ANC’s tied hands debilitate the country
Ahead of the 2017 elective conference of the ANC, some party veterans colloquially known as the ANC 101 called for a “consultative” conference to discuss how to return their movement to its founding values. They produced a document, titled “For the Sake of Our Future”, which outlined their grievances.
They were strung along by the party’s officials for months before their call was finally rejected. In 2017, they met without the ANC’s blessing and participation.
In December 2017, about 4,000 ANC branch delegates met in Nasrec, outside Johannesburg, and elected a new leadership six officials plus 74 executives. Then deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa beat his rival, Nkosazana DlaminiZuma, by a narrow margin to become president of the ANC.
As with the so-called top six, the rest of the national executive committee (NEC) was made up of supporters of Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma. This was interpreted by optimists as a sign of unity and a rejection of slate politics.
After the elections of the NEC, delegates went on to pass controversial resolutions, including that they want land to be expropriated without compensation and the central bank to be nationalised.
Almost two years later, the two resolutions have yet to be implemented. As well as slow implementation of electoral promises and badly needed structural economic reforms, these resolutions, especially the land one, are among the hurdles to the president’s drive to recruit $100bn (about R1,5 trillion) worth of foreign direct investment to SA by 2023.
And, unsurprisingly,
Ramaphosa’s opponents in the party are baying for his blood. They want to use these to oust him at the national general council a midterm review meeting of the branches which is due to be held in mid-2020.
Ramaphosa’s election both as ANC president and as head of the republic reignited hope of renewal for the country and the ANC. However, almost two years after the elective conference, it is becoming clear that the ANC has not renewed itself and that the reasons behind the calls for a consultative conference are still there.
The ANC has become the biggest stumbling block to SA’s progress. The ANC political calculus matters more than what is good for SA.
It is the ANC consideration that is holding up all the toughest decisions the government has to take. These difficult calls include meaningful cost cutting; reduction of the public service wage bill; the future of the Gauteng Highway Improvement Project (urban etolls); and the ailing stateowned enterprises (SOEs), which rely on fiscal bailouts.
For example, instead of talking about more revenues, including billions of municipal debt owed to Eskom, politicians are busy talking about how to reduce operating costs at the energy utility. Instead of cutting the cabinet to 15 ministers, the ANC intervened to keep the largesse to accommodate its various factions.
Last Wednesday, finance minister Tito Mboweni acknowledged that “as expected” even the modest cost reductions envisaged in his February budget had failed to materialise. He went on to announce even more insignificant cost reduction measures, such as travel and phone costs for ministers, members of the provincial executives and mayors.
Instead of discussing productivity improvements and the appropriate size of the public service, the government is offering voluntary severance packages to deal with these issues. This is being done despite knowing full well how blunt natural attrition and voluntary severances are as instruments of headcount reduction.
For months this year, Ramaphosa has had to contend with mixed messages from his ANC colleagues. For example, some in his party still believe that the SA Reserve Bank should have been nationalised by now, despite the president’s statement that this is not feasible at this stage.
This toing and froing will continue until the ANC is fixed. Unfortunately, this will not happen on its own, nor will it be done by branches in 2020 or 2022. Appointing more NEC members to Luthuli House, the party’s headquarters, will not help.
A century after its founding, the ANC has not been refashioned as a governing party. Its mechanisms are too archaic for today’s challenges. For example, it still does not have mechanisms of dealing with ill-discipline among its top officials such as an immediate past president calling his comrades apartheid-era spies or a sitting secretary-general denouncing his comrades as wedge drivers.
A bigger part of fixing the ANC has to do with how people become leaders: instead of branches electing leaders regional, provincial and national
members of the ANC have to directly elect their leaders, including the president. This will deal decisively with the problems of factionalism and gate keeping and stop the corrupting influence of money in its politics. To do this, it has to have modern systems that ensure every member is known and accounted for.
A CENTURY AFTER ITS FOUNDING, THE ANC HAS NOT BEEN REFASHIONED AS A GOVERNING PARTY
● Dludlu, a former Sowetan editor, is executive for strategy and public affairs at the Small Business Institute.