through the eye of the needle, whenever she would miss the tiny hole.

Threading the needle can be an exasperating task and frustrating if you are not patient because the eye of the long slender sewing tool with a pointed tip is small.

The ANC has its own policy document called The Eye of the Needle – meant to be a rigorous process its cadres should go through before assuming leadership positions at branch, regional, provincial and national level.

The document makes it clear that the party should put in place a leadership collective that satisfies the character of the ANC – defined as “a nonracial and nonsexist national movement; a broad national democratic movement; a mass movement and a leader of the democratic forces”.

More importantly, the document says: “A leader should lead by example. He should be above reproach in his political and social conduct – as defined by our revolutionary morality.

“He should act as a role model to ANC members and nonmembers alike.”

The true test of leadership, it says, includes:

Handling conflict in the course of ANC work by understanding its true origins and seeking to resolve it in the context of struggle and in the interest of the ANC;
The ability to inspire people in good and bad times by reinforcing members’ and society’s confidence in the ANC and in transformation;
Winning genuine acceptance by the membership – not through suppression, threats or patronage – but by being principled, firm, humble, and considerate.

If the magnitude of corruption we have seen in South Africa – from Guptagate to the VBS Bank cash heist in Limpopo, by men and women who are supposed to lead society – is anything to go by, then surely The Eye of the Needle is gathering dust at Luthuli House.

Peter Vale, an academic with the University of Johannesburg, put it so well when reacting to the VBS Bank scandal: “It is like stealing from your grandmother – unforgivable.”

The governing ANC is never short of such policy documents and progressive structures like the integrity committee.

In the same vein, who can forget the EFF for coining the “pay back the money” slogan to mount a political offensive against ex-president Jacob Zuma to repay some of the public funds used to refurbish his Nkandla homestead?

Like a pack of hyenas, the EFF leadership recently hounded Nhlanhla Nene to leave office as finance minister after his testimony at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, where he made startling revelations of having met the infamous Gupta family several times.

Only when serious allegations surfaced from the South African Reserve Bank investigation that pointed to EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu and his brother, Brian, as having benefitted from the massive looting of VBS Bank, did we start to question how the party, which has been in the forefront of fighting graft, could itself be a subject of corruption.

Inde le ndlela (we still have a long way to go).