On the occasion of the African National Congress’s 100th anniversary early this year, there was a literary text that kept playing inside my subconscious mind every time I watched or read about this momentous event – one of the most significant of our time.
It is a passage from Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah: “The prime failure of this government began also to take on a clearer meaning for him. It can’t be the massive corruption though its scale and pervasiveness are truly intolerable; it isn’t the subservience to foreign manipulation, degrading as it is; it isn’t even this second-class, hand-me-down capitalism ludicrous and doomed; nor is it the damnable shooting of striking railway-workers and demonstrating students and the destruction and banning thereafter of independent unions and cooperatives. It is the failure of our rulers to re-establish vital inner links with the poor and dispossessed of this country, with the bruised heart that throbs painfully at the core of the nation’s being.”
As a literary text, of course, this passage is open to varied interpretation but it does paint an image that can now be presented as evidence of how the myth of South African exceptionalism has been busted. I say “now” because for close to two decades, South Africa – and the ANC in particular – has felt firmly insulated from the plague suffered by most post-colonies on the continent – cancerous corruption, a debauched machinery governance, economic exploitation, poor service delivery and rising unemployment, a cocktail so poisonous it can explode into civil unrest and bring about a revolution.
Speaking of revolutions, it was most interesting this past week to hear the ANC profess its commitment to ensuring that the revolutionary gains of 1994 – when the progressive forces of the time attained political freedom from the apartheid regime – had been consolidated and that to safeguard against these gains being reversed, the party would be engaging the second gear of seeking economic freedom.
It was most refreshing, for once, to see President Jacob Zuma – a leader who is always reluctant to make solid commitments to key policy – speak of the need to go back to the Freedom Charter so that the party could reshape itself as a viable 21st century entity within the political sphere by honouring its pledge to improve the lives of many South Africans.
Perhaps that is the genesis of the problem, that the latter-day ANC has been so fixated on 1994 and in so doing has forgotten about its founding mandate altogether. If anything has been lost within the ANC over the last two decades, it is the internal knowledge and understanding that this party is not just a Mickey Mouse movement but rather, a form of consciousness, a deliberate awareness of one’s bounden duty towards the persistent and continuous shaping of a moral and political philosophy that captures the dreams and aspirations of a free South Africa as envisioned by the Freedom Charter.
Out of this loss, regrettably, we have witnessed this “failure of our rulers to re-establish vital inner links with the poor and dispossessed of this country”. So, when President Zuma speaks about a national democratic revolution, makes reference to the Freedom Charter, criticises the land reform programme and declares that the state is the custodian of all mineral and petroleum resources within South Africa, he is essentially communicating the founding ideology of the ANC.
However, by also saying that the party must be engaged in the ideological struggle and lead debates in society, Zuma is confirming that there indeed has been a massive disconnection between the aspirations of those who lead the ANC at present and what the organisation stands for in principle. It is a kind of disconnection that has bred public mistrust of the party and also led to a massive loss of public confidence, never mind that it is still winning elections – primarily because South Africa lacks a viable and credible opposition movement for the majority who vote.
Yet the question remains: What should happen in this festival of ideas that President Zuma encouraged to flourish? Given the intra-party dynamics of the ANC – as we have seen them unfold of late – what specific guarantees are there that ideas will be respected as ideas and not lead to anyone’s expulsion from the party simply because they shared, well, a ‘bad’ idea?
Perhaps the biggest idea the ANC needs to debate is how it deals with its own victories at specific intervals, such as the political victory of 1994. The problem with winning is that far too often, there is not in place a strategy to contain and build upon the gains. It is like winning the lotto and getting broke after three months. Beyond this policy conference and beyond Mangaung later this year, the ANC’s main duty should be to resolutely guard against the movement being thrown into disarray.
But there is a clear problem and this problem was perfectly captured by postcolonial theorist, Frantz Fanon. The ANC should take heed going forward.
Said Fanon: “The living party, which ought to make possible the free exchange of ideas which have been elaborated according to the real needs of the mass of the people, has been transformed into a trade union of individual interests. Since the proclamation of independence [read political victory] the party no longer helps the people to set out its demands, to become more aware of its needs and better able to establish its power.
“Today, the party’s mission is to deliver to the people the instructions which issue from the summit. There no longer exists the fruitful give-and-take from bottom to the top and from the top to the bottom which creates and guarantees democracy in a party. Quite on the contrary, the party has made itself into a screen between the masses and the leaders. There is no longer any party life, for the branches which were set up during the colonial period are today completely demobilised.”
