ANC in ruins: What is to be done?
Tabane is the author of and host of on Power 987, Sundays to Thursdays 9pm to 12am. Follow him on Twitter @JJTabane
One hundred and six YEARS ago to the day, a glorious movement was born to liberate the African child from oppression – the ANC. One hundred and six years later that movement is a shadow of its former self – disgracing all its founding fathers and in need of urgent resuscitation.
As the latter-day leaders went about laying wreaths at the former ANC presidents’ graves last week, the question that loomed large was how much they must be turning in their tombs as they look down at how the 106-year-old party has been destroyed, primarily by the loss of a moral compass.
There are many things the ANC has done with distinction over the years – keeping us motivated in the toughest of times and ensuring a march to freedom unprecedented the world over. The ANC’s success as a liberation movement is what set the standard it must now meet as a governing party - very high. It is after all this same party under Oliver Tambo that went around the world lobbying all who cared to listen about how immoral and evil the apartheid state was.
Apartheid consisted of murder, systemic discrimination and deep corruption, where only a few benefited at the expense of the majority. Quite frankly, there are many things that apartheid was able to achieve that the latter-day ANC is now repeating, in a sad and twisted way. I know this is harsh, but it is born out of stubborn facts.
Under the ANC’s watch in exile, people were maimed and killed in camps under the guise of war. No war rules were followed – a seed of lawlessness was planted here, and its bounty fruit has come back to haunt society today in so many ways as we watch daily as the supreme law of our land is violated and the ANC is sold to the highest bidder.
Now the stories of everything from money laundering, theft and sexual harassment are coming out bit by bit as comrades who lived in these camps do not want to go to the grave with these stories. More is set to come out in days and years ahead. With the benefit of the Public Protector’s State of Capture report and the SA Council of Churches’ unburdening report, we know that, once in power, the ANC has found itself in the grip of an apartheid-type criminal network led by the Guptas and several of its own leaders, without a tinge of shame.
Moreover, it has allowed and abetted the continuation of white monopoly theft – where white business has clung on to the country’s largesse, refusing to share it with the majority. This has happened under the ANC’s watch through failed schemes of economic emancipation and the turning of a blind eye to the refusal to transform ownership patterns of the economy.
A 24-year-long policy schizophrenia has worsened the conditions of most South Africans – 55% live below the breadline, according to Stats SA, and almost 30% are unemployed. These are not Doomsday prophecies or the white media’s fertile imagination, as some will have us believe, but the reality of South Africa as the ANC turns 106.
This story can’t be spun. The ANC had a golden opportunity last month to reverse this tragic situation, and it failed dismally. This assessment of failure is based on the ANC’s own seminal documents: Through the Eye of the Needle (defining what kind of members are worthy of being ANC leaders) and the Freedom Charter (defining what kind of economic future South Africa deserves).
So what did the glorious movement do? It elected leaders who, even upon being starved of all conference food, would not fit through criteria of credible leadership even if the document was not setting such high standards as The Eye of the Needle.
Some of the leaders on the ANC’s national executive committee can’t go through a wide-open door of credibility, and if our justice system could go through any “eye of credibility”, it should be rounding off some of them as criminal suspects – starting with the minister of intelligence, who allegedly (according to a sworn affidavit) bribed an officer of the court within minutes of being appointed a cabinet minister, as well as the repeat offender that is the president, who has used taxpayers’ money to run from court to court for more than a decade.
The document, merely by existing, shamed the ANC as it emerged out of Nasrec. The poor Freedom Charter has been so bastardised over the last two decades that it has become the subject of at least two splits in the party, with breakaway rebels claiming to be better custodians of this sacrosanct document.
The land policy obfuscation and the free education fiasco stand out as cardinal failures to take the Freedom Charter seriously. Both have seen chaotic results of landless and the worst literacy levels in the world. On its 106th birthday, the ANC is all but finished. But some of us have no luxury of despair. The ANC must rise from the ashes, and to do so it must honour these two documents, which will become the instruments of uplifting the people for whom it was founded. Hopefully by reclaiming the economy as well as by adorning itself with more credible and younger leaders to take it into the future, the ANC can win back the hearts and minds of the electorate.
In my book, Let’s Talk Frankly, written three years ago, I made 11 suggestions to the then secretary-general of the ANC about how the party can rebuild itself.
On the occasion of yet another January 8 song and dance, I recommend the letter to Gwede Mantashe in that book as Ace Magashule’s bedtime reading as I repeat a few of these suggestions to him: Elevate the issue of integrity – in other words, stop theft of public resources; Elevate meritocracy – in simpler words, deploy capable cadres and stop jobs for pals; and Elevate the state’s capacity to deliver services. Once these basics are in place, the ANC will regain its confidence among the electorate, who are now gatvol of endless promises and daylight robbery.
For the ANC of Nelson Mandela to rise from the ashes, there is a long and winding road ahead, and the question uppermost on the nation’s mind is whether there is a roadmap in the offing as we await yet another January 8 Statement. Quite Frankly, it is not a happy birthday to the ANC.