ANC fails lessons to its detriment

SOMETIMES democracy really is the worst solution, except for all the others. One of the charges levelled at the ANC leadership after its choice of Tshwane mayoral candidate went horribly wrong is that it “ignored the people”. This misses the point — the fight had very little to do with “the people”. But the ANC has nevertheless learned the hard way that ignoring democratic processes is a recipe for trouble, even when they may be dominated by local bosses.

In multiparty democracies “the people” rarely decide who will become party candidates — in some American states, voters who do not identify with a party are allowed to vote for its candidates in primary elections, but this is a rare exception.

In most cases, voters choose between candidates selected by party members. There is nothing undemocratic about the idea that, if you want to choose party candidates, you should join the party.

The ANC’s choice of local candidates is no exception, despite its claim to give “communities” a say.

It is never clear who these “communities” are but it seems likely that they are party activists wearing another hat. In the end, it is the ANC that chooses the candidates: in Tshwane, the supporters of mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa and his deputy, Mapiti Matsena, were party branch members, not grass-roots citizens.

But, while ANC members are entitled to choose ANC candidates, it is unlikely that this is what was really happening in Tshwane. In theory, the source of decisionmaking in the ANC is the branch — in Tshwane, Ramokgopa was backed by slightly more branches than Matsena. But, as some in the ANC acknowledge, the branches are fonts of democratic decisions in theory only — they are often treated as voting fodder by the factions.

Calls for power to return to the branches are routinely ignored because the elites who run factions are much more powerful than the people who belong to branches.

So it is likely that what the ANC leadership chose to ignore was not the will of ANC members, but the relative strength of two factions.

That this happened in Gauteng, where party bosses are meant to have less influence than in the other provinces, shows how deep-rooted factionalism has become within the ANC. Given this, imposing a candidate on Tshwane was not a refusal to listen to the people but an attempt to take power out of the hands of the factions.

Why, then, accuse the ANC leadership of ignoring internal democracy when it was simply curbing the power of local factional leaders? The answer is that the cure for factionalism is not ignoring the choice of branches — it is trying to ensure that they really do reflect the will of members.

If the intention behind imposing Thoko Didiza on the local ANC was to weaken factionalism, it has done the opposite.

The factions did not disappear, they took their battle into the streets, where the people of Tshwane were forced to live with the consequences.

Local power holders do not go away if their will is overridden — they find new ways to wield influence. And as long as democratic processes are not working, the ways they find may well rely on force.

If the ANC really does want to defeat party bosses, it needs to find a way to give branch members the power to stand up to them. If that is too difficult, it has little option but to recognise the power of local bosses until and unless it can find a political strategy to weaken them.

But, as the party’s reaction to events in Tshwane shows, the ANC’s approach to internal difference does not equip it to deal with factionalism.

Faced with a factional revolt, its leaders resorted to the time-honoured refrain that the ANC has the right to “deploy” candidates as it sees fit and that anyone who is loyal to it would simply accept this.

That this argument was made by the Gauteng leadership shows how ingrained is the habit within the ANC of dealing with difference by imposing a solution from the top rather than trying to influence reality on the ground.

It is an approach that often worked in the past but, as we have just seen, is powerless in the face of factionalism.

The days when liberation unity (usually) trumped internal differences are over: the ANC will face continued factionalism as long as its leaders, like most elites, believe that ignoring democratic politics is a better option than trying to make it work.

There is nothing undemocratic about the idea that, if you want to choose party candidates, you should join the party