The media may be right, after all, to frame the recent ANC policy conference within the context of Mangaung. Yet they too – much like the ANC’s “trade union of individual interests” – have conveniently ignored the possibility that all the proposals being put forward are not about the upcoming elective conference in December but rather, about going back to Mangaung in 1912 and re-establishing the party and its vision in the spirit, hopes, dreams and aspirations of its founding ideology, making it possible, therefore, to discover ways in which it can confront key events such as Mangaung in 2012 in way that is mature, progressive and mindful of the need to prosecute current political, social and economic struggles in South Africa in a manner consistent with that founding ideology.
Anything less than this will not go far in building and strengthening public trust or even reviving public confidence in the ANC. Actually, it will be fatal to the party’s future success, rendering it yet another Marxist wasteland that has presided over yet another aborted transition.
Can’t quite understand how a party that gave the freedoms you now enjoy is suddenly the root cause of all our problems. “media may be right” – shows your utterly biased portrayal of the ANC sounds like you bought into the DA politics of “divide and rule” so forcefully peddled our media mafia. The more divisions created in the black electorate, the more the white tribal DA stands to benefit.
Try reading the works of giants like Biko, Mandela, Gandhi and King for a change to understand why we are beset with the post-colonial, post apartheid mess and how to clean things up rather than the writings of some ivory tower academic like Frantz Fanon!
“I Never promised You a Rose Garden”is both a song and a book. My children have threatened to sing that song at my funeral!
It is the story of a psychiatrist trying to cure a mentally ill teenage girl in Nazi Germany when “the lunatics were running the asylum” on the outside.
A very similar situation to Chinese Communism when Mao decreed that reading his Red (not Vietnames Green) Book to mentally ill patients would cure them and sent out his bare foot doctors!
Listening to the ANC conference made me remember it – are the lunatics running the asylum again?
“……..that all the proposals being put forward are not about the upcoming elective conference in December but rather, about going back to Mangaung in 1912 and re-establishing the party and its vision in the spirit, hopes, dreams and aspirations of its founding ideology, making it possible, therefore, to discover ways in which it can confront key events such as Mangaung in 2012 in way that is mature, progressive and mindful of the need to prosecute current political, social and economic struggles in South Africa in a manner consistent with that founding ideology…………..”
I do like your contribution to this serious debate about the future of SA. I do not care much about the future of the ANC…they have lost the plot (and the credibility with the majority) big time. Just a matter of time for it to show.
Harping on the “collective mood” some 100 years ago is not going to do it in very much different circumstances of daily life for the people.
Thanks for a nice and thought provoking article.
bernpm
Especially since 100 years ago the ANC was a Christian Democratic Party opposed to both Marxist Communism and enforced Atheism, and also to Pan-Africanism, and what they campaigned for the most was for closing the borders to cheap imported labour from the neighbouring states.
Another ANC myth, other than the African Renaissance/Egyptology myth, is the myth of the “successful armed struggle”.
By 1985 the “armed struggle” had been totally defeated. The Cuban loss at Cuito led to the Russians and the Afrikaner settling peace and independence for Namibia, with Russia withdrawing all the Cubans from Africa. This was follwed by the Nkomati accord signed with Samora Machel, and the ANC being thrown out of all the frontline states. Which is why the last people who would have wanted to bring down his plane would have been the White Afrikaner – but the Black Communists might have done!
Which is also why the ANC had to go to a negotiated settlement at Codesa.
And also why they started a black-on-black war in the townships against the IFP in 1985. These 20,000 black deaths were EXCLUDED from the TRC rigged to blacken De Klerk (who had won the Province of the Western Cape), and Buthelezi (who had won the Province of Kwa-Zulu Natal).
This continual praising of the Cubans by the ANC looks very much to me like bribe money to stop them, and the Russians, telling the truth. But you can read all about it in the book “The Other Side of History” by van Zyl Slabbert.
The Pirates of the Caribbean had a motto and that was “Take everything we can – give nothing back”. The Pirates of Polokwane (The ANC) have the same motto.
They serve themselves and no one else. All the great hopes and dreams of the Freedom Charter have died in the greed of our new masters.
I’m not aware of anyone with a bad idea who has lost his/her ANC ticket; take Mbeki, his health minister and others who have introduced disastrous education policies.
When I was in my 20s, ‘I never promised you a rose garden’ was the scariest book I read, now I’m living it with hosts of others.
aluta continua
indeed
“South Africa – and the ANC in particular – has felt firmly insulated from the plague suffered by most post-colonies on the continent – cancerous corruption, a debauched machinery governance, economic exploitation, poor service delivery and rising unemployment”. Indeed. As its propagandists like Harris show, the ANC is the embodiment of that plague – an aggressive and threatening sense of entitlement (‘the party that gave you the freedoms you now enjoy), with a combination of entrenched corruption and patronage, coupled with racism and tribalism (‘black electorate, white tribal DA’). SA is in fact repeating every mistake of every previously independent African country, but more deliberately than ever, and with malice rather than naivety as the drivers.
