The Sunday News
Cetshwayo Mabhena
AFRICA’S oldest liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa is on trial for its very soul.
The movement was formed in 1912 as, not a political party, but a movement for liberation. It was formed not just for black South Africans against apartheid but for Africans at large. Its non-racial genealogy also meant that even white people that enjoyed racial privilege could find accommodation and political shelter in the movement whose Freedom Charter (1955) radically spelt that South Africa belonged to all that lived in it. Clearly the movement had an ambitious and messianic birth.
The promise of liberation itself that accompanied the birth of the movement was an ambitious claim and a demanding cause. Now this titanic movement with its large historical vocation has to compete for votes, the hearts and minds of South Africans, with political parties that advance narrow and populist ideologies such as “South Africa for the South Africans” and such other slogans that find currency and purchase within huge sections of the population.
In the name of the democracy that the ANC has delivered some white right-wing organisations are gaining prominence advancing thinly concealed racist agendas. The dilemma of the ANC is a true political imbroglio of a kind.
The movement either has to remain true to its liberatory vocation and lose popularity and votes or transform into a political party with populists tendencies and compete for popularity and votes with these young and reckless political parties with narrow objectives some of which are scary at best and toxic at worst. But in this moment of trial the ANC has something higher and deeper to do than choose the easy paths of populism and political opportunism.
The enemy within the movement
This week I get into conversation with Yacoob Abba Omar of the Mapungupwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA). Omar believes that the ANC should drift towards being a political party while rooting itself in its liberation origins and credentials. Regeneration and rejuvenation of the movement is what Omar reflectively suggests.
Indeed the ANC has a lot of work to do on itself. After its poor showing in the recent municipal elections, different cadres explained the political losses in different currents of excuses, ranging from the shortness of the campaign period to poor media coverage.
Yet there is a way in which the ANC has been its worst enemy. Senior cadres, for instance, have been caught in serious corruption where millions have been looted from the public coffers in the midst of growing poverty and misery of the majority.
Internal factional fighting that pits what are called Radical Economic Transformation (RET) cadres and the reformists that claim to fight corruption and cozenage are on the boil. The RETs are ridiculed by their opponents for advancing corruption and theft. The internal fights in the ANC have tended to erode the movement and empower its opponents especially white, racist and right-wing entities that publicly speak of democracy but privately aspire for a return to apartheid.
It is for that reason that Omar is right in suggesting that the ANC should renew itself while it also goes back to its true origins as a liberation movement that flies high above narrow agendas. As I write, under pressure from populists parties that campaigned on the “South Africa for South Africans” mantra the ANC is now generating policies that are hostile to Africans from other countries, shedding off its own skin as the “African” not South African National Congress. Partisan political pressure should really not shift a liberation movement from itself and its roots. Or the liberation credentials will evaporate and tyranny remains.
The ANC has to deal with itself as its own enemy at a certain historical and political level. This will involve going back to the intellectuals of the ANC as a movement that was formed by intellectuals such as Pixley Ka Isaka Seme, John Langalibalele Dube, Josiah Gumede and Sol Plaatje.
One of the key challenges of the ANC that threatens it with death is that it is a child of intellectuals whose upbringing and growth has been taken over by others, who might be different from them.
Because of the conflictual factions, grudge politics that is combined with the rigorous internal democracy of the movement there is no ANC President besides Nelson Mandela who has successfully finished all his terms of office. A culture of recalling leaders has taken root for better or for worse in the ANC.
The friend and the ally within the movement
The ANC has blood enemies in South Africa and outside that offer scathing criticism of the movement. But as Omar rightly observes the best critics of the ANC are found within the ANC. The movement has a healthy culture of internal debate and rigorous exchange.
Taking advantage of the frank conversations within the movement should introspect and recover itself from decline before it is too late. Instead of leaning on factions, the ANC should trace its steps back to the organic intellectuals and public intellectuals that populate its membership. The tripartite alliance of the South African Communist Party (SAPC), Confederation of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the ANC itself is wealthy in intellectuals and some trained and experienced policy eagles that have the capability to regenerate the ANC by taking it back to its liberation movement legacy and also driving it forward into a movement of the future that appeals to youths that are not so enchanted by liberation struggle myths and legends that the movement rehearses before every election.
Omar recounts how such liberation movements as the Indian National Congress (INC) have had to recover themselves from decline by not only relying on glorious history but also fashioning some enchanting futurist programmes that arrest the imagination of youths that are suspicious of history tales.
The Labour Party in the United Kingdom and the Republican Party in the United States of America, even as they are not liberation movements by any inch, have all had to undergo moments of recovery and regeneration from decline in political fortunes. As a liberation movement the ANC has more work to do on itself besides generating the simple populism of winning elections.
They have work to do in keeping the movement a true liberation movement that has the vocation to liberate itself and also other political parties that must enjoy, as they are doing, the freedom to get involved in elections and win some without being clobbered or banned. It is the trial of the ANC as a liberation movement to keep itself in existence and also ensure the existence and even electoral prosperity of its own enemies.
The tyranny of democracy
One only needs to watch the multi-party deliberations at the South African National Assembly to witness the insanity and beauty of the democratic experiment of the Republic.
The ANC can claim that it has delivered to itself and every other political party the freedom to get intoxicated in democracy, protest publicly, contest and win elections.
It is in that way that I have argued that even as the ANC declines politically and electorally, it remains victorious in having created the political conditions where it can allow itself to democratically lose elections.
In short, on trial for its political soul and liberatory destiny the ANC should go back to its philosophers, Machiavellians included; in order to salvage a future and advance the cause of liberation without resorting to tyranny and other political monstrosities.
Cetshwayo Zindaba Mabhena writes from Gezina, Pretoria, in South Africa. Contacts: [email protected].
