A detox opportunity the ANC urgently needs to take

In the immediate aftermath of the 2007 Polokwane conference, when some of the leading minds of the triumphant “tsunami” movement were still trying to make sense of their victory, it became fashionable to quote a Chinese saying to explain what was happening.

“If you open a window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in.”

This was one of Deng Xiaoping’s favourite sayings in the early 1980s as he carried out his “socialist market economy” reforms, which some now see as having been the first important steps towards turning China into the industrial economic giant it is today.

Deng’s point was that while his government was introducing changes that would allow for a market economy and foreign investment, the Communist Party’s core political ideas and values would have to be adhered to to avoid the revolution being undermined by outside influence — the flies.

But in the post-Polokwane case, the Deng quote was cited in a somewhat shallower context. It was employed to explain the fact that to dislodge president Thabo Mbeki and his inner circle from the top echelons of the ANC, the self-styled Left had to forge tactical alliances with rank opportunists, people accused of corruption and many others whose only qualification was that they had fallen out with the establishment for one reason or another.

The “Leftists” regarded Mbeki’s defeat as the collapse of what they termed the 1996 Class Project — the supposed neoliberal agenda that conspired with monopoly capital to keep the majority in economic bondage. They were anxious that their victory not be hijacked and squandered by the “undesirable elements” they had been forced into bed with.

But if indeed they did try to “swat the flies”, they clearly failed. For it was not long before the entire party was overrun by what some of its veterans call “foreign elements with foreign tendencies”, who turned it and its successive administrations into monuments of corruption.

In the space of less than two decades, a giant of a political institution whose courageous struggle against racial oppression had placed it head and shoulders above its rivals, was reduced to a mere criminal cartel in the eyes of many citizens.

Despite all the talk of “renewal”, “the new dawn” and “acknowledging the mistakes of the past” that came with Cyril Ramaphosa’s victory at the 2017 Nasrec conference, the party’s image remains tainted, with growing numbers of voters seemingly unconvinced it can change its ways.

This is mostly because, on taking power, Ramaphosa seemed too concerned with keeping all factions within the tent happy, rather than acting against those whose actions had turned the ANC into what he once famously called corruption’s “accused No 1”.

As a political survival tactic it worked for him, because it prevented any bruising breakaways ahead of the 2019 general election. But it also severely undermined his “renewal” and anti-corruption messages and made him look weak and indecisive as discredited figures found their way into his cabinet.

The approach also encouraged his opponents within the party to brazenly challenge and undermine official party positions, further eroding the public’s confidence in the ANC. In spite of all of this, the president and his party were often reluctant to act, seemingly fearful of being accused of purging those with whom they differed.

Yet purging of a different kind has been happening, almost on its own, within the ANC. It is difficult to keep count of all the breakaway parties that have sheared off from the ANC since Polokwane. Each took with it a chunk of members and leaders, many of whom had played some role — big or small — in the tsunami victory.

With the main beneficiary of the 2007 tsunami, Jacob Zuma, now having effectively left the ANC by publicly endorsing and campaigning for a new opposition party, we can safely say the “coalition of the wounded” that made Polokwane possible has collapsed.

With the exception of a few notables, many of the prominent leaders of that movement are now either running their own opposition parties and start-up trade unions or have abandoned politics altogether. Presumably, they took with them some of the “foreign tendencies” the veterans accused them of having smuggled into the party post-2007.

What, then, does the ANC do about this?

Some of its more romantic leaders like saying that the party “is like an ocean, it cleanses itself”.

Will they seize on this “self-cleansing” opportunity offered by the final collapse of the Polokwane coalition to reimagine a clean and modern ANC that is capable of leading South Africa?

Perhaps it is too late for the current crop of leaders to do so. Perhaps it will take several generations, and even a couple of elections as an also-ran, for the country’s oldest political movement to rid itself of its current image.