Exile taught cadres to keep goodies and bad all in the family

IT’S said that many a true word is spoken in jest. President Jacob Zuma wasn’t exactly trying his hand at comedy but he was, shall we say, in convivial company when he let slip that he didn’t care as much about the country as he did about his own party.

Zuma was among friends, when one tends to lower one’s guard or get carried away. That’s when the truth comes out.

That the party is the be-all and end-all is as close as we’ve come to understanding the unwritten philosophy guiding the ruling cabal. It explains a lot of things. The party is supreme, the people mere pawns.

His underlings have since been working hard at dissembling. But this was not a throwaway line by Zuma. He was making a cogent argument. His minions obviously think we’re mentally challenged.

Zuma’s credo brings to mind an innocuous incident at the SABC some years ago. Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, later to be president Thabo Mbeki’s communications minister, had come to national prominence as chairwoman of the first board in the new era that prepared the SABC for changes before and after the 1994 elections.

As chairwoman, she was responsible for moulding the mindset of the organisation, ushering out the old guard and engaging a new management team under Zwelakhe Sisulu. She became almost a de facto chief executive, intimately involved in day-to-day decisions.

That obviously created a certain animus between her and Sisulu, and when the time came for Sisulu to renew his contract, he demurred. Something had to be done about or for Matsepe-Casaburri.

One day her secretary walked in to my office with a note she wanted me to check for possible errors. It was a statement saying Matsepe-Casaburri was leaving the SABC to become premier of the Free State.

The incumbent, Mosiuoa Lekota, had controversially been hounded out of office and sent to parliament as an ordinary MP after a public falling out with some powerful figures in the province. Curious, I went to see Matsepe-Casaburri.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “The ANC has just sent Lekota packing to parliament against his will. This is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.”

She fixed me with a cold stare, as if I’d said something rude. “The ANC is my organisation,” she said. Her voice was firm, although perhaps in danger of losing its timbre. “I’ll do whatever it wants me to do!”

That she was so beholden to the organisation that she was prepared to do what, on the face of it, looked detrimental to her own interests was a revelation.

Loyalty didn’t seem an adequate description of her commitment. The party was not some institution out there that she had to pay allegiance to. It was part of her being, her makeup. She was who she was because of the party; it was part of her very soul.

I remember a journalist who had been in exile arguing forcefully that he couldn’t be unduly critical of the ANC government. Almost choking with emotion, he said the organisation had clothed and fed him and his family while in exile, and educated his children. He couldn’t turn against it to satisfy some flimsy notion of media freedom.

Such a view can sometimes have huge consequences. When Mbeki was recalled by the ANC in 2008, for instance, the action was so outrageous it would have been understandable had he resisted. But no, he didn’t. He readily agreed to step down, and even showed his blundering foes how to fire him without breaking the law.

“I have been a loyal member of the ANC for 52 years. I therefore respect its decisions,” he said.

In other words, the party is king. Its decisions have to be obeyed. How one feels about them and their consequences is immaterial.

Such fellowship was obviously forged in the crucible of struggle, especially in exile, where members were not only hunted like animals but the entire world seemed to have turned its back on them. The party was their only form of sustenance. If the party was a parent, its members were siblings.

The political goal has now been achieved, but the habits and idiosyncrasies of struggle persist — to the detriment of good governance. There are clear policy consequences. The ANC’s deployment policy, for instance, is designed to spread the perks of office — jobs, tenders, favours — within the family. And we also see the party leveraging a huge chunk of state assets through outfits such as Chancellor House.

Family members look out for each other. There is therefore a tendency not to criticise party members involved in wrongdoing. Which is why the ANC has been able to enforce party discipline on the obscenity that is Nkandlagate. This culture, honed by years in exile, is now firmly entrenched in the government and has intensified under Zuma.

It will probably continue should, as seems likely, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma succeed him.

I have been a loyal member of the ANC for 52 years. I therefore respect its decisions