THE ANC 10 YEARS ON

One of the byproducts of a crisis is the narrowing of perspective. If you pan out and take a broader view of perhaps 20 or 30 years, any contemporary condition assumes a different character.

For the ANC, there are forces at play on the organisation, the consequences of which are likely to be fully felt only in the next decade or so. The party appears blind to them.

With the ANC having just concluded its policy conference, now is as good a time as any to identify those macro forces, if one is to understand the party’s potential future.

Since 1994, the ANC has effectively undergone two grand transitions. The first was under former president Thabo Mbeki. An urbane intellectual who advocated a Leninist approach to democratic centralism and with a large electoral majority, he used the ANC’S vast political capital to create a powerful, autocratic machine.

Underpinned by policies like cadre deployment and at the height of its power, the depth and breadth of its influence was hegemonic. The party sought to bring all arms of the state directly and indirectly under its influence, and its agenda, built upon the amorphous idea of “transformation”, was omnipresent.

Mbeki inherited an inherently autocratic internal political culture and the support he enjoyed inside and outside the party, together with his programme of action, allowed him to augment the control that came with it. In turn, he positioned the ANC in the centre ideologically, The ANC has only compromisers and appeasers in its ranks — people who will accommodate rather than counter any decline particularly on the economy, suppressing many of the more radical, socialist impulses that dominated the rank and file.

It came at a cost. The rise of Jacob Zuma, a demagogue born of the ANC’S rural constituency and backed by the party’s alliance partners in the unions and the SACP, was in large part a response to all that Mbeki represented. Like Mbeki’s, though more fanatical and ephemeral in nature, his election brought with it a huge amount of political capital. On the back of it, he initiated the ANC’S second grand transformation.

But Zuma’s ANC was not the product of design and intent in the way Mbeki’s was; certainly it was not ideologically coherent. Rather, it was the side effect of neglect and self-interest. He purged the organisation of those loyal to Mbeki, alienated intellectuals in the party and pandered to a far more socialist agenda, and personal patronage soon replaced party loyalty. Cadre deployment, the mechanism on which so much ANC control hinged, became an excuse to place the weak, corrupt and ineffectual into positions of power.

With self-enrichment supplementing any reorganisation or new agenda, the party was systematically hollowed out, its hegemonic grip was shattered and its ability to deliver was fundamentally compromised. Party discipline collapsed and electoral support weakened. With those two things, inevitably, unity imploded and division came to define the ANC, its alliance partners and the relationship between them. With that, the state collapsed.

Today, the stage is set for a third grand transition. Zuma is nearing the end of his term and the environment he has bestowed on the party is as dangerous as it is brittle. There have been numerous occasions throughout history in which some iron-fisted disciplinarian emerged from the chaos, promising order and unity. Tyranny often followed close behind. And, just as Zuma’s populism was a response to Mbeki’s control and ideological compromise, so the ANC itself is set to spasm again in the other direction.

Of the pretenders to the throne — Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-zuma being the two most prominent — no-one seems to embody this kind of impulse.

Devoid of meaningful content or any sense of conviction or purpose, each appears primarily to be a surrogate for a faction inside the party. Whichever is elected, it is likely his or her presidency will play out in that fashion. They are followers more than leaders, and will take direction from those to whom they are beholden. Because of this it is unlikely that either will be able to arrest the decline; at best they might slow the deterioration.

Two days were set down at the ANC’S policy conference to discuss “organisational renewal”. The relevant policy document is a muted affair. It seeks merely to strengthen

What it means: Those destined to succeed Zuma offer no new vision of the future but are rooted in a return to the past