Can ruling party beat the odds?

As the ANC policy conference looms, the divisions within the party have become more apparent.

The divisions are not only factional but are fundamental.

This conference is one of the most important conferences in ANC’s post-apartheid history. It comes at a time the country and the ANC are at crossroads.

The country’s socioeconomic and governance crisis is deepening. And this has precipitated a trust deficit and the state now faces a crisis of legitimacy.

The policy conference will not only decide the governing party’ s policy posture for the future. It will be defining the character of the party and whether or not its integrity will be salvaged.

It is the precursor to the elective conference in December where new office bearers will be chosen. The logic is the ANC ought to first decide on principles, values and a policy mandate and then use those as a criteria to select leaders to carry out the vision.

Junk status, growing unemployment, landlessness, deepening inequality, poor educational outcomes, deindustrialisation, failing national cohesion project, bad governance and maladministration continue to dog South Africa.

It is to these challenges that the ANC must respond to. If the ANC wants to redeem itself, it needs to demonstrate through the conduct and outcomes of this policy conference that it is up to the task. This is what voters want to see.

But the succession race seems to have overtaken the focus on policy. And robust discussion that is necessary to change the trajectory of the country so desperately needed is likely to be overshadowed. Whereas in the past the party has discouraged the proposal and discussion of names for the party’s top positions, this time the succession debate has run unabated.

The policy conference also takes place within the context of the Gupta e-mails saga (and) state capture which point to the systemic pillaging of the state.

And the PR gimmick of radical economic transformation versus white monopoly capital, inserted into the public discourse by Bell Pottingers, the Guptas’ PR strategist, will be the proxy for the factional turf war that is unfortunately likely to play itself out at the policy conference.