The ANC has cannibalised itself and the state
Fikile Mbalula selfie.
As the ANC galvanises troopers for its annual January 8 statement commemoration (it’s become difficult to call it a celebration of late) in Mbombela, Mpumalanga, the mood is a far cry from the effervescent years of hope and energetic mobilisation.
The year 2024 is a determinative one for the party as it limps towards the country’s seventh national elections marred by organisational erosion, policy uncertainty and political conflagrations by its former and current leaders.
What accounts for the Cassandran view in the governing party and the country? Which subjective and objective factors are responsible for the ANC cannibalising itself and the state machinery in full view and to the shame of its unmatched long history in Africa?
The ANC’s theatrical infighting and utterances by its leaders are not short of a spectacle. They have exposed the farce that has become “organisational renewal” and “party unity”.
South Africans recently witnessed ripples of riotous leadership tensions aired on a public broadcaster at the memorial service of playwright Mbongeni Ngema. The chairperson of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, a known exhibitionist, humiliated an evidently frustrated premier on live television.
This happened in a province the ANC is delicately holding on to, with the launch of the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party by former president Jacob Zuma. As if that wasn’t enough, the secretary general of the ANC, who equally misses no moment for a public comical skit, has added his two cents worth to the fire by publicly admitting that the ANC protected kleptocracy when it lied in parliament about Zuma’s “fire pool” at his Nkandla house.
Fikile Mbalula is evidently a man with a poor conception of society misguided by contaminated levels of arrogance and populism.
Such kleptocracy pours cold water on party claims of building a dedicated meritocratic cadre at all levels of government. Instead, the goal of entrenching an ethical leadership is now more a statement of intent than a reality.
The sharpest thorn leading to the next election has to be the utterances and actions of former presidents. They have, on various platforms, launched scathing attacks on the state of the party and, of course, spared no punches for the incumbent president.
One salvo launched, which could be detrimental for the ANC in the next elections, is the launch of the MK Party and Zuma publicly endorsing it. Critics internally and externally have polemically aired their discontent about his actions. Former president Thabo Mbeki has also received similar wind for his remarks.
Who is to blame for the creation of such “boisterous audacious insolence” but the ANC and its systematic inability to genuinely become a leader of society through good governance and service delivery?
Although former presidents are well within their constitutional rights to criticise the ANC, join parties of their choices and do cartwheels, their criticism is distinct from people who have never ascended to power.
They presided over the ANC in its ascension and diminishing trajectory during the democratic dispensation. They had decision-making powers, developed policy frameworks that have led us to the current weak economic state and enjoyed power as presidents of the ANC and the state.
Over the past three decades we have witnessed how strongly the character of the ANC coalesces, warts and all, around the sitting president.
During the Mandela era, South Africans were justifiably intoxicated by the rainbow nation euphoria. Nelson Mandela’s presidency, legitimately collective in its approach, embodied traits of rallying social forces despite stark political contradictions and preserving organisational centrality and discipline. No one in the ANC dared question nor compromise this vision. The former president of the ANC Youth League, Peter Mokaba, had to bear the brunt of veering outside this non-compromising vision.
During the Mbeki era, the ANC transitioned towards a technocratic approach to civil administration and revitalising the Pan African agenda through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) and regional integration. It was also the era of jagged contradictions in the tripartite alliance as a result of non-consensus on economic growth policies such as the Growth Employment and Redistribution and the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa. Critics believed it was an era of elitism and class entrenchment in the ANC.
It was during this period that the South African Communist Party (SACP), in its 2006 State Power discussion document, criticised the incumbent for “over-presidentialising” the ANC. Without labouring the theoretical Marxist literature of its meaning, the crux of the SACP’s critique was cautioning against a highly bureaucratised state centred on the presidency. It argued that “The government in fact operated as a ‘party’. It set itself over and above parties replacing intellectual and political hierarchy.”
The Zuma presidency was initially perceived as the era of “returning the ANC to its character of a mass populist organisation”. There were more deployments for the alliance and perceived consultative approaches. But it was in this era that absolutism in the presidency became entrenched, with detrimental effects for the country and party. It was sad to witness the ANC sacrifice organisational centrality in defence of the president. With that came institutionalised factionalism, gaping party-society social distance, and voter apathy as seen in the 2019 national elections.
Therefore, what Zuma is accused of being today is the cumulative consequences of what the ANC allowed, enabled and affirmed over 15 years.
The ANC continues to endorse wanton kleptocracy and policy schizophrenia as President Cyril Ramaphosa, a man who preached unity and an end to corruption, has taken not just a page but the whole manuscript from his predecessor. For instance, placing energy and state security portfolios in the presidency affirms this. Likewise, the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) has become defunct, and authority and power has been centralised into the machinery of the presidency.
Under Ramaphosa, the ANC is seen, fairly and unfairly so, biased to conglomerates and an organisation that holds no leaders accountable, let alone act against them. The inertia in the criminal justice cluster to implement the Zondo state capture commission’s recommendations is an unforgivable indictment of the governing party. The lack of meaningful prosecutions and imprisonment of the kleptocratic mars and compromises the very ethos of democracy.
The above, albeit not entirely, explains why the ANC finds itself in this political rut. The concentration of power in the office of the president and non-accountability created the narcissistic monstrosity we now witness. It would be disingenuous however, of any ANC member to assume that the crisis happened overnight. It is this culture of personality elevation that has seen the ANC erode into a cult, veering off its “society-centred” character.
The culture of concentrated absolutism cascaded down to provinces, giving birth to the Premier League and chairpersons who behaved as though they were God ordained.
While former presidents have suffered unceremonious exits, usually after an excruciating process of tiptoeing by the party’s national executive committee, holding the president accountable in the ANC has become more cumbersome for the membership as well as the NEC. Given its strategic centralisation of patronage and deployment, the cost of holding a president accountable has economic detriments, risking non-deployment or forfeiture to accumulate from state patronage. Non-accountability has vilified presidents from taking responsibility for their contribution towards the cannibalising the ANC through factionalism and hollowing out the state.
Ramaphosa has “refreshed” the concept of reactionary Bonapartism, according to the SACP. As president, he has “set himself over and above parties, not so as to harmonise their interests and activities within the permanent framework of the life and interests of the nation and state, but so as to disintegrate them, to detach them from the broad masses and obtain a force of non-party men linked to the government by paternalistic ties”.
Borrowing from Gramsci, South Africa is arguably now plunged into a “catastrophic equilibrium”.
South Africans need to face the barrel of the ballot.
Gugu Ndima is a social commentator. Follow her on @Mandima_writer
