When an archbishop and winner of a Nobel Peace Prize threatens to pray for our president and his government as he used to for the apartheid regime, it would be extremely uncharitable not to spare a sympathetic thought for the beleaguered African National Congress and its leader.
The ANC in exile was the moral other of a National Party regime that was responsible for the crimes of apartheid and white minority rule. The ANC government must, in terms of its policies and their impact on the poorest of the poor, be seen to be the antithesis of apartheid. It is very important for the ruling party to have views about its legitimacy and moral authority reinforced by those who, as a result of their contribution to the liberation struggle, are regarded by many in this country and around the world as worthy of beatification and canonisation.
It is for this reason that a lecture delivered by Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the Nelson Mandela Foundation has invited the ire of ANC leaders, who saw it as an attack along the lines of the United Nations Human Development Report released in May this year, which said that policies of our government are ”objectively anti-poor”. Criticism of black economic empowerment and Mbeki’s policy on Zimbabwe, coupled with assertions about the lack of debate and a culture of sycophancy within the ANC, in a speech that honours a saint, represent an assault on the legitimacy of the ANC in the eyes of party loyalists.
What seems to have angered the ANC president most are suggestions that debate is being stifled within the party and that revolutionaries have become unctuous in their political conduct. I believe that the former is not completely true and that the latter is not unique to the ANC. Show me a political party, anywhere in the world, that does not have its fair share of sycophants and I will show you a political leader who hates sycophancy.
As for the argument that Tutu — because he is not an ANC member — cannot express views about lack of debate in the ruling party, I find myself bemused, because I am not certain that one must be a horse to comment about horse racing. But I do not agree with the archbishop when he says there is no debate in the ANC. The problem is less about the lack of internal debate and more about what erodes the quality of such debates. This does not necessarily mean that Mbeki is actively suppressing debate. It is possible that many in the party are so mesmerised by his intellect that they suspend their thinking when it seems he is about to make another profound statement.
Mbeki’s critics have, however, argued that he is over-sensitive to criticism and have used the spats with Tony Trahar, Charlene Smith and Tutu to support this viewpoint. Either Mbeki is a lion or those around him are sheep. Whatever the truth is, the archbishop has every right to be concerned when members of the ANC who are intellectual giants in their own right are conspicuous by their silence.
On the other hand, the possibility exists that levels of consensus within the ruling party have reached unprecedented levels.
There may be other explanations for this state of affairs, including factors such as one’s position in relation to the internal party political centre. Since all members of a party such as the ANC will always have partial access to political realities inside and outside of the party, the level of engagement with critical issues depends on access to information and knowledge. The further members of a political party are from structures of leadership, the less able they are to influence the discourse, because debates tend to be distorted in favour of more powerful forces within the organisation.
The ANC is not immune from this problem. In its case the problem is exacerbated by weak branches and the quality of leadership that is available to members at this level. In many cases members of the ANC have very little access to political education, and this compels branches to deal mainly with administrative issues. This undermines resolutions the ANC has taken in its national forums on issues such as cadre development, and the enhancement of members’ understanding of complex issues such as globalisation and economic policy.
Another factor is the power of the party in our political system in relation to individual party members and voters. The knowledge that the advancement of one’s political career depends on the compilation of party lists prior to an election may distort conceptions of party discipline and undermine internal democracy, if the desire to rise within the ranks of the party breeds a culture of ingratiating subservience to power.
If there is lack of debate within the ANC, I am afraid that this may be true of most, if not all, political parties in this country.
Aubrey Matshiqi is an independent political analyst