Divisions in the African National Congress are being galvanised by a crisis of self-definition and have created a vacuum in the party — a vacuum that the South African Communist Party has moved to fill by suggesting that unless the SACP decisively intervenes, the needs of the poor will never be met.
Discussion documents circulating within the tripartite alliance, strategic speeches and presentations by alliance leaders, and concerns expressed by some ANC seniors this week have culminated into a heated debate that the divisions impairing the ruling party are almost entirely the result of an identity crisis facing the ANC.
Blade Nzimande, SACP secretary general, has led a public onslaught on the ANC’s policy direction over the past two weeks in an approach that has become bolder every time. Projecting the SACP as a voice of conscience that seeks to return the ruling party to its historic role as pro-poor and pro-working class, Nzimande has indirectly projected ANC president Thabo Mbeki as the Judas Iscariot who sold out the soul of the party to big capital. Nzimande’s gospel has found resonance in discontented constituencies and structures of the ANC.
It was evident this week when National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) president Senzeni Zokwana said the current ANC was no longer the party of Oliver Tambo and urged NUM members to help the SACP save the ANC from itself.
Two ANC veteran leaders said this week that since 1994, the party had failed to facilitate a comprehensive internal debate about its political identity — as it did during the apartheid years — as a party in government, which had resulted in its current “state of paralysis”.
The lack of political debate had led to centralisation of the ANC, “replicating the state presidential centre within the ANC and reducing the secretary general’s office and organising work to administrative tasks, while politics is housed in a parallel ANC dominated by the president”.
The party had as a result been unable to defend increasing accusations from its tripartite alliance partners, and from within its own ranks that it had failed its core constituency — the working class.
A hard-hitting discussion document released by the SACP last week devoted half its space to a debate about whether the “mode of functioning of the alliance, inherited from the earlier period [prior to 1990], is still relevant for the current period”.
The document said: “Unless the ANC is a mass-based democratic and self-styled disciplined force of the left and begins to assert a real revolutionary authority and discipline over its legislature caucuses, for instance, a petty bourgeoisie cadre focused almost entirely on commercial racketeering will swallow the organisation.”
On Monday, Nzimande made a comprehensive presentation to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) central executive committee meeting, advancing the arguments in the discussion document, including a debate on whether the SACP should contest the 2009 general election independently.
On Wednesday afternoon, Nzimande addressed the NUM elective congress where he again used the discussion document as a rallying point — a clear indication that the SACP is moving to fill an ideological vacuum left by the current leadership crisis facing the ANC, which has resulted in the ruling party becoming “organically remote from a popular support base”.
Last Sunday, Nzimande announced that the membership of the SACP had doubled from 20Â 000 to 40Â 000 since 2002 — a statistical indicator that the communist party was beginning to espouse for many the “workerist” ideals the ANC had appeared to eschew as a governing party. The ANC has 440Â 000 paid-up members.
An ANC leader who spoke on condition of anonymity said an example of the distance between the ANC leadership and its membership base was the fact that the national executive committee (NEC) was composed almost entirely of state leaders, including ministers, premiers and business people. This had had the additional effect of extinguishing vigorous debate within the party’s highest decision-making body as “each member seeks to protect his or her interests”.
Former president Nelson Mandela suggested during his tenure that state leaders should never dominate the NEC in order to maintain non-aligned debate within the party structures.
A discussion paper circulating within the ANC currently and due to be published in the next Umrabulo edition proposes a more representative NEC.
Among others, it proposes that the ANC should include a fair representation of young people. The document also proposes that four additional positions be set aside for Cosatu, even if some trade union leaders may have been directly elected.
The document suggests that the NEC should be increased from the current upper limit of 90 to 120 members. There should also be provision for 10 co-opted members to allow for regional, demographic, class, government deployment and other balances. The document expressed concern about the lack of balanced racial demographics in leadership structures, saying that the national working committee, for example, is made up only of Africans.
It is understood that a large component of the terms of reference for the task team appointed by the ANC to investigate the origin of the “hoax” e-mails that implicated senior party members in a plot to undermine party deputy president Jacob Zuma will be to politically investigate the root of the divisions racking the party and may include recommendations, such as reconstituting the NEC.
Mbeki’s comments last week for a broader South African public to be involved in choosing its next leader have been read by his critics as capitalising on what he feels is popular support for himself residing outside the ANC.
A recent Markinor survey found 59% of South Africans felt Mbeki had handled the Zuma matter very well. The same survey found that 64% of the respondents were against Zuma becoming president.
His critics said it was amazing that Mbeki, who was elected through ANC structures, was now advocating what amounted to presidential elections.
The ANC has refused to respond publicly to the SACP, saying it would do so within alliance structures.