Marion Edmunds and Rehana Rossouw
CABINET ministers are likely to come under fire from the African National Congress’s senior cadres this weekend over government failings in meeting its most ambitious election promise – a better life for all.
It is difficult to divine how bitter the discussions at the lekgotla, which began on Thursday, will be. But senior party leaders in Shell House have come to the meeting armed with reports of apathy among the rank and file.
They are also pepped up by criticism that government has sold out on the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) – an audit Shell House commissioned for the lekgotla paints a dismal picture of RDP performance, with most departments judged to have fouled up what was once the central component of the ANC’s manifesto.
The Cabinet and premiers have been promoting growth strategies, wrestling with government structures and extending influence overseas.
Shell House, meanwhile, has been watching the slow decline of party spirit, and the loss of commitment in the larger constellation of civil organisations which once made up the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) – the volunteer workforce the ANC is going to have to mobilise for the 1999 elections.
“The MDM has been run down and is battling to redefine itself. The problem is that a weak MDM is essentially a weak ANC,” said a senior Shell House source.
One of the points to be discussed at the lekgotla is the revival of the MDM, with and through the revamping of the RDP. It is expected that Shell House leaders, Cosatu and South African Communist Party representatives will call on Cabinet ministers and provincial leaders to demonstrate that they are creating jobs, providing electricity and redistributing wealth.
Authors of Shell House’s damning RDP audit blame the Finance Department’s growth strategy for eclipsing the ANC’s RDP goals, and crushing its spirit. The audit is expected to be played as a tactical card, and not necessarily thrown down as a challenge to those in Cabinet. However, senior officials hope to jump on the defensiveness of Cabinet to bolster the cause of the RDP so it can be used to motivate the masses.
A Shell House source said this week: “We want to take seriously the new spaces that open up and encourage the people to assume a lot of responsibility – local government is one such space. We hope to introduce participatory budgeting so that people have input from the townships and the community understands the restraints on resources … We must become active in community policing forums. There was a time when we mobilised the people against crime, but now it’s Pagad, mobilising against the ANC in government …
Another worry to Shell House is the weakness of branches, financially and in terms of membership. Numbers of paid-up members have fallen since 1994. Shell House sources say many who joined in 1994 have failed to renew their membership, either because they had forgotten or because they thought it was a one-off payment.
It is not expected that any province has paid up membership of more than 100 000, with the North-West and the Western Cape climbing to 40 000 each, and Gauteng pegged at about 50 000.
Meanwhile, the Pan Africanist Congress says it is not sold on the idea of a coalition with the ANC and is committed to remaining in opposition to the ruling party until the 1999 elections.
PAC general secretary Michael Muendane, who was part of his organisation’s delegation to a meeting with President Nelson Mandela on Wednesday, said the party was sceptical that it could be offered a senior Cabinet position.
“I don’t think the PAC is in any mood right now to join the Government of National Unity in a junior role, and I don’t think at the end of the day the ANC will agree to give us a senior Cabinet position … We are not focused right now on a seat in the Cabinet, we are going into government into 1999 and we are too busy right now to get bogged down in such practicalities.”
Muendane said the PAC was more concerned with a demand raised in the meeting that PAC members be included in South Africa’s civil service. The PAC wanted its members in the foreign service, the defence force, the intelligence service, the police and the prisons service.
The National Party has once again declared its intent to forge new political alliances, this week declaring 1997 the year in which it would “brake [sic] the ANC’s present domination”. The party vowed to do the same last year.
A NP executive committee bosberaad decided it would seek cooperation with other parties, community leaders and community organisations with the goal of establishing a new political party. “The NP’s objective of providing a stronger alternative to the ANC is based on our conviction that the ANC has abandoned the country’s voters,” said a NP statement.
It said it would approach “all leaders with whom the NP has potential common ground” to restructure the political playing field. The Democratic Party and Inkatha would be first on its list.