Once Upon A Time There was an ANC

By Dumisani Tembe

The African National Congress (ANC) has a leadership problem, and not a masses problem. It is a leadership that over time, has failed to appreciate the importance of consolidating the organisation, rather than focusing on its own factional leadership positions. It has failed to appreciate that factional leadership positions are actually nothing within a weak porous organisation.

The masses are merely responding to a leadership that has reduced them to a step ladder of accessing and sustaining power positions. In the process, the ANC leadership has reduced the movement into a shallow organisation which is now on a survival mission that is heavily reliant on virtues of its former leaders, and historical events such as the annual January Eight statement.

On the face value, the ANC keeps losing electoral support, mainly evidenced by the loss of control of key Metros such as Johannesburg, Tshwane, and Ekurhuleni. According to those who hold this limited reflection, both within and outside the ANC, the ANC just needs to regroup and focus on the forthcoming 2024 national elections. In this limited view, the ANC is now a mere electioneering organisation simply preoccupied with five-year periodic survival. 

In real terms, the ANC lost the substance of being a liberation movement and organisation. It has lost its liberation capital and character. It has lost its centrality of being the pillar of the proverbial “broad church” against apartheid legacy. It has lost the substance of being a “leader of society”. It cannot “lead society” from opposition benches. 

In a historical twist of irony, the ANC has committed to be an opposition, and to hold the governing conservative Democratic Alliance (DA) “accountable”. Given the DA’s programme of conserving the wealth and poverty patterns of apartheid, the ANC is committing itself to holding the DA accountable to this agenda, and thus leaving the poor black masses more vulnerable to socio-economic exclusion. 

The ANC is increasingly being positioned where the architects of Codesa wanted it to be: a weak and non-consequential political party post statutory apartheid. That is, post ’94. The white minority architects of Codesa had a long-term plan: sustain apartheid economy overtime mainly by decapitating the liberation agenda and its leading liberation movement – the ANC. 

Given the ANC leadership presence in most of the post-colonial Africa where this agenda was also applied, the ANC ought to have expected that it was going to be subjected to similar patterns over time, and plan to counter it accordingly. Perhaps, the ANC leadership did appreciate this agenda, but failed to strategise and sustainably contest against this white minority agenda. 

The ANC has in part, actively participated in its own weakening. This includes the ANC’s demobilization of would be left forces such as the South African Communist party (SACP); the Congress of the South African Trade Unions (Cosatu); and the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco). 

This political elitist alliance has mainly served to demilitarize mass activism, whilst serving as the political elitist ladder to cabinet positions. Linked to this, branch membership has mostly turned to serve ANC elite in their endless leadership contestations. The ANC, therefore, has steadily alienated  itself from the masses organizationally, in terms of its alliances, and its endless leadership factional battles. 

The problem of the ANC is not the masses that are withdrawing from formal political participation, but a leadership that erodes mass organisational participation, whilst consolidating its own leadership positions. It is a leadership that overtime, has failed to build and consolidate the organisation. Stuck in endless revolving door leadership contestation, the ANC at an organisational level, disintegrated into a porous shell. 

 The ANC failed a basic revolutionary principle – that revolutions are rooted within solid political movements and organisations, and not in government. Put differently, a weak ANC organizationally, cannot yield a solid government, and without a solid government the ANC could not deliver a better life for the masses. The ANC’s elite scramble to be in leadership positions of the organisation en route to government positions, has led to the collapse of the ANC, and the weakening government it administers. 

The National Party (NP) understood well the nexus between a strong political party and a strong government. Hence, it invested massively on intellectual production and other scientific projects to capacitate  NP organizationally, and as government. The ANC leadership, for all its revolutionary rhetoric, has not built a single Think Tank to enrich the organisation and its government. 

It is hard to remember one major groundbreaking progressive paper generated from within the ANC thinkers. Failure to invest in the intellectual capital of the ANC, resulted in a stale organisation lacking in innovation, and the ability to appreciate emerging society dynamics. Consequently, the ANC has steadily become too stale and stagnant in the manner it manages its own internal affairs, and the way it governs society. 

This has resulted in a tilted government that advantages white minorities whist leaving the  black poor masses in the lurch.  Rather than a liberation government, the ANC  simply positioned itself as a neutral government subject to open contestation by various race, class, and interest groups. 

This gives white minorities with the historical experience and resources of formally engaging government an advantage. Whilst the black masses continue to go to the streets with rocks as their means of engaging government, and the latter responds with force. 

Overtime, this built a relationship of mistrust between the ANC government and the black masses. Some of this relationship of mistrust sharply manifesting over the government’s handling of covid19.  Blacks suffered far much more than affluent white minority communities. This included the black masses being subjected to harassment by the police and by the army. 

The ongoing degenerating trust relationship between the ANC government and the masses, resulted in the dwindling electoral support for the ANC in both recent national and local elections. Whilst the masses progressively expressed mistrust against the ANC and withdrew its election support, the ANC leadership could not do much because it is too consumed in its internal leadership factional battles. 

The sum implications of all this is that the masses have lost faith and trust on the ANC as a liberation movement. It is possible that the masses have lost faith in both liberation politics, and the current liberal democratic system. Most have probably resigned to a state of survivalism. 

The ANC will not be able to rebuild trust and confidence on itself by the masses before 2024. The ANC’s survival in 2024 general elections will rely heavily on its relationship with the IFP, and smaller political parties. Between now and 2024 general elections, the ANC will not do much to consolidate its organisational capacity. Rather, it will be embroiled in leadership contestation over whether its president, Cyril Ramaphosa must continue to lead the party or not. 

Soon, writing on the ANC will start with “Once upon a time …..” 

Tembe is Political Analyst at the Kunjalo CDR. 

Twitter page - @Kunjalo CDR