@Fanon,
Several countries in Sub Saharan Africa are on the rise. Their worst days seem to be behind them. Kenya, Ghana, Zambia, Senegal among them. I think more than one are lower ( lower=better) than SA on the Global Corruption index and several are lower than SA on the Global Peace index.
In SA, many problems or tensions are increasing, not decreasing: high income inequality, high unemployment, service delivery protests, land reform pressures etc. Other problems such as poor education for the majority, high crime levels don’t seem to be diminishing.
Comparing SA to other African countries today may not serve any useful purpose.
@Fanon: Well put. The rot will continue relentlessly, driven as you say by hate and malice as opposed to simple ignorance. The unfortunate part is that the rabid propagandist’s view is the one most likely to get the receptive ear of the corrupt rubbish that comprise the now government. It’s always easier to listen to whatever suports your agenda, no matter how wrong that agenda may be. The beloved country is truly on the brink now.
@Beddy, a hundred years ago the ANC was setup as an organization to uplift the native like in the US. At that time it was like the NAACP in the US that DuBois help founded.
What is missing in this discussion is when the Europeans went to Asia most of these countries were feudal and there was a certain degree of development. In China this country in some ways was more developed than the European countries. In black Africa this was a different story because the people weren’t feudal but, living in a primitive setting. When the English left India there was a large class of highly educated people to run the country along with a business class in India. In black Africa this was not the case and it will take time to develop these people. One must remember after the fall of the Roman Empire, it took a thousandth years for France and England to get their act together.
@Fanon,most black Africans will tell you that the blacks in SA were lucky because the whites didn’t pack up and leave like they did in other parts of Africa. You are talking about a group people that don’t have a culture of running things in an efficient manner. The ANC has put people in charge of running things in SA that they know don’t have the skill to do so.
Sterling
Where you are correct is that Africa did not have enough educated people for self rule. The Congo had independence dumped on them when they had only about 5 university graduates in the whole country, only a few hundred boychildren who had been educated to read and write and only to the age of 12, no infrastructure and roads, no common language, and no communication network – not even radio.
Harris, you’re jesting surely. Fanon’s warnings are just about the clearest prophetic voice there is from the postwar anti-colonial era, and you surely know as well as the rest of us that Biko drew much inspiration from Fanon.
Levi, a very well-intentioned essay. However, no recourse to past virtues is going to make a real difference. What is surely needed is a commitment to ethical and effective civil service (delivery). That does not require sublimities of vision, hailing of iconic memories, and party triumphs. All it requires is fundamental decency, duty, mundane daily competence and commitment. I’d say that the ANC needs, first, to start a movement to promote the virtues of a good basic education and the virtues of teaching as a calling, a nation-building profession. All of the rest is back-to-front.
Proir to 1994 the Dutch Afrikaner ran a SOCIALIST state with strong environmental controls, parastatals, emphasis on farming, food security and subsidisation of basic foods.
The English ran business – on a CAPITALIST System – but the Afrikaner ALSO built up their own NEW businesses.
The ANC inherited a Socialist/Capitalist Mix.
Now we have a Capitalist/Communist/Entitlement mix!
” second transition” some get worried about that, some are bubbling in that confusion”
thanks Mr Kawabata for having made an attempt, but in totality of your writing, you have possible fell short of exposing yourself of who real who are, because one you get worried about the ANC policy conference if the resolutions of that conference would a way to go or not , your basis for such are as coined in your text “intra party dynamics of the ANC” Let me first cast that think, what people see in within the ANC , some tend turn a blind eye in the fact that Ucongolose is the broad church organisation, this means all interests of patriots are found within the ANC.That is is reason no 1 for ANC persistent victory in the elections, despite some setbacks which have been experienced on the ANC elections victory when comparing with overwhelming victory of two third majority. let me allay your fears whatever you see within the ANC as termed ” dynamics” you should understand it as class struggle at it heights thank you.
mhlekazi
The ANC only got a third of the vote, because half the of electorate did not vote in the last election, and could easily lose the next to an opposition co-elition.
Jannie Smuts never expected to lose the 1948 election either, although he was warned in advance by Ray Alexander Symons, founder of South Africa’s Trade Union movement, that he would.
After the election he asked her how she had known he would lose – and she told him that she knew that he had lost toutch with his people.
So has the ANC!
Like Jannie Smuts, Nelson Mandela has been better on the International Stage.
Great shame to the folks that dehumanized their fellow humanbeings. The great thing is that at last they are being ruled by the people that they degraded.
God is the Avenger and we are under His eyes. let us all treat one another as equal fellows.
http://shameguilty.blogspot.co.uk/ Pastor Dan