The ANC’s national conference comes at a time of sharp challenges to the constitutional and democratic order within which our politics takes place. With load-shedding at unprecedented levels, a sense of gloom pervades our national scene. Few believe there is better to come for South Africa, and the undignified scramble for positions in the ANC’s top echelons only adds to a sense of hopelessness.
The chances of ANC delegates taking time off from lobbying for votes are slim and those who are hoping the conference will formulate a workable vision for the future of our country are likely to be disappointed. The distraction provided by the Phala Phala scandal involving the theft of foreign currency from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s game farm is likely to dominate proceedings. But clouds of suspicion will hover above other delegates as well, notably Zweli Mkhize, the former health minister caught up in the Digital Vibes corruption scandal.
The party’s decision to postpone any discussion or decision on its integrity commission’s reports on Ramaphosa, Mkhize and several other bigwigs may have the effect of at least getting the candidates and delegates to the voting halls at Nasrec. No-one will be disqualified, it seems, so that none among them may feel suited to throwing the first stone. It is indeed a confederacy of the tainted.
The party’s decision to postpone any discussion or decision on its integrity commission’s reports on Ramaphosa, Mkhize and several other bigwigs may have the effect of at least getting the candidates and delegates to the voting halls at Nasrec
Yet the ANC remains the majority party nationally and in all but one province, and its elections and decisions on other matters are important indicators of where the country may be headed. Ramaphosa’s re-election should have been a foregone conclusion, given the number of nominations he has attracted from ANC branches in comparison with Mkhize. But such is the nature of the Phala Phala scandal — its negation of Ramaphosa’s cleanup, its eerie echoes of how ANC MPs were corralled to fall behind their leader in parliament without regard to objective facts — that the voting outcome should not be taken for granted.
In their decisions, the delegates must put aside narrow factional interests in favour of what the country needs. Most pressingly at this dark juncture, the country will be looking to the ANC to produce a style of leadership, and the personalities to drive it, that is most conducive to digging us out of the deep trough of despair into which we have fallen.
In doing so, they have no better role models to inspire them than the leaders of the past. The ANC must surely appreciate that its first 10 years in office represented a high-water mark of its efforts in government. Therefore delegates would be well advised to try to capture once again the spirit of the 1994 compromises which, for an all-too-brief period, made South Africa a role model for societies in transition from authoritarian to democratic governments. The defining features of this era were humility, a willingness to compromise in the broadest possible public interest and a rejection of populist “solutions’’ to social problems.
This requires a return to basics for the party and a realisation that come the elections in 2024, the ANC may not command the 50%-plus it needs to govern alone. The ANC must recapture the spirit of compromise and negotiation. It will surely need it in the years ahead.
The party must look back at its successes: the ushering in of a democratic state bound by a constitution of which we can all be proud; the creation of a black middle class where this hardly existed before 1994; the incubation of a class of technocrats and experts in the civil service who have the expertise to make a difference if given the chance by the politicians. It needs to recapture the spirit of tolerance and putting the collective public interest first, with the aim of ensuring a better life for all South Africans.
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