Analysis
Tom Lodge
At last year’s African National Congress council meeting, secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe said “the principles of democratic centralism continue to guide our structures”. Strictly speaking there is little in democratic centralism that liberals should find objectionable.
The concept was used by the Soviet Communist Party to describe the organisation of its internal life. Its 1961 constitution elaborated the concept. All party executive bodies were to be elected, from bottom to top. Party bodies were to be accountable at regular intervals to the rank and file and to higher bodies they were to report on their activities and encourage critical evaluation.
The party was to maintain strict discipline, reflecting the views of the majority. And, between elections, decisions of higher bodies were binding on lower bodies.
Nothing in these principles is especially authoritarian. Most political parties with democratic pretensions make comparable internal arrangements. Soviet democratic centralism, though, is associated with other features of the Communist Party’s history not intrinsic to the concept. And, when “democratic centralism” is evoked, these additional characteristics are often implied. They include the right of leadership to terminate criticism “in the heat of battle” (invoked by Lenin in 1919); the 1924 ban on “fractionalism”; a prohibition on any organised caucus in the party; the regulation of policy discussion through representatives from a superior party organ; and elections by show of hands.
There is no reference to democratic centralism in the ANC’s constitution. New ANC members, though, promise to combat “any tendency towards disruption or factionalism”. This makes it difficult to mobilise opposition to policies adopted by leadership before a conference.
Conferences are now to be held every five years a long period to exempt a leadership from evaluation or policy review. On policy, ANC conferences tend to adopt pre-drafted resolutions.
Individuals try to influence policy through “discussion papers”, which suggests a semblance of internal debate. But circulation of these papers needs leadership sanction.
In contrast to Soviet practice, ANC leadership elections are by secret ballot and can be vigorously contested. In the 1990s, though, leadership tried to limit competition for senior office.
Even so, Motlanthe’s vocabulary of Bolshevik bureaucracy should be seen as romantic aspiration, not an accurate description of inner ANC life. The national executive council’s dissolution of three provincial executives shows how remote the ANC’s ideal of a disciplined vanguard is. And, unlike the Soviet Union, if people don’t like the ANC they can leave and vote for its rivals. Democratic centralism in a constitutional democracy is very different from Stalinist absolutism in a one-party state.