WHAT’S LEFT TO STEAL? AN ELECTION
There’s not much the ANC has not stolen, but a cabal in the party has the IEC in its sights
In April 1655, French king Louis XIV supposedly declared: “L’etat, c’est moi [I am the state].” It’s nearly four centuries since Louis XIV’s reign. Theories and ideas of the state have evolved significantly since then. Yet, despite the gulf in time and place, the ANC’s attitude towards the state and its institutions has been pretty much the same as Louis’s. Over the past 30 years of ANC governance, the separation between party and state has collapsed.
Institutions of democracy and accountability have been stuffed with party cronies instructed to act in the interests of the ANC alone.
These men and women, in large measure, abandoned their primary role to serve all the people of SA and instead served the party leader.
The damage and devastation that this conflation of party and state has caused is there for all to see in the state capture commission report. Between 2008 and 2018, then president Jacob Zuma’s tentacles reached into every sphere of the state and replaced dedicated civil servants not just with yes men but with thieves. There is a point in the state capture report where it details how one of Zuma’s appointees at the State Security Agency encouraged ANC members to “bring people”. It was a free-for-all. If the state is one person, or one party, can it be expected to deliver for all citizens? Can its institutions act freely and fairly in pursuance of constitutional principles and stability for the sake of the entire population? From the state capture report it is clear that most, if not all, institutions of democracy and accountability were repurposed to benefit Zuma, his family, his close associates and the ANC.
If Zuma’s supporters return to power in the ANC, why would any sane person expect independent institutions and a free and fair election in 2024?
Over the past four years President Cyril Ramaphosa has been on a mission to fix the party. He has failed.
One of his key supporters, the outgoing Gauteng ANC chair David Makhura, lamented at the weekend that the ANC is at war with itself.
“We must not lie to ourselves, we disappointed people,” he said.
That is Ramaphosa’s report card from inside his own organisation. In 2018 he said all the right things and received support from a populace exhausted by Zuma. He did fairly well in leading the country through Covid. He supported the Zondo commission and saw it through to its conclusion.
Yet his Phala Phala farm debacle and his silence in the wake of it has him being compared to his kleptocratic predecessor. It is possible that Ramaphosa will survive the scandal. Whatever happens, the ANC is in a downward spiral. It will almost certainly lose Gauteng in 2024. It will take a walloping in other provinces. It is not far-fetched to speculate that it may have to form a coalition at national level.
All this would not matter if a Makhura or a Ramaphosa were at the helm of the ANC — they make up a grouping in the party that would accept defeat at the polls. It can now not be guaranteed that such a leader will rise to the top in the ANC.
Should the ruthless radical economic transformation (RET) grouping unseat Ramaphosa, its key aim over the next year will be to undermine every institution possible and to dominate one in particular: the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC).
Julius Malema once said the “ANC does not win elections, it steals them”. He was wrong, but he would be proved right if the RET crowd came back to power in the ANC. The only way for an ANC, led by the likes of Ace Magashule or Bathabile Dlamini, to win an election would be for them to put their cronies in place in the IEC, to undermine and compromise its independence, then stage a sham election.
So if anyone were to ask me where SA business, civil society, opposition parties and every citizen should keep their eyes, I would say it is the IEC. As we saw from the state capture report, the ANC stole everywhere. Under a Zuma crony, it would now steal the one institution it needs to stay “legitimately” in power. That’s the IEC.