‘Step aside’ is a derisory farce by an intrinsically corrupt party

President Cyril Ramaphosa must have felt more than a twinge of embarrassment during his visit to flood-ravaged KwaZulu-Natal when all and sundry photographed him side-by-side with Zandile Gumede, the recently elected chair of the ANC in eThekwini, who is accused in a R200m corruption scandal. Just days after Gumede and ANC branches in the country’s third-largest city — the ANC’s biggest region by membership — defied the president’s wishes for criminally charged party members to step aside, there he was, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Gumede.

Ramaphosa was in the province to see for himself the extent of the damage caused by floods in which about 400 people are known to have died, scores are still missing and important infrastructure has been destroyed.

Gumede’s presence in his entourage has been explained away as being part of her duties as chair of the co-operative governance portfolio committee in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature.

That, on its own, makes a mockery of the entire step-aside gimmick that the ANC has adopted in a bid to convince voters that it is serious about clearing out the rot within its ranks. What it means is that a politician whose conduct is so embarrassing for the party that they are asked to distance themselves from it is still good enough to hold public office, and even chair a legislative committee.

It is precisely because of such inconsistencies in the application of the step-aside principle that the ANC’s rank and file continues to undermine it by electing into positions of power and authority individuals with questionable track records.

Ramaphosa has gone out of his way in recent months to get party structures to buy into his idea that for the ANC to “renew” itself and shed its image of corruption, it has to stop providing shelter to those in its ranks accused of wrongdoing.

But judging by Gumede’s re-election as ANC chair in eThekwini, the election of murder-accused Mandla Msibi as Mpumalanga ANC treasurer, and the conduct of the ANC-dominated ethics committee in parliament, it is clear that the message is falling on deaf ears.

The ethics committee used a technicality to clear former health minister Zweli Mkhize of accusations that he had contravened the ethics code by enabling his son to benefit from a contract his health department irregularly gave to Digital Vibes, a company run by the former minister’s associates.

None of this should be surprising to anyone who has followed South African politics, especially the ruling ANC, closely.

The party as we know it today is controlled by factions that were at the forefront of getting Jacob Zuma elected as ANC president in 2007, despite the fact that he was facing arms deal corruption charges.

Hiding behind the legal principle of “innocent until proven guilty”, his backers took a legalistic approach that ignored moral and ethical considerations. Their success meant that the party was changed forever and that the door was now open for anyone, no matter how chequered their past, to run for leadership posts.

It is those people who now wield power at all levels, from the grassroots branches all the way up to the national executive committee.

They may lose to Ramaphosa and other “reformists” now and again in NEC meetings, but their determination to retain the status quo means they will always push back.

The question for the rest of us as citizens is, how do we extricate ourselves and the country from this mess?

We cannot afford to be held hostage by a political class whose main preoccupation is to avoid jail, while effective governance suffers.

How do we extricate ourselves and the country from this mess?