The ANC can neither hold the centre nor lead society. The recent policy conference was bereft of new ideas. (Paul Botes/M&G)
Castration. Really? Castration. Has it come to this? Apparently so. The national policy conference of the ANC dragged a once-proud party of liberation and of ideas into the abyss.
Behind the scenes the ANC is held together by string and a group of volunteers who, for many years, have provided sense and reason while all around them was falling apart. I won’t name them, to spare their blushes.
But they are experienced operators, who know the ANC system and organisational culture, and are savvy enough to handle pretty much anything that is thrown at them. They are wordsmiths and process junkies. They sort the wheat from the chaff. They panel-beat the roughly hewn draft resolutions that are tossed around the various policy sub-commissions.
They hold the centre, as former president Thabo Mbeki would say.
They are one of the reasons the ANC has been such a stable organisation — at least, policy-wise. To a fault. So stable that it has now run out of steam and ground to a halt.
In the past they were like the men shovelling coal into the steam engine. You couldn’t see them but without them, nothing would happen.
On occasion, they have turned pig’s ears into silk purses. But these days they don’t even get pig’s ears to work with. Only castration.
I asked three of them to give me one policy innovation that had emerged from the national policy conference last weekend. Apart, that is, from castration for sex offenders.
They replied but they could not answer. There was nothing new, they admitted. One told me that the ANC’s support for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s plan “to deal with load-shedding by cutting red tape for private investment and giving Eskom space to do maintenance, strengthen its finances and restructure for the energy transition is significant”.
This is not a new policy. The government has been heading in this direction, painfully slowly, admittedly, but inexorably for a long while. And, it is true that, as my source put it, “it is a highly contested space”. The “victory”, they added, was that “good policy is winning the day”.
As the ANC insider acknowledged, the president’s stance was “crucial for South Africa’s economic performance”. Indeed. And it should have happened a long time ago. High energy users in the private sector, and especially the mining sector, have been asking for it for years. Only stubborn, pig-headed resistance from the energy minister, Gwede Mantashe, and other ANC dinosaurs had impeded progress.
More interestingly, the insider indicated that “there is a realisation that it has to be done effectively and urgently for the ANC’s political survival”. The remaining few adults in the room are waking up to a certain reality — far too late, it should be added — to achieve either the goal of saving the ANC from electoral defeat or for saving the economy.
For the rest it was mainly about holding the ANC together. It was an introspection of the most grotesque and sociopathic sense. Rome is burning and the ANC fiddles, narcissistically preoccupied with internal issues such as the “step-aside rule”.
At a time of mounting crisis, when old ideas have failed, a viable political party of government has to come up with something new, otherwise its demise is inevitable. As Mbeki pointed out a few days earlier, at ANC secretary general Jesse Duarte’s memorial service, the socioeconomic risk matrix of South Africa is gravely concerning. His point about an Arab Spring brewing is entirely justified.
Did the national policy conference in any way respond to this crisis? No.
What about climate change, the existential threat that is posed to life on Earth? Bizarrely, the draft policy documents prepared for the conference and tabled for discussion at it contained just one meagre paragraph — and a thoroughly disreputable one at that — on climate change.
Further evidence of just how disconnected the ANC is from the reality, including from the government, which, as recently as last month, completed an admirable piece of work led by the inestimable Presidential Climate Change Commission that both conceptualises and sets out the strategic pillars for a “just energy transition” — almost certainly the most important piece of policy-making that the government is seized with — yet not one that apparently merited any serious conversation at the national policy conference.
The farce of the policy conference proceeded as it was by the even more pathetic sight of the KwaZulu-Natal provincial conference singing songs of support for former president Jacob Zuma, who single-handedly oversaw the wholesale looting of the country while he was president for nine years, was the inevitable culmination of a long process of decline.
Regardless of what happens in December, when Ramaphosa is still likely to be re-elected for a second term as president of the ANC and, therefore, of the country — despite the failure of his renewal project for the ANC, as inevitable and futile as this failure in organisational leadership is abject — the ANC is now an empty vessel, both policy-wise and politically.
It can neither hold the centre nor lead society. It will no doubt summon one last hurrah in 2024 but it will not be enough. The second transition lies ahead, 30 years after the first. The next election will mark the start of a new era — of greater electoral competition (and instability and uncertainty) — and the end of an old one, of ANC dominance.
Everyone needs to start preparing for this transition. It will be messy. So far, the ANC’s attitude to early signs of electoral decline and defeat — in the metros of Nelson Mandela Bay, Ekurhuleni, Tshwane and Johannesburg in the 2016 and 2021 local government elections — has been relatively measured, driven by denialism rather than any serious digestion of the implications of longer-term loss of power.
Loss of its majority at national level, accompanied by an even more certain loss of power in Gauteng, the economic engine room of the country, will be far more painful and may stretch at least some of the ANC’s leadership’s magnanimity. Those who have been waiting patiently for power and are now on the cusp of attaining it, such as Paul Mashatile, and his backers including DD Mabuza, may find it hard to take.
Much will hinge on the precise numbers. A narrow loss of its majority — that is, 46% to 49% — will mean that an “easy coalition” can be quickly put together, drawing in a couple of the smaller parties with seductive promises of jobs in government and other goodies. Ramaphosa will probably survive and the ANC will remain in power.
A more serious defeat — anything below, say, 45% — unlikely but possible — will likely result in the immediate recall of Ramaphosa. His opponents will seize the opportunity to berate him for being the first leader to lead the ANC to national defeat.
Mashatile, the party’s treasurer general, who is now in pole position to secure the deputy presidency in December, would take over and then face an interesting choice as to coalition partner or partners. Opting for a string of smaller fish will be even messier and unstable. Opting for one of the big fish — the Democratic Alliance or the Economic Freedom Fighters — will involve an even more tricky dilemma.
All of this lies ahead. Unlike the first transition of 1994, which had a long and at times bloody lead-up but ultimately culminated in a clear and decisive transfer of power, the second transition will be messier. There will be no clear immediate winner. Because there is no realistic scenario in which any party other than the ANC is able to secure a majority in 2024.
So, patience and further resilience will be required. The endgame will probably only emerge in 2029. By then, the other transition — an economic one, in which a new economy has to emerge because the old one is simply not fit for future climate-smart, sustainable purposes — should also have gained traction.
Indeed, it is the economic transition, rather than the political one, that offers greater potential for a more stable and prosperous future for South Africa — despite the ANC’s laughable disregard for it and failure to grasp its fundamental importance and vast potential.
But then again, perhaps it’s not so surprising. The ANC’s future lies behind it, as last weekend amply demonstrated.
Richard Calland is an associate professor in public law at the University of Cape Town and a founding partner of political risk consultancy the Paternoster Group.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.
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