The ANC’s national conference this weekend is arguably the most important in the party’s post-apartheid history.
Not because the party will chart a brave new future for the country. Or suddenly come up with radical, practical solutions to the many problems facing us.
Rather, the conference may mark the last time delegates meet while their party has exclusive control of the government.
Based on its steadily declining support since the highwater mark of 1994, the ANC’s domination of national politics seems destined to end come 2024.
The ANC’s electoral woes are the result, in large measure, of its poor performance in government — with Eskom, which is pulverising the economy and depressing the national mood, being the poster child of the party’s failures. This is quite apart from the crippling internecine power struggles.
But the question for South Africa is whether the party is in a position to lead the country out of the mire and fix what is broken. Doing so would depend on the ANC being able to provide thought leadership and foresight. The trouble is, intellectually the party is a mere shadow of its former self.
Is there any point in still looking to the party for solutions to the country’s many crises, both current and imminent? Could this, its 55th elective gathering, be its last-chance saloon, where it shocks us all with fresh new thinking and an effective and inspired leadership? Few will be holding their breaths on that score.
If we accept that great interventions for the national good must be preceded by innovative and visionary thinking, we must interrogate the party’s capacity for it.
As a government, what is the ANC’s big idea for the country? Deng Xiaoping is often credited with declaring that “to get rich is glorious”, which at the time — the 1980s — seemed like ideological sacrilege.
While attribution of the phrase to Deng is disputed, this is besides the point; the sentiment captured the transformative vision he had for China, “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.
Today China is a major economic power in the process lifting millions out of poverty, no longer the global bit player and backwater it once was. China being referenced because it is much admired by many in the ANC alliance.
For an increasing number of its members, the big idea became to use the party as a platform for self-enrichment
So in the ANC’s case, what would be the national vision, the central guiding project?
It cannot be ensuring reliable and affordable energy, the party having failed to fix the Eskom problem for nearly 15 years.
Is the vision the National Health Insurance scheme? Given the appalling state of our public health system, many doubt the party’s capacity to deliver on the plan. The question being why the current system has been allowed to go to the dogs in the first place.
If the party’s vision is to grow the economy and provide employmentvfor the millions of jobless South Africans, including youth, it would be rated a spectacular failure.
The social grants programme, often counted as one of the government’s big successes, is useful in alleviating poverty but can hardly be said to represent a national vision.
Yet the ANC did have a big idea once, one that it achieved. It was to free black people from the yoke of apartheid. The new South Africa was to be based on such lofty ideals as those in the Freedom Charter.
But once in government, what became of the ANC’s vision? For an increasing number of its members, the big idea became to use the party as a platform for self-enrichment. The party lost its way, prey to what its theorists call the “sins of incumbency”.
After 28 years in government, the party that played a pivotal role in freeing the country has run out of ideas.
It needs to jettison the assumption that it is the sole repository of wisdom and solutions, or that it can single-handedly fix the national crisis.
What the country needs is a reset through a national dialogue of stakeholders. This is an undertaking all South Africans who love their country should be able to sign on for.
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