ANC: Torn between two roles
Does it makes sense for a party in power to continue to use the language of liberation, asks Ben Turok
Many people find it anomalous that the African National Congress persists in calling itself a liberation movement when it is clearly a party in government.
Some ANC leaders say it is both a liberation movement and a party in power. The task of a liberation movement is to fight for the liberation of a people; the task of a party is to fight for a place in a given political system. So does it make sense for a party in power to continue to use the language of liberation?
Some classical social scientists held that political parties generally represent classes. The ANC clearly does not represent any single social class; it represents the aspirations of a cluster of national groups that naturally include a range of class interests. At times the ANC talks about the leading role of the working class, but this does not make it a working class party. Indeed, in practice, the ANC is much more like a broad movement representing a combination of social categories, racial and class. The essential element is that these should have suffered institutional disadvantage because of the apartheid system. So the term liberation movement seems justified.
It also seems to reflect the notion strongly held in the movement that South Africa is characterised by the concept of “internal colonialism”, where the ruling colonial power is located within rather than without the country. But does this concept continue to hold once the previous subjects hold political power? Are the same kind of legal/institutional mechanisms that sustain colonial rule still in existence? If so, what does that say about the massive changes to Parliament, the legal system, the public service and elsewhere brought in by the ANC government? How important are they in the totality of social relations that make up a social system?
Some years ago a Swedish professor, Goran Therborn, wrote a book called What Does a Ruling Class Do When it Rules? Therborn forced political theorists to think through just how a social system is sustained. His work showed that a ruling class exercises power through a variety of mechanisms, including state power. But it will also seek to entrench some degree of social coherence.
A true ruling class will have at its disposal many mechanisms to do so. These include ownership of the media, close links with the monarchy and aristocracy, domination of economic power and the institutions of business, a certain cultural hegemony in educational institutions, especially universities, strong influence in the military sphere through long-standing officer class traditions and the usually conservative traditions of the church. This powerful combination of factors ensures that the interests of the ruling class are well protected and that social cohesion functions to maintain existing traditions that favour the ruling class.
The ANC, not representing a given ruling class, has few of these advantages. True, it is taking steps to provide some presence in several of the above institutions, but this is sometimes tokenist and the new incumbents find it very difficult to swim against the tide of tradition, as for instance in the army and police.
Even in the public service new affirmative action appointees or deliberate political appointees find themselves in a foreign environment where the values are alien to ANC traditions and where the culture of liberation is quite unknown. And so the government talks about the need for transformation without examining properly the dynamics of its own institutions as agents of that transformation.
Most importantly the ANC in government seeks to win the hearts and minds of South Africans, but is lacking the supporting institutions normally available to a class in power. It was this sense of disempowerment that led some ANC leaders to complain that “we are in office but not in power”.
The ANC has a huge majority in Parliament but can it rule through Parliament? Yes, the ANC does appoint the executive and is the main driver of legislation. Does this create an illusory sense of power?
To some extent this seems to be the case. Majoritarianism is not enforced so easily in a multi-party system. In other former colonial countries such as Tanzania and Zambia the liberation movements set up one-party systems and the lines of command were clear. In South Africa the multi-party system provides for the previously dominant classes to be represented in Parliament and the political system generally. The Democratic Alliance seems to see itself as the representative of the former ruling class/es.
In the rest of Africa, one-party systems were adopted to prevent divisiveness based on tribalism from infecting politics and to encourage nation-building as the primary objective. Our own “reconciliation” campaign was an echo of this idea. However, many believe that the interests of the previously disadvantaged differ too sharply from the interests of the previously advantaged for this to happen speedily.
But even in Tanzania and Zambia the one-party system has been abandoned in favour of multi-party politics and a conventional parliamentary system. Even in the former Soviet bloc a parliamentary system is now the rule and is seen as the necessary antidote to the authoritarianism that ultimately crippled those systems.
In South Africa, despite the overwhelming electoral strength of the ANC, there is no prospect of a one-party system. Indeed the ANC opted for proportional representation to ensure that minorities were adequately represented in Parliament. Much as some in the ANC would like to see a greater assertiveness by the party in order to speed up transformation, the way the institutions of state and Parliament have emerged means that the due process of parliamentary democracy have to be observed. It seems that we are all parliamentary democrats now, even as the slow pace of transforming our own colonial legacy weighs heavily upon us.
So how does the ANC in government gain the hegemony it needs to consolidate itself as a party in power? The answer clearly lies in the degree to which it can win hearts and minds through delivering those benefits it set out to deliver when it became the government. The financial resources to do so are now available. The amount of money received by government in taxes increases year by year. Spending has been held down in the pursuit of fiscal rectitude. The dogs can now be unleashed, albeit responsibly. The needs are very great and the public service must be pressured to be far more proactive.
At the political level, there seems to be sufficient realisation throughout the country, and indeed among all social classes, that the ANC remains the one and only custodian of peaceful progress in the country for the foreseeable future. The “social coherence” that Therborn found in the objectives of ruling classes elsewhere can only be achieved by positive achievements in good governance by the ANC. This must now be internalised by the ANC itself and accepted by others outside it.
Ben Turok is an African National Congress MP