ANC’s ‘cracks run deep’ and could be beyond renewal

With the former ’80s anti-apartheid activists, the so-called “Young Lions” of the time, and Congress of South African Students veterans having now conceded that the ANC was “in the throes of an existential crisis”, political analysts on Tuesday said the party was beyond renewal.

This as former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe have been criss-crossing the country in a last-ditch effort to rebuild party unity ahead of the December elective conference.

Some of the ’80s generation of political leaders who operated under apartheid state repression, over the weekend discussed the paper “Notes on the Renewal of the ANC”, written and delivered by African Peer Review Mechanism CEO Professor Eddy Maloka – to be incorporated into the ANC renewal programme.

Painting a picture of a party which has lost touch with its members and societal aspirations, Maloka said the ANC was plagued by factionalism, with corruption having played a major role in its current state.

He also blamed the ANC’s status quo on the party having abandoned its 1994 project of establishing people’s power – “ending up with elite power, instead”.

“We should eradicate the culture of ‘I have arrived’, because it not only breeds arrogance in our ranks, it also accounts for the alienation and the growing distance between our people and the ANC leadership,” said Maloka.

“An anti-intellectual culture took control of our movement over the last few years.

“We now believe that you don’t have to be technically competent to be a leader in the ANC or in the state.

“All you need is to be a party operator, with control over a sizeable number of branches.

“Party operators have taken over the ANC and the state, abusing loopholes in our cadre deployment system.

“The ANC is under the spell of what can be characterised as the insanity logic, whereby there’s no alignment on what we want to achieve as a party and for our country,” Maloka said.

“To align our plans with our actions, we must break the hold that factionalism has over these actions and decision-making.

“If a government wants to build a bridge, it must give this task to qualified engineers, not to a gifted guitar player.

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“Similarly, if you want to organise a high-end art festival, give the assignment to artists, not to a bricklayer.”

Merit, argued Maloka, should guide the ANC’s approach to cadre deployment. Maloka said ideological orientation, value system, experience, conviction, work ethic, skills set and talent constituted a complete ANC cadre.

Independent political analyst Dr Ralph Mathekga and University of South Africa political science professor Dirk Kotze said cracks within the ANC ran far too deep to be repaired.

“It is naive to think that the decline of the ANC will be reversed by a series of ad hoc interventions that are being led by the elders of the party.

“The problem runs deep and cannot be addressed in this manner – not by way of flicking a switch.

“What is significant about the intervention of the elders is that they don’t have vested interests, because they are no longer politically active. The ANC should realise that things have materially changed on the ground, with South Africa not in the same way it was found,” said Mathekga.

Kotze said election results have, since 2009, reflected the ANC as “a party in decline”.

“The ANC has been in constant decline – something hard to turn around for governing parties, especially when close to the 50% cutoff point,” said Kotze.

“Some governing parties have gone into opposition and then reconfigured or repositioned themselves,” he said.

– brians@citizen.co.za