Years of self-interest in leadership explain ANC’s woes

Mbeki must take responsibility for planting seeds of exclusivity in ruling party’s politics

IN A leaked recording of an ANC NEC meeting, Stan Mathabatha asks party officials a critical question – does an organisation called the ANC still exist? It is startling to think that 26 years of majority rule has fundamentally limped South Africa’s most prominent and oldest liberation party.

Mathabatha’s query is indicative of the fact that whatever was of the ANC is no more. Party interests are no longer understood as important by party members, officials, and leaders. In essence, the ANC is now a political vehicle used by its leaders to execute individual self-interested mandates.

The current crisis that the ANC faces is not the sole consequence of Magashule-Zuma and lawless ANC factions. Instead, there is a much more antique problem at play which the ANC has failed to address over the years – that being, ANC leaders utilising the party to further their own political destinies.

In the ANC’s “Through the Eye of the Needle” report, self-interested leadership is seen as the antithesis to the virtues of cadre-ism. However, consecutive ANC leaders have failed to prioritise party interests and instead opted to direct ANC politics and policy towards individual self-interest.

For instance, while many have praised Thabo Mbeki’s presidency as exemplary, he ought to take full responsibility for planting seeds of exclusivity in the ANC’s contemporary politics.

I do not believe this is tantamount to an all-encompassing monopolisation of power, as Mbeki detractors have sensationalised, but rather that while Mbeki took it upon himself to bolster the fine-tuning and modernisation of the ANC, he established an institutional hierarchy within the party that revolved around his presidency. Under Mbeki’s leadership, the ANC’s local and provincial structures became more estranged, and the party began to show signs of divergence and discord.

Ultimately, Mbeki’s headship of the ANC failed to appreciate the historical specificities surrounding his leadership.

The ANC, at the time, needed a leader who was highly aware of the tedious process of democratising the party. The process required constant “push factors” from the ANC’s top offices aimed at institutionalising greater inclusivity, debate, participation, and accountability.

These party demands, however, were opposed to Mbeki’s leadership style which favoured an exclusive institutional hierarchy within the party for his political self-actualisation.

ANC structures must take the blame for having allowed the biggest mistake in the history of the organisation to happen – that being the election of Jacob Zuma as president of the party through blatant lies, mischievous plots, and the gross mortification of Mbeki. Undoubtedly, the day Zuma took up presidential office signified the day self-interest fully trumped over ANC institutional ethics and standards.

Professor Susan Booysen has it spot on when stating that “the post-Polokwane ANC was a party movement that had lost the innocence of an untainted belief that it could shape the future to fit its foundational ideals” 1. Zuma’s presidency killed and buried the ANC that we had known – since that time, the party has become a different animal altogether.

Ramaphosa is in essence attempting to resuscitate a dead beast. (1. Booysen, S. 2011. The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Power. Wits University Press. Page 57.) Gone are the glory days of the ANC – and gone are they forever. In his plans to renew the party, however, he has also fallen into the very same trap that ultimately hinders it.

Currently, Ramaphosa’s leadership of the ANC is pillared on fighting corruption and the moral regeneration of the party. The way he has gone about doing this, however, seems far more a consideration of political grandstanding than a careful, competent, and nuanced approach to dealing with party corruption.

For example, Ramaphosa has opted to, with great force, implement the step aside policy while failing to meet other pertinent resolutions of the NEC. This supports the narrative that his corruption fighting campaign is rather a political purge of his party opponents and more beneficial to his legacy than to party interests.

Ramaphosa’s need to define a political legacy for himself has obscured him of the fact that certain political party offices, such as that of the Secretary- General’s, are too big and important to be allowed to fail.

Rooting out corruption in such offices warrants supreme dexterity. Whilst Ramaphosa is winning the battle against his political foes within the ANC, he continues to place his party in a legitimacy and authority crisis which is likely to cost the party at the polls.

And so, one must ask ANC supporters what is left of the ANC to vote for? As factional battles rage on with no end, party interests have become ever more obsolete and promises unfulfilled. Unless ANC leaders can effectively address the issue of self-interest in leadership, the party will remain in the slumps.