Will the real leaders of the ANC please stand up?
As success of China shows, sacrifice and reconciliation will bring rewards
THE national flags flying outside shops have competition from a sea of flags covering Tiananmen Square like a red blanket. Metro subway stations have to be closed and traffic diverted as young people, in the main, came out to celebrate the Chinese National Day on October 1.
Throughout China millions of people participated in the celebrations. In churches, congregants prayed for the country while local tourists took the opportunity to see their country or to visit family and friends. With these holidays and national day, comes the big snake of thousands passing Mao Zedong’s mausoleum to pay homage to the founder of the people’s republic on its 68th anniversary.
The Chinese have reason to celebrate. In Pretoria, the new Chinese Ambassador to South Africa Lin Songtian noted some of that country’s achievements since its “opening up” in the late 1970s. To reform is for China to open up to the world and for the world to open to China, were the words of Deng Xiaoping, as he led China into its new era of prosperity through Marxism with Chinese characteristics.
When the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, Lin recalled, the country had a GDP per capita of less than a $100. Today that figure sits at about $8 000 (R113 589). The country has been able to lift at least 700 million people out of poverty while becoming the world’s largest manufacturing power.
Yet it would seem that the greatest lesson the Chinese can teach is the willingness and the ability to reform. China personifies the saying, adapt or die. Lin told how in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, China introduced 1 200 new reforms and at the same time registered an average growth rate of 7.2%, accounting for nearly a third of the global economic growth. China has plans to eradicate poverty completely by 2020.
All of this is important because the Communist Party of China, which rules the country, understands the implications of political legitimacy. The government, which hardly differentiates between party and state, because the party is the state and the state is the party, is able to clamp down on civil liberties, access to internet and strictly enforce the rule of law precisely because the people of China permit them to do so.
The Chinese people are willing to forfeit these rights and privileges to attain a better and more comfortable life for all. One cannot downplay “Confucian values” such as harmony, consensus, order, communitarianism, modesty and spirituality and the tremendous influence these have on the political culture, but it is paramount for the party always to be seen as legitimate, without blemish and righteous in the eyes of ordinary Chinese people.
The image of the party and its legitimacy are of utmost importance. For this reason it is swift to deal with corruption, internal strife within the party and any form of factionalism. The thinking of any cadre, trained in the party, dictates that it is the party and the people’s republic first before anything else. Stemming from this philosophy, one can understand the abhorrence for corruption and abuse of office.
In its discussion on Strategy and Tactics for the 5th National Policy Conference, the ANC wrote that the rapid development of countries such as China and the crisis brought about by the global financial market in 2008, contributed to the decline in the legitimacy of the political and business elites.
The ANC, suggesting that this phenomenon of the political and business elites losing legitimacy as not being unique to South Africa but found across the globe, attributed to the decline in legitimacy on the inability of these classes to address “fundamental questions of social inequality, declining social ethics and mismanagement of global challenges such as migration and terrorism”.
In respect of its own legitimacy and how it is viewed by the populace, the ANC dedicated an entire section in its discussion document on the balance of forces going towards its National General Council in 2015 on the question of the legitimacy of the polity and the state. In fact, the ruling party made it clear that the democratic system was placed in jeopardy by those who were trying to chip away at the legitimacy of the democratic state.
The unfortunate recent spate of occurrences, at conference level especially, has not assisted in any way to help build the ANC brand and strengthen its legitimacy.
Before the 2014 national and provincial elections, internal ANC research showed that the party’s base voters, in the ANC’s stronghold areas of support, were showing signs of mistrust in the organisation.
During the Struggle and even during the negotiated settlement period, a large number of people trusted the ANC to carry their mandate, but that support is waning because of internal fights, and mismanagement of state resources.
These fights and abuse of public resources do not only happen at a high or national level but where the people are, in the wards and municipalities.
Following the court cases, the conferences as well as the killings in KwaZulu-Natal, it is imperative that senior ANC leaders sit down and call for a ceasefire. A negotiated settlement within the party with a clear programme of action for radical economic transformation must be agreed on. The question of leadership must be based on compromise for the old adage of “no one is bigger than the ANC” to emerge.
There is a story in the scriptures of two women fighting over a child with each laying claim to be the mother. King Solomon, in his wisdom, suggests to cut the child in half and give one half to each. Of course, thought the king, a mother would rather have her child live with another woman than have it die. This is how the king discovered who the real mother was – the one who would give up the child and see it live.
In the same way, the real leaders of the ANC should give up their positions to ensure the party live. If the ANC is able to go back to its roots of sacrifice and being accommodating, as it was to the apartheid enemy, it will once again win large amounts of legitimacy in the eyes of the people.