Whither the ANC now?
Ramaphosa must muster resolve to act decisively, without fear or favour, on corruption
IT MUST be very clear today that the ruling ANC government is arguably facing the most devastating crisis ever in post-apartheid South Africa.
The better days of this fatally troubled and compromised party we will never see again.
That better half of the ANC perhaps belonged to its past stalwarts such as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Water Sisulu and others – I am convinced no attempts by the ANC at its “renewal” will ever materialise.
The ANC is a very strange, contradictory and in many ways predictable party.
Since its 1997 conference, it has been busy with its “renewal”, but instead we have seen a worsening of problems besetting it.
The recent more dramatic decline of the ANC has been notoriously characterised by wanton corruption across the state-public sectors.
The current crisis in the corruption-infested ANC government, which I in fact believe is terminal, is so bad, widespread and deep that I foresee a major split in it over the coming period despite President Cyril Ramaphosa’s efforts to hold it together.
This I believe, in the interests of the country and in fact, the better half of the ANC, is perhaps necessary.
The fragile unity within the ANC, as a result of the fact that its contesting factions have been constituted in a fractious manner since its 2017 elective conference, was in any case from the outset perilously perched.
Not only has the leadership of Ramaphosa, despite his best efforts, not managed to stop the corruption, but it has in fact deepened as a result of the worsening economic and political crisis in the country, making the contestation for dwindling resources more palpably evident and indeed desperate between the factions.
The Zondo Commission of Inquiry exposed much of the corruption within the ANC-controlled state, but I believe more will still emerge because it is that deeply rooted and systemic.
But the tentacles of corruption did not suddenly raise their ugly head with the exposures during that ongoing inquiry.
Instead, we need to go back to the arms deal of 1999, where I think the rot of corruption really took root.
However, what Covid-19 did was to exacerbate and deepen all the historical conditions – race, class and gender divisions in South Africa.
Arguably, no crisis in this country since the days of the old Cape slave colony has been as devastating as the impact of this virus, penetrating every nook and cranny of our society and leaving nothing untouched and unscathed.
It is against this background that we must view the letter Ramaphosa penned to the membership of the ANC a few days ago on the corruption that has bedevilled the ruling party recently, especially that associated with contracts for personal protective equipment (PPE) to combat the virus, in which some senior members of the ANC have been implicated.
There can be no doubt at all that it was mainly such callous corruption in the midst of the worst crisis we have ever faced, which defined the gravity of that letter to members of the ANC.
Very significantly, Ramaphosa drew attention to the ANC’s 2017 conference resolution to vigorously combat all form of corruption in the public and private sectors and the various measures which he and the Cabinet took in that regard.
“Despite all this work, corruption stands as one of the greatest challenges facing our society,” he wrote. As a result, the most important question to pose is this: Why is it that despite those combined efforts, corruption is still endemic in the ANC government and especially in the state and public sectors, and often committed by its own members, such as with the contracts for PPE? The biggest reason why, despite what were sincere efforts by Ramaphosa to deal with it, corruption has not only continued but arguably got, ironically, worse after the 2017 ANC conference has to do, I firmly believe, with two interrelated factors: the ANC’s cadre deployment policy, which aside from often notoriously incompetent appointees, is itself arguably corrupt; and the internal factionalism which is replicated inside various government departments and state entities.
But the burning question, which is rife in the media, is this: why is Ramaphosa so ambivalent about taking firm steps against many ANC politicians who have been seriously implicated in wrongdoing and in some cases where there is credible evidence of corruption?
To date, not a single senior ANC leader so implicated has been charged with corruption.
The biggest problem in this regard is that Ramaphosa is afraid to act decisively, especially when it is against politicians in the opposing faction because he fears it will upset the delicate and vulnerable factional balance inside the ANC government and thereby jeopardise his presidency.
But unless he very soon musters the revolve to act decisively and without fear or favour, which the corruption crisis urgently demands, history is going to remember him as a lameduck president when it mattered most.