The ANC conference hammered home to delegates that power comes hand-in-hand with responsibility, writes Gaye Davis
ANC DELEGATES may have left the organisation’s 49th national conference more united and motivated than ever before — but the coming months will prove no easy walk.
In a sense, the ANC has bought itself some time: grassroots delegates now have a better understanding of the complexities facing the ANC’s government representatives and also have a range of tasks to carry out in terms of re-building the organisation and locking into grassroots campaigns around local government, land issues and the implementation of the reconstruction and development programme.
The five-day gathering was a time of celebration, as delegates revelled in their election victory, and of sobering up to the responsibility of governing. President Nelson Mandela set the tone in his opening address to the 3 000 delegates — many of them young cadres.
“In as much as we have succeeded in mobilising the people for the victory we have scored, we have today the responsibility to mobilise them to become active participants in improving their quality of life; in defending and advancing our newly won democracy. We have to inculcate among all our people the culture of taking responsibility for the task of reconstruction and development. Neither the government nor the ANC alone can realise these plans.”
The ANC was confronted with scrutinising itself: not only as an organisation with its structures impoverished both financially and in terms of cadres “lost” to government, but also as the dominant partner in a government of national unity, with all the constraints that entails.
“We managed to get into government but it almost cost us our organisation,” said a Northern Cape delegate at the start of the conference. At its end, he was more sanguine: “We understand better now how difficult it is to change things in government. And we now have tasks to carry out when we return home. Before, all was darkness; now there is light.”
But there were also those who criticised the way the conference was structured, saying that, effectively, elected representatives came with policy proposals to have them rubber-stamped by delegates who found themselves out of their depth. The way the conference was structured — with delegates split into 11 commissions, each addressing key issues — also contributed to limiting input from the grassroots, critics said.
Criticisms aside, the conference started a process designed to close the gap between process and delivery, between the ANC-in-government and those outside, increasing links between far-flung communities, the legislature and the executive.
And the spectacle of delegates breakfasting under the steely gaze of apartheid’s architect in the Free State University’s Verwoerd hostel brought home Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s strategic message: that being in government without transforming the power it conferred, or transferring it to the people, meant little.
Yet, confronted with Cyril Ramaphosa’s bleak secretary general’s report depicting an organisation virtually devoid of funds, its structures weakened and embattled by political jockeying and border disputes, delegates’ exuberance was barely dampened. As Mandela pointed out in his closing address, none of the mud-slinging over lack of delivery materialised; delegates showing instead “an unprecedented display of unity”.
The question now is how well delegates will be able to communicate their new-found direction to those at home; how well they will be able to translate it into the action required to carry out the programme of action defined by conference.
Immediate tasks for delegates include:
* Launching an education campaign by the first week of January to ensure pupils’ speedy registration at schools and drawing communities into governance bodies “at all levels”.
* Preparing for a national strategy workshop in February on local government elections and setting up local councils in rural areas.
* Tackling the IFP’s power-base among traditional leaders.
* Setting up RDP groups at local government level to monitor and push for implementation.
* Establishing land and agriculture committees ahead of a planned national summit.
Elected representatives will return to parliament and provincial legislatures with task lists for legislative change and new initiatives. Proposals include democratising organs of the state: changing the function of the Public Service Commission so that Minister Zola Skeyiwa becomes the effective political and administrative head; taking on the public service unions; restructuring the courts and setting up an independent prosecuting authority; privatising state assets to finance the RDP; re-writing the constitution; re-shaping foreign policy — the list goes on …
Mandela warned of the “danger that the organisation could turn into a conveyor-belt of government decisions … or a force steeped in resistance mode”. It is a fine line to tread; the first steps have only just been taken.