The African National Congress’s national general council (NGC) opened with a show of unity on Thursday, but senior leaders renewed the criticism of patronage and factionalism within the party that have dominated communication from Luthuli House in recent weeks.
As President Thabo Mbeki chatted to Jacob Zuma, the man he recently fired as deputy president, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) leaders embraced Minister of Public Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi after a week of public clashes over Cosatu’s unemployment strike.
But secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe was not in conciliatory mood. He told the 3Â 000 party members at the meeting that the “single-minded pursuit of control over public resources and ascendancy to authority,” by ANC cadres is threatening to paralyse the party.
This admonition formed the heart of an uncompromising Organisational Report reviewing the state of the ANC.
Only 50% of the party’s wards meet basic standards such as having held an annual general meeting in the past 15 months, he said. “In many cases, the reasons for the … lack of coherent and consistent branch organisation are not rooted in ideological differences. Rather, these problems rest primarily on the preoccupation on the part of public representatives with securing access to and control over public resources.”
Motlanthe added that the recent municipal service delivery protests are a direct consequence of growing patronage in the party and the “oft repeated perception that the ANC only comes at election time”.
The array of concerned residents’ groups that have mushroomed across the country have unashamedly been formed by members of the ANC who are being used as “voting fodder” by branch leaders, said Motlanthe.
“In this context, we need to pose the question: Is it correct for public representatives to have business interests, especially where these interests do not predate their assumption of public office?”
Motlanthe also addressed controversy over the perceived revolving door between influential civil service posts and the private sector. He suggested there should be an automatic review “by a dedicated government agency” to eliminate any conflict of interest.
“How can we ensure that those exiting from public service, either as professionals or public representatives, are prevented from using government resources to invest in their personal fortunes?” he asked.
The question echoes conflict of interests raised by, among others, Cosatu when former director general of the Department of Communications Andile Ngcaba left public office to head an economic empowerment consortium that claimed a 10,1% stake in Telkom.
Motlanthe also took up increasing tension over the disjunction between party structures and the government the ANC controls — notably the emergence of “two centres of power” in some provinces. This after the party’s decision to de-link the appointment of premiers from the election of the provincial chairperson of the ANC.
This, combined with low levels of management capacity at provincial and local level in the party and the state, has resulted in “the relationship of trust between the provincial ANC structures and the provincial executive council [breaking] down and surfacing of ‘parallelism’ between the ANC and government structures,” said Motlanthe.
In the Eastern Cape, he said, “Divisions following provincial conferences led to perceptions that the ‘grouping’ that had lost the leadership contest ‘was settling organisational scores’ through deployment to structures of government.”
He also laid into Free State structures for allowing political divisions to displace service delivery as a priority, and said the only explanation for the divisions on display at the Western Cape provincial conference was a struggle over access to state tenders.
“It is notable that when the ANC was in opposition in the province, we were united into a cohesive force. Now that the ANC has access to and control of public resources, the demon of factionalism has quickly reared its ugly head.
“The central challenge facing the ANC is to address the problems that arise from our cadres susceptibility to moral decay occasioned by the struggle for the control of and access to resources. All the paralysis in our programmes … are in one way or another a consequence of this cancer in our midst,” he said.
It was impossible to avoid signs of the party’s divisions, but they were carefully managed.
The conference, held at the University of Pretoria, started an hour late with Mbeki and Zuma entering together, avoiding differing receptions from their supporters.
Delegates warmed up while waiting by singing freedom songs, with some of Zuma’s KwaZulu-Natal supporters dressed in their “Innocent until proven guilty” T-shirts.
Seated next to Motlanthe and treasurer Mendi Msimang, Mbeki and Zuma appeared friendly as they conversed and pointed at delegates.
Mbeki said the NGC had to answer questions about how the branches and other structures of the ANC could help the accomplishment of the national democratic revolution and assess progress it had made promoting its principles, eradicating poverty and improving social cohesion.
He reminded delegates Walter Sisulu, Dullah Omar, Beyers Naude, Ray Simons and Raymond Mhlaba, who he said “never asked for any material reward for the things they did over many decades to help bring about our emancipation”.