ZAKHELE NDLOVU
I remember the chaotic 2007 ANC elective conference in Polokwane as if it were yesterday and the deep divisions within the ruling party that gave birth to the breakaway Cope party led by supporters of former president, Thabo Mbeki, in 2008.
Since then another breakaway political party, the EFF, was formed prior to the 2014 elections by the former ANCYL president, Julius Malema.
Last month saw another chaotic ANC elective conference as disruptions caused delays and the unprecedented postponement of the adoption of crucial resolutions and the conference declaration to this month.
With prominent leaders such as Ace Magashule remaining suspended and the expelled Carl Niehaus out in the political wilderness, the question is: can we expect these crises and unmanaged divisions to further weaken the ANC and lead to another breakaway political party this time around?
By its own admission, the ANC desperately needs unity and organisational renewal. But the party is highly divided and, in recent decades, suffers from the cult of personality and members who are hellbent on being on the gravy train.
The calls for unity emanate from the deep divisions that were laid bare at the 2007 Polokwane elective conference and have continued to tear the ANC apart.
Since then, we have seen some members of the losing faction not voting for the ANC when the opposing faction is in power. This was evident in the last local government elections (2021) in KZN when the RET faction sought to undermine the Ramaphosa faction by not voting for the ANC, thus leading to the resurgence of the IFP which regained control of numerous municipalities in KZN.
The calls for organisational renewal stem, on the one hand, from the realisation that the quality of the ANC’s membership leaves a lot to be desired and, on the other hand, from the sustained decline in its electoral support as evidenced in the loss of the Johannesburg, Pretoria and NMB metros and the near loss of the eThekwini metro.
After assuming power in 1994, the ANC attracted some members who only wanted to have access to state resources through scrambling for powerful positions.
This has made the ANC a magnet for people who want to take shortcuts in the pursuit of self-enrichment, including all sorts of shady characters hellbent on pursuing their selfish agendas.
These shady characters have been accused of vote-buying, gate-keeping and creating ghost members to maintain their influence within the ruling party.
It did not help that the majority of black people lack the skills needed in the economy because of the apartheid past. In this context, the only avenue to secure employment for many people was to join the ANC to get jobs in the public sector, benefit from the tender system and secure some form of patronage. The result is that underqualified people secured powerful positions.
For quite some time now, Mbeki has questioned the quality of ANC members saying that “over the years the quality of the membership of the ANC has degenerated”. Mbeki knows better as he has been a victim of the venom of unruly members at some ANC rallies and at the 2007 Polokwane conference.
Judging by the poor quality of delegates at ANC provincial and national conferences, it is clear that the ruling party has struggled to attract members who embody certain qualities that can take the ANC and the country to the next level. This can be seen in the delegates who attend conferences who, for the most part, are people good at knowing the party’s songs and slogans but know very little about policy matters.
It is an open secret that the ANC has struggled with solving its internal problems. These problems include the embarrassing failure of the ruling party to pay the salaries of its own employees on time; the failure of what Thabo Mbeki refers to as the inability to attract quality members who can then help the ANC to elect quality leaders; the holding of conferences that are free of disruptions and chaos as well as decisively dealing with those members deployed in government and state-owned enterprises who are accused of breaking the law; mismanagement, incompetence and blatant corruption.
The question that begs an answer now is: can the ruling party solve the country’s problems if it cannot solve its internal problems? Put differently, should ordinary citizens trust the wobbly and seemingly disorganised ANC that has become synonymous with mismanagement, incompetence and corruption to lead the country out of the mess it finds itself in?
The stakes are very high now as South Africa contends with the following problems:
Rampant lawlessness; economic paralysis; a society that increasingly depends on social grants; unending load shedding; the rapid decay of towns and cities; weak intelligence services and incompetent police force that were badly exposed during the 2021 lootings and the rapid damage to the railroad infrastructure that used to efficiently transport goods and provide the working class with a cheap transportation system, just to name a few.
Lawlessness has been on the rise in recent decades and examples of it include rampant illegal electricity connections that undermine Eskom’s ability to recover from its paralysis; the hijacking of buildings in major cities where occupants live without running water illegal electricity connection is the norm; brazen illegal mining; the brazen sale of drugs and counterfeit goods; widespread extortion, cops openly collecting bribes and illegal immigration.
For its part, load-shedding is hurting the economy and making it increasingly difficult for South Africa to attract much-needed domestic and foreign investments. A number of businesses are shutting down because their operations depend on the sustained supply of electricity. This means more job losses in a country where unemployment is already at an unacceptably high level.
As elections continue to be reduced to a popularity contest, and not used as a mechanism for holding elected representatives accountable the ANC stands another chance to win the 2024 elections but beyond that nothing is guaranteed.
Zakhele Ndlovu is a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Daily News