Has moment of revolution passed for the veterans?

IT’S BEEN a brutal year for the ANC.

We accept, if nothing else but through political legend, that the raw politick within the former liberation movement has not been this fraught since April 1969, when it held its fabled conference in Morogoro, Tanzania.

Although deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte made it clear that not all of the “veterans and stalwarts” who met with the ANC’s leadership on Monday, and again yesterday, were in her estimation “veterans and stalwarts”, some may have made reference to that East Africa gathering presided over by OR Tambo.

Although there are few veterans still alive who were at Morogoro, it’s an intrinsic part of the party’s history, much like the First Congress of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in December 1977 in Luanda, or the meeting of the Revolutionary Committee of Unity and Action, a group of young Algerian militants, organised in March 1954, which led to the establishment of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN).

Both the MPLA and the FLN brought about liberation and, ultimately, decolonisation in their countries. The ANC, on the other hand, played the most dominant role in bringing about liberation, but decolonisation is still not on the horizon.

Nonetheless, as the “veterans and stalwarts” this week tried to confirm they still hold something of a controlling hand within an ANC now led by Jacob Zuma, the illustrious history of belonging to the ranks of Africa’s great militants, felt rather far away.

It didn’t come across that there was meaningful solidarity with the veterans’ efforts on a national scale, let alone further afield.

It didn’t feel like they were getting letters of encouragement from compatriots in Africa – or the rest of the developing world – as they tried to wrestle the venerable liberation movement free from its tendencies to state capture and corruption; to restore it to the glory it enjoyed from 1990 to about 1998, when neo-liberalism started to really sink in.

It’s doubtful Brahim Ghali, incumbent Polisario Front leader of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic – operating out of the refugee camps in Algeria – sent through a WhatsApp of support to anyone in the cars turning into the parking lot at the St George’s Hotel in Irene on Monday.

That was where the delegation of veterans and stalwarts, who were signatories to the For the Sake of Our Future document, met with the ANC’s national working committee (NWC).

Afterwards, the veterans released a statement describing the meeting as “a frank discussion of the challenges the country faces and those within the ANC and the alliance”. They said members of the NWC were “significantly aligned with their own perceptions” and that they, the veterans, found it encour- aging that there was no attempt to restrict discussion.

At the same time, due to this recognition of the urgency of the situation – and their proposal that there be a consultative conference – it was agreed that they would meet again yesterday, just before the ANC NEC embarks on one of its most crucial meetings yet, this weekend.

There was indeed something quite profound in the veterans’ expression that they had “valuable insights, experience and assistance” which they wished to offer in the organisational renewal of the ANC. They still, in a way rather lovingly, called it “a movement”.

They said “this undertaking is not provided in the interests of ourselves, family or associates, but because we believed and still do, that the set of historical values of the ANC are the primary reason we have a constitutional democracy today”. That was moving in itself.

But on Thursday, they made it clear, knowing – and remembering – the inner workings of the ANC, that “simply creating an illusion of progress will not benefit the country or the (party)”. In the recent past, the ANC has, to its detriment, become well-versed in creating that “illusion of progress”.

For example, it will tell us that it has put every South African child in a classroom, but it fails to come to terms with the truth that on Tuesday, its appointee in the ministry of basic education, Angie Motshekga, and her provincial MECs (this includes the DA’s MEC in the Western Cape), will not meet their legally-mandated obligation to norms and standards in infrastructure.

As of Tuesday, thousands of children will, yes, be in classrooms, but without proper sanitation, toilets, roofing, fencing, electricity and water. We don’t expect there to be many consequences for the ANC – or the DA in the Western Cape – for this human rights abomination.

Certainly, there are antagonists to Marxist-Leninist Fidel Castro’s Communist Party, resisters to the history of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s red shirts and arguments around the way that Ghana unfolded following the coup against Kwame Nkrumah.

But those antagonists represent – even in Cuba, and Miami – a rather small part of the way that history will remember those heroes.

They presented such an overwhelming influence, that it is impossible to discuss the world’s history without them and their soldiers. And that is where the ANC essentially parts ways with its compatriots in the epitaph of liberation.

We were indisputably distinguished as a nation through former guerrilla Nelson Mandela, and also, to a lesser extent, through Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Luthuli. However, always in Mandela’s shadow in terms of global liberation history, were some of the most brilliant and courageous individuals of our nation: Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, Chris Hani, Ronnie Kasrils, Jack Simons, Ruth First and others.

We would not place Zuma among them.

And so, as we awaited feedback from the stalwarts – including, dominantly, Kathrada, Cheryl Carolus, Andrew Mlangeni and Mavuso Msimang – after their meeting with the leadership yesterday, there remained a real concern that because the party has not, in its 104year history, laid the groundwork for the soldiers to have the kind of sway which would endorse checks and balances to help keep it on the right track to total liberation and decolonisation, it may be doomed.

At Morogoro, the task was to bring about organisational reform. The party said in its jour nal, Mayibuye: “the answer lies in the scientific fact that there is always a time lag between the demands of history and the development of social forces except at that precise moment of revolutionary change when both factors coincide perfectly to advance society to a qualitatively different, higher plane”.

Perhaps that precise moment has come and gone for the ANC. We hope not.