The ANC’s Bi-Polar crisis: A Threat To The South African Dream


By Musa Mdunge

 
Over the past weekend, the African National Congress (ANC) hosted its national executive committee (NEC) meeting. This meeting comes at a time a where the party finds itself at a crossroad in a bid to keep the house united while fighting corrupt elements within its ranks. Moreover, the state of the ruling party must be seen in the context of a pandemic that has ravaged South Africa’s economy and placed great pressure on social services such as healthcare and the welfare system. President Cyril Ramaphosa promised a new dawn in 2018 but was bequeathed an ANC kingship with comrades who represented the height of state capture and corruption under the Zuma administration. 

However, to be fair to both him and the rest of his comrades in the top six and the NEC, the ANC has long had a history of factionalism dating back to the formation of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1959 after strong disagreements between the chartists (Mandela bloc) and the Africanists (Sobukwe bloc) over the role on non-whites and communists in the liberation struggle. This split within the ANC was based on ideological principles and this type of rift and factional battles would continue to permeate within the ANC until the 2007 Polokwane conference. 

Polokwane represented a fundamental shift within the battle for the soul of the ANC. It was no longer ideological and policy difference that shaped the debate around who would be king (or queen someday). Now the battle lines had to do with access to state power and how the state represented a goldfield opportunity for those who sought self-enrichment at the cost of national duty and responsibility. After all, former President Thabo Mbeki is on record stating that there was no material difference between the policies adopted by the ANC under his presidency and those adopted under the Zuma years. 

The link between party positions and state positions as adopted in the 2007 conference meant that the fight for the soul of the party would affect the efficiency of the state. Rather than appointing cable people to government positions, those who were elevated were in many cases men and women who would sell their country for a quick buck with no thought to the general curse of poverty that would be passed down from generation to generation. 

The 2017 NASREC conference represents the second wave of factional battles within the ANC that would further test South Africa's democratic foundations. The party’s decision between the Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma faction and the Ramaphosa faction was the most consequential choice since the Mbeki-Zuma duel and this time rifts within the ANC produced a stalemate, with neither side sweeping the border on either the top six or the NEC. I have heard ANC officials diagnose the mixed bag of results as a call by the party’s rank and file as a call for unity. I think it was a sign of a party with the phoebe of taking one single path, choosing rather the pass down the bucket down the road. 

The inability of the party to decide and implement resolutions on how to deal with criminally charged members of its leadership core is to be dealt with in the party is the greatest signal that it the latter observation and not the former that holds. It is not a struggle for unity that makes it difficult for the ANC to take on ANC Secretary-General, Ace Magashule, or President Jacob Zuma. It is that the party never chose what it wants to look like at NASREC. At least Polokwane affirmed that the party would be made in the image of Zuma, so it was in 1997 as Mbeki to over from Mandela and so it was in the 1992 conference of the ANC. NASREC produced a party with a bi-polar identity and in doing that so, paralyses hit the state and the ability of government to focus on implementing much-needed economic social reforms. 

Moreover, beyond structural changes to the governance of the party, the leader at the top, Ramaphosa in his style of leadership poses certain challenges. I have often argued on this platform and others that he is a great diplomat, however, does he have the conviction to make decisions, even if they may not be popular. I have argued and still do that I don’t seem to get a sense that he has reconciled in his mind that he is the President of the Republic of South Africa and the ANC and needs to show up in a manner that his predecessors all did. You would think the Magashule is equal to Ramaphosa and if that is the case then it just shows how weak Ramaphosa has been and how emboldened Magashule has become. 

Unfortunately, we can’t afford to entertain arguments that it is either the ANC or the country, for the story of South Africa and its fortunes have been tired to the ANC since 1994 and it remains the dominant party in the body politick of the republic, with all other parties either in regression (besides the EFF) or too small to pose a threat to the ANC. We must concern ourselves with what happens in the ANC and we must call on the leaders within its rank who still hold the South African dream in their hearts to fight to the soul of the ANC! 

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