WHERE TO THE ONCE MIGHTY ANC?

THE spectre of the ruling ANC party resorting to a crowd funding campaign to raise funds to pay staff salaries.

The spectre of staff forced to go on strike because they have not been paid for the last three months and because of their “appalling employment conditions.”

The spectre of a ruling party’s offices closed throughout the country less than two months prior to key nationwide local elections scheduled in October 2021, despite party efforts to get the Independent Electoral Commission to postpone them.

The spectre of that same party’s iconic “prison museum” – a World Heritage Site - on the infamous Robben Island where ANC and anti-apartheid stalwarts including Nelson Mandela were incarcerated for decades, in a state of dereliction and decay, confirmed by relatives of ex-inmates.

That the ANC is a party in crisis must be the mother of all understatements.

Is it merely a question of the ANC being institutionally inept, or do these metrics of organisational dysfunction hide a deeper malaise of misplaced self-entitlement, unfettered cadre deployment and a proven lack of party management leadership?

Cynics argue that if the ANC cannot get its own house in order, what hope is there for its management of the country and its challenges.

To be fair to the ANC, the issue of party funding and mismanagement is the bane of liberal democracies whether in the so-called advanced or emerging countries.

How liberal democracies fund their political parties is a perennial issue. Should they be funded from taxpayers’ money or from private donations or a bit of both, subject to the usual caveats of full donor disclosures, caps to donations and a ban on foreign contributions.

In the US, presidential, congressional and senate elections are beholden to corporate and wealthy donors which has corrupted American democracy into ‘Bizdemocracy’. That spending on US presidential elections runs into billions of dollars is anathema to the very ethos of democracy.

The problem with ANC party development is its dependence on political donations and the generosity of forgiveness of South Africans, “which even permeated into frauds by political party members.” Cadre deployment,late ANC intellectual Sedick Isaacs added, favouring ANC members led to factionalism, skewed departmental management and inconsistency of policy, which is why he strongly believed in a politically neutral civil service.

For a party with a 109-year history and a current membership of 1.4 million, the ANC has a tendency to move in pedantic ways.

The ANC is currently celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke, pioneering activist, first black South African woman to obtain a science degree, a delegate to the ANC’s founding conference in 1912 and a founder of the Bantu Women’s League, a forerunner to the ANC Women’s League. Yet it took another 31 years for women to be accepted as full members of the ANC in 1943.

It has taken 26 years into South African democracy before the ANC embraced online membership and digitisation which went live only in February 2020.

In his riposte, ANC General Manager FC Potgieter declared:

“I do regret the hardship and the uncertainty that (delayed salaries) has caused staff and their families. This is deeply regrettable. The ANC management will continue to engage with staff representatives on their grievances, with a view to find a solution, so that we can resume normal operations.”

Comrade Potgieter, the question you should ask yourself is: “How on earth did the ANC get to this sorry state of affairs?”