‘The ANC has become the disease of which it pretends to be a cure’

In his paper “Notes on the Renewal of the ANC”, African Peer Review Mechanism chief executive Professor Eddie Maloka reminds his comrades – the “young lions” and other 1980s anti-apartheid activists – about an article published by veteran communist Jack Simons in the 1990s before the dawn of democracy.

No ANC leader at the time could imagine that the Simons article – published in the African Communist about a fictional “comrade” who found himself in a comfortable government position after independence from apartheid – could years later become the true reflection of the disastrous state of affairs in the governing party and government.

“Some 30 years later, we can now see that Simons’ piece of fiction has now become a prophecy. His fictional character is now within our midst – it’s in the ANC, in government – the dominant phenomenon in our movement.

“The ANC has become the disease of which it pretends to be a cure,” was how frank Maloka was in painting a picture of the once-revered liberation movement, today struggling to find a cure to the plague of factionalism, corruption, greed and arrogance.

“This kind of personal transformations starts with small things, but particularly with how comrades perceive and understand their deployment to the state.

“All of a sudden, some of our able-bodied comrades are no longer able to carry their own bags and another person has to do this simple task for them.

“Comrades can’t go to the bathroom without the aid of VIP protection. Others can’t visit their relatives over the weekend without blue lights. These small things may look trivial and insignificant, but they actually work quietly on the subconsciousness of comrades.

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“As we speak, some comrades no longer perceive their deployment to the state as a public service – an act of revolutionary duty – but as a moment of demonstrating that ‘I have arrived’,” argued Maloka.

Compared to other established democracies, this is indeed a stark contrast, especially when one looks back at the life of the late Swedish prime minister, Olof Palme, who did not only offer financial and material assistance to the ANC in exile, but was committed to the project of a truly free South Africa.

Humble until his assassination on 28 February, 1986, Palme suffered a single gunshot wound while walking home from a cinema with his wife Lisbeth Palme in a Stockholm street, with Lisbeth slightly wounded by a second shot.

True to their principle of serving and living with the people, they had no bodyguards with them because they firmly believed that no one would hurt them. Also, without bodyguards, SA Communist Party stalwart Chris Hani was gunned down outside his Boksburg home on 10 April, 1993 – just a year before the country’s first all-inclusive democratic elections. What can be learnt from the Palme-Hani assassinations is that we once had leaders who were selfless – not self-important and arrogant – like those of the ANC of today.

We can perhaps tolerate the bodyguards, but the series of scandals, corruption, state capture, malfeasance – in the face of poverty, decaying infrastructure, street potholes and rampant crime – is an unforgettable and unforgivable sin. South Africans are crying out for change and leaders who put their interests above their families, close associates and cronies. If disgraced former health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize – who left public service under the cloud of the Digital Vibes scandal – harbours ambitions of being voted to power in the December ANC elective conference, God help us.