Advancing unity in the ANC ahead of elections
Today KwaZulu-Natal is held up as an example of how this can be done
OVER the past few months, a lot has been said about the exemplary leadership provided by the province of KwaZulu-Natal in advancing unity within the rank and file of the ANC.
A few months ago, many observers, and indeed some of our comrades, were in doubt about the ability of our province to heed and implement the call by the 54th National Conference of the ANC to renew and build unity within the ANC.
This doubt stemmed from the very public manifestation of divisions within our movement which resulted, among other things, in the nullification by courts of the 2015 provincial conference. A distant observer would have been forgiven for believing that the cohesiveness of the ANC had reached its proverbial Waterloo.
However, the mutual embrace of the leadership which emerged from our 54th conference, the successful hosting of the province’s own conference, as well as the very visible willingness by comrades to seek solutions to the movement’s challenges rather than advance stumbling blocks, all put paid to these fears.
Today, the province of KwaZulu-Natal is held up as the perfect example for how unity must be advanced. But from the abyss that threatened the very existence of the ANC as we know it in KwaZulu-Natal, how did we become the ANC’s beacon of hope for unity and renewal?
Immediately after the 2015 provincial conference, unhappy as some of us were with the processes and the outcomes, we took a decision that the survival, sustenance and continued growth of the ANC was of paramount importance – more important than the frustrations we experienced, and definitely more important than individual egos.
Heeding the counsel of writer Frantz Fanon, we, as the current generation of the ANC, immersed ourselves in the task of rebuilding the ANC.
It is a task whose execution or abrogation would determine what kind of generation we would be remembered as and we did not want to be remembered as a generation under whose watch the ANC perished.
Driving us to accept this was the appreciation that the mission of the ANC is not yet accomplished. We felt that it would be dereliction of our revolutionary duty to retreat into our little corners and sulk while the motive forces of our revolution, the people (the majority of whom are poor) who we serve, were left in the lurch.
Upon realising how far we had begun to stray from our path, we were left with no option but to go back to basics. The first task was to admit that in any organisation, and particularly in an organisation as big as ours, there would always be contradictions.
The acknowledgement of these inherent contradictions enabled us to accept that all of us were responsible for managing these contradictions and not to point fingers at each other.
With this in mind, immediately after the 2015 provincial conference, we decided to engage with fellow comrades with whom we differed.
These engagements were premised on the understanding that the unity of the ANC would come as a result of engagement among comrades, irrespective of the views they held.
Over the past decade or so, the ANC has learnt invaluable lessons. Two are that elevating leadership contests above the pursuance of the objectives of the revolution is a recipe for disaster, and the fact that it is only in instances of irreconcilable and diametrically opposed ideological differences that we can give up on comrades.
In this regard, we took our cue from Comrade Samora Machel, who counselled that: “When we are disunited we divide the masses and the fighters, causing the rank and file to lose confidence in the leadership, demobilising it and making it inactive, and opening breaches through which the enemy penetrates.”
However, the unity we seek to build is principled unity. It is based on revolutionary honesty; on the fact that we are in concert in so far as ideological outlook and values are concerned and also in step in advancing the objectives of our revolution.
That is why again we agree with Comrade Samora when he says: “Unity is not something static, a supernatural and absolute value that we place on a pedestal to worship. In the process of struggling for unity we have always said: we must know with whom we are uniting and why.”
Therefore, immediately after the 2015 conference we sought unity.
Those overtures in 2016 created a platform for us to engage even beyond the outcome of the court case in 2017.
It is because of this long-term vision that we were able to navigate the challenges attendant to the formation and functioning of the interim leadership structure before the 2018 provincial conference.
Even as we were forced to postpone the 2018 provincial conference because of challenges, we were never in doubt that we would find one another, because we knew that ultimately we did not have ideological differences.
Contradictions on their own are not bad for an organisation because they are a prerequisite for development. They force organisations to consider new ways of doing things.
Chinese philosopher Mao Zedong argues that: “There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development.”
On the question of antagonism, he explains that it “is one form, but not the only form, of the struggle of opposites”. Put simply, the antagonistic contradictions are those between ourselves and the enemy, whereas the non-antagonistic contradictions are those among the people. Obviously, in the course of struggle, non-antagonistic contradictions may also evolve, because of change in material conditions, into antagonistic contradictions.
Importantly, as the leadership of the ANC, we have, through the ongoing process of forging unity, learnt to listen with an even keener ear to the views of the members and supporters .
We have learnt to re-inculcate the culture of robust engagement among comrades and created an environment for thorough ventilation of issues.
Even as we speak, the provincial leadership of the ANC is hard at work engaging with members at branch, zonal and regional levels addressing organisational challenges and building unity.
Indeed, as we sought to forge unity, first as the three-aside, then the tenaside, then the provincial interim committee and ultimately as the current provincial executive committee, we have been aware that those who benefited from alien tendencies that had set root in our movement were equally hard at work. This is because, to them, the mission of the ANC is subservient to their personal ambitions.
This is also because, to them, ascending the rungs of leadership within the ANC, mostly by foul means, is the easiest way to unlocking state resources for their benefit.
The provincial leadership of the ANC, with the guidance and assistance of the national leadership, is confident that those behind these tendencies are daily getting exposed. The ANC is on a mission to rebuild itself and we are succeeding in this regard.