Shortly after the ANC was handed a bloodied nose in the last election, talk of renewal became elevated within the party. What made it en vogue was the sobering thought that its days were numbered.
While some progressive people in the ANC — and there are many — had argued for renewal much earlier, the ANC’s traditional nonchalance held sway, with many believing the party of Tambo, Mandela, Sisulu and others would still command sufficient votes to govern on its own.
The outcome of the May 29 election last year not only proved sobering for many, it placed the party’s need for renewal at the centre of all considerations about its survival.
Sadly though, renewal meant different things to different people. On paper, renewal meant an earnest attempt to rewire the ANC, regain public trust by addressing the party’s organisational weaknesses, rebuild its connection with ordinary people by solving social issues, and ensure that those with public power don’t use it for self-interest. In the main, however, renewal came to mean ensuring that those charged with malfeasance, mostly corruption, step aside. This, on its own, is not a deterrent.
This is why, more than a year since the election, renewal has become an afterthought, nonchalance has regained its place and the party seems unmoored. It is drifting towards the next election as if it must discover, along with the rest of society, how many people still want to vote for it. It doesn’t seem interested in making an effort to self-correct.
Trite though it appears, the party must take the May 29 rejection with a seriousness that is overdue.
When the organisation did seek to respond to its poor showing, it went about reconfiguring party structures in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, where it had received a clear rejection from voters. The reconfiguration itself has been mired in factionalism. If nothing else, this shows the party is struggling to unlearn what is causing its demise. As ANC Youth League leader Collen Malatji said, the ANC may have the right message for the masses but the messengers are without credibility in the eyes of the voters.
The question is why the ANC is so nonchalant about its own future, even when the voters put it on notice.
Some say this is not President Cyril Ramaphosa’s problem because in the next election he will, like his predecessors Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, be playing merely a supportive role. Ramaphosa talks renewal but seems comfortable squabbling with his main GNU partner, the DA, about being part of a right-wing nexus bent on sabotaging our country. We knew that before the GNU was formed; why feign the surprise?
If it’s not Mbalula, then who? Will the billionaire Patrice Motsepe, who has demonstrated his leadership in business and local and continental soccer, perhaps save the ANC from itself?
Ramaphosa's deputy, Paul Mashatile, is mired in controversies about his sudden ownership of houses in Gauteng and Cape Town estimated to be worth close on R70m. How does this align with renewal — the central plank of ANC survival? What is Mashatile’s life hack for amassing at great speed such wealth? As the ANC fights for its survival, questions will be asked about whether Mashatile represents what is needed to help the ANC survive. Will he help it regain public trust and thus more votes, or will he cost the ANC votes? ANC voters, though, aren’t naturally averse to a super-wealthy leader. Otherwise they wouldn’t have voted for Ramaphosa.
But when there is suspicion about how the wealth was gained, the stench becomes putrid. More so after Ramaphosa, through Phala Phala, demonstrated to many that being rich means you can keep unexplained dollars in your sofa. The heightened public distrust of wealthy leaders doesn’t mean poor ones are welcome. Jacob Zuma, former ANC president, is a scar refusing to heal for the ANC.
But the question remains: if not Ramaphosa or Mashatile, in whose name is the ANC going to plead its case to potential voters as a party that has successfully undergone renewal? Secretary-general Fikile Mbalula? Is he a person so laden with credibility he would lift the ANC’s ailing fortunes to closer to 50%? For some, Mbalula talks strategy but his actions reveal a leader in too deep and adrift in the blue sea. He makes too many elementary errors that rule him out as a saviour. Unless, of course, in the world of the blind the one-eyed man becomes king.
If it’s not Mbalula, then who? Will the billionaire Patrice Motsepe, who has demonstrated his leadership in business and local and continental soccer, perhaps save the ANC from itself? Running the ANC is not like running a soccer club, protested Mbalula in a JJ Tabane-style rant the other day. But Motsepe would lend the ANC his credibility, even though, without renewal, it could prove to be too little too late.
Perhaps the reversal of the electoral decline of the party is considered to be secondary to simply gaining the throne again — because even if the ANC gets 30% in the next election it would most probably still be the biggest party.
The ANC leaders, including Ramaphosa, Mashatile and Mbalula, are busy with way too many things, none of which relate to repositioning the ANC so that it regains public trust.
They are too busy with side issues, and the core reason the party is in free fall is left unattended.
Without renewal, which ought to be an antidote to the public distrust of the ANC, the party is sailing blind. It’s not serious about the message it should send to voters, who are tired of overrated razzmatazz and make-believe stuff when the truth about the ANC stares them in the face.
While the ANC does have capable, ethical leaders, they stand no chance when the other players start circulating cash in plastic bags ahead of party elections. So they get demobilised even before the race begins.
A combination of moneyed but compromised leaders and demobilised ethical leaders, in addition to an effectively abandoned renewal programme, means the ANC is failing to learn how to stop the decline. It is a ship that will remain unmoored and lost at sea unless someone urgently attends to renewal — not as a means to simply force corrupt leaders to step aside, but renewal in its truest sense.
Time is running out for the continent's oldest liberation movement, whose leaders are busy, very busy, with a million things except what matters most — renewal.
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