ANC must face its demons
Road to Nasrec is paved with evil misfortunes. It’s up to Mantashe and his comrades to rebuild the organisation
QUITE FRANKLY
WHEN asked about the legacy he wants to leave as the secretary-general of the ANC after a decade at the helm, Gwede Mantashe said he wanted to emulate the dexterity and resilience of Duma Nokwe, who led the ANC as its secretary-general at a difficult time in exile.
With Oliver Tambo, the longest serving president of the ANC, Duma Nokwe, rescued the ANC from what threatened to be its demise at the watershed conference in Morogoro in 1969.
Almost five decades after Morogoro, Mantashe is grappling with similar challenges of organisational decline, a leadership crisis and a general sense of a lack of direction in the ranks of his movement.
He is on record as confessing that the most difficult task he has had to face as secretary-general is to deal with an organisation whose image was in decline and the worrying level of trust deficit within its ranks.
Ask any bystander about the fortunes of the ANC two decades into democratic rule and they will paint you a picture of a haunted house of greed, corruption and decline in morals and integrity.
As the party’s 54th elective conference beckons in less than a day from now at Nasrec, how will Mantashe and his comrades turn around this bad image and emulate the footsteps of Nokwe?
How will they rescue the ANC from self-destruction and its leadership crisis?
The first diagnostic question they will have to answer is how the ANC got to where it is today. It is only through such a diagnostic approach that the organisation will be able to identify its devastating weakness and thus apply the correct medicine to heal its dying self.
Unlike the sheepish lot that refused to discuss Mantashe’sdiagnostic report at its recent policy conference, delegates to the conference must take the bull by the horns and face their demons boldly.
It is imperative that they understand how and why the ANC continues to self-destruct despite so many red flag warnings, from some of its tried and tested membership including its veterans whose wise counsel has fallen on deaf ears.
Opening the Mafikeng 50th national conference of the ANC, Mandela was the first to diagnose the roots of the evil that engulfs the ANC today.
He told about 3 000 delegates: “One of the negative features is the emergence of careerism within our ranks.
“Many among our members see their membership of the ANC as a means to advance their personal ambitions to attain positions of power and access to resources for their own individual gratification.”
This sums up the evolution of the character of the present day members of the ANC and the attitude that we have witnessed from ANC branches since Mandela made these startling observations.
We have witnessed countless cases of members of the ANC using their proximity to the leadership of the organisation to influence processes in employment opportunities, tender rigging and other malpractices that tarnish its image.
We have become accustomed to the type of leaders of the ANC who are rogue and concerned only with amassing wealth for themselves and their cronies across all sectors where the ANC is influential.
In provinces like KwaZulu-Natal, we have seen how ANC comrades hunt each other down and kill in a frenzy of power struggle and greed for resources.
Successive conferences of the ANC have decried these tendencies but every time they have to implement resolutions to deal with these, they are all found wanting until it’s time for the next elective conference.
So the road to Nasrec is paved with these evil misfortunes and it is up to Mantashe and his comrades to whip the ANC into line if they are to regain their lost pride.
Many policy analysts and public commentators have been urging the ANC to modernise and dump the archaic model of branches in favour of delegates.
One of the reasons for these proposals is the level of manipulation that happens at these branches especially during the time of elective conferences.
The phenomenon of vote buying and delegate manipulation is a direct product of the branch system in the organisational structure of the ANC.
One of the other tendencies that have characterised the build up to ANC elective conferences is the dissident culture perpetuated by those who often lose elections at provincial level and the new phenomenon of court challenges.
This year, the Eastern Cape provincial “chair festival” conference took the cake as the most chaotic conference of the organisation since its unbanning in 1990.
The resort to violence and utter disdain for organisational processes has replicated itself across provinces of the ANC and has become a matter of grave concern.
The ANC needs to deal with internal organisational discipline if it is serious about the project of renewal and self-correction.
The pervasive scenes of ill-discipline and dissident behaviour that played themselves out across the provinces is a culture that the new leadership must focus on in building the new ANC.
The factional tendencies that have manifested themselves within the NEC have also, in large measure, compromised the ability of national leadership to deal with these thorny issues.
There is a lot on the plate of the ANC’s incoming leaders. We are all hopeful that they will step up and restore the integrity of their organisation and the country.
In emulating the sterling work of Nokwe and his generation of ANC leaders in exile, Mantashe needs to ensure that the 54th national conference is not a mere talk shop like the rest of past conferences.
They have a duty to conduct a thorough self-introspection and adopt a programme that will restore the integrity of the ANC as the custodian of people’s aspirations and leader of society.
Above all the leadership choice emerging out of this conference will demonstrate whether the ANC is ready to put South Africa first. Such a choice will determine whether the people will vote to keep the ANC in power at the polls come 2019.