Thabo Mbeki’s tough message to the African National Congress to switch its focus from internal divisions to building the party and improving service delivery has won him acclaim from party structures for finally providing leadership.
However, a view persists on the left that the ANC president is trying to heap blame on Jacob Zuma for the party’s internal woes, evading his own responsibility.
ANC structures and the provinces are distributing Mbeki’s seminal political overview to branches as part of the Mvuselelo Programme, aimed at reviving the ANC’s branch structures by reintroducing policy and ideological debate through monthly ”political schools”. A key aim is to break down the obsession with the succession battle between camps aligned with Mbeki and Zuma.
In the overview, Mbeki chided the party for becoming consumed with the Zuma saga to the detriment of the party’s development mandate contained in the 2004 and 2006 elections manifestos.
”If I were to ask ANC regions and branches about the programme of their municipalities to eradicate the bucket system and ensure access to clean water, I wonder how many would be able to give a clear answer as to what the plans are in this regard, what time-frames have been set for the development of their areas, what are the likely problems that may be encountered, and what would be the interventions in the event of such difficult challenges occurring,” Mbeki said.
Leaders across branch and provincial structures interviewed this week generally expressed relief that Mbeki was at last ”leading from the front”. The Young Communist League was one of a handful to express reservations.
”The president has given us orders for existence as ANC cadres,” said, ANC Western Cape chairperson James Ngculu. He added that some members thought ”we’re there to quarrel”.
Supra Mahumapelo, North West secretary, said the provincial executive committee had debated Mbeki’s NEC political overview last Friday and ”resolved to intensify the president’s call”.
A member of the KwaZulu-Natal executive committee said Mbeki’s statement was long overdue and ”it is absolutely true that this thing has put us in an unprecedented crisis.
”There have been concerns that the timing of the statement may create further divisions, but I don’t think so — especially considering its frankness. I’m optimistic that the gap created by the fall-out will be bridged.”
Another NEC member close to Zuma said the crisis had indeed meant that branches had abandoned their programmes, and that their discussions were dominated by the succession.
Charlotte Lobe, the ANC Women’s League spokesperson, said ”the president’s intervention is important in that it thrashes out the exact tasks of the branches … He has placed Luthuli House at the centre of work happening in government and the ANC.”
One region in KwaZulu Natal revealed that it had used Mbeki’s political report as part of an induction for newly elected regional leadership.
But the Young Communist League’s Buti Manamela struck a discordant note: ”The intervention further alienates alliance partners because of the disparaging tone in which it refers to the South African Communist Party discussion documents … [Mbeki] is also being one sided by trying to clear himself of blame for problems affecting the ANC. He is trying to implicate Jacob Zuma in all problems, including lack of service delivery.”
ANC spokesperson Steyn Speed described Mbeki’s political overview as ”a line of march” to the party’s membership. ”The current challenges facing the movement have added a great burden on the branches, because for the first time in the ANC’s history we have a deputy president facing these charges,” said head of the Presidency in the ANC, Smuts Ngonyama. ”That on its own is adding a lot of pressure … Most of the clarity on this matter will come from the court processes — in that respect the movement is in a state of uncertainty.”
As part of Mbeki’s call for ”ideological, political and organisational … refocus” the ANC has revived one of its most contentious discussion documents, rejected out of hand at the party’s national general council (NGC) last year.
The Organisational Design of the ANC: A Case for Internal Renewal forms part of discussions between all the provincial secretaries, facilitated by the secretary general, which aim to redesign the party to fulfil its transformation mandate.
The discussion document made numerous proposals for a more streamlined, technocratic ANC, with unruly regions and branches brought firmly under the control of Luthuli House. It ran into stiff resistance at the NGC.
Get rich, get rich, get rich
- ”With reference to this lecture, the central point made by [economic historian] Karl Polanyi is that the capitalist market destroys relations of ‘kinship, neighbourhood, profession and creed,’ replacing these with the pursuit of personal wealth by citizens who as he says, have become atomistic and individualistic. Thus every day and during every hour of our time beyond sleep, the demons embedded in our society, that stalk us at every minute seem always to beckon each one of us towards a realisable dream and nightmare. With every passing second, they advise, with rhythmic and hypnotic regularity -‒ get rich! get rich! get rich!”
- ”It is perfectly obvious that many in our society, having absorbed the value system of the capitalist market, have come to the conclusion that, for them personal success and fulfilment means personal enrichment at all costs and the most theatrical and striking public display of that wealth.”
- ”We must place at the centre of our daily activities the pursuit of the goals of social cohesion and human solidarity. We must therefore strive to integrate into the national consciousness the value system contained in the world outlook described as Ubuntu.”
- ”Indeed, as we South Africans, grapple with our own challenges, billions of the poor and the marginalised across the globe see the world ever evolving into a more sinister, cold and bitter place: this is the world that is gradually defined by increasing racism, xenophobia, ethnic animosity, religious conflicts, and the scourge of terrorism.”
Moves to clamp down on ANC Inc
The ANC’s NEC is developing a code of conduct to regulate the relationship between the ruling party, government and business, as political patronage, influence-peddling and private political party funding threaten to debase the party, writes Vicki Robinson.
This is part of a clampdown on greed and acquisitiveness. At the weekend, Mbeki delivered a hard-hitting speech at the fourth Nelson Mandela Memorial Lecture at Wits University where he warned that the ”deification of personal wealth” was becoming ”the distinguishing feature of the new citizen of the new South Africa”.
It is understood that at the NEC meeting held in Ekurhuleni two weeks ago, a high-level task team consisting of Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, businessman and NEC member Saki Macozoma, ANC Deputy Secretary General Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele, and Director General in the Presidency Frank Chikane, presented a paper on the interface between the ANC, government and business — a relationship which has encouraged cronyism.
The code of conduct, which is being developed ahead of the party’s policy conference in June next year, would ultimately be written in to the ANC’s constitution, an NEC member said.
The NEC has become a branch of ANC Inc. Several members have acquired significant business interests and politicians are increasingly becoming deal-makers.
The NEC paper suggested that while South Africa’s economic transition through black economic empowerment was fundamental to democracy, it had unintentionally created a capitalist class fostered by close connections with the state and ANC.
The presentation differentiated between two groups within this class: party or government officials who have entered business but remain in their official positions; and members of the emergent black elite who have left government for business, but who naturally retain their political connections.
The paper follows a resolution adopted at the party’s national general council in July last year, which said: ”The NEC should develop ÂÂprotocols to regulate the conduct of ANC members in respect of their participation in business.”
The national general council also decided that such a protocol should include ”a cooling off period and a review by an appropriate government agency in order to eliminate the basis of suspicion and insinuation” when public officials leave office and enter business in the same line of work.
The NEC presentation also addressed the issue of the ”revolving door syndrome”, currently unlegislated in South Africa.
Independent Newspapers reported last month that new cooling-off restrictions were contained in an unpublished Bill to amend the Public Service Act.
One of the better-known examples of government officials who entered businesses from which they benefited while in the public service is former director general in the Communications Department Andile Ngcaba.
Ngcaba benefited from a deal by the Public Investment Corporation to transfer a portion of its 10,1% stake in Telkom to empowerment groups, including Ngcaba’s Elephant Consortium. While at the communications department, Ngcaba was the chief architect of Telkom’s privatisation -‒ through the Elephant Consortium he accrued massive wealth as a result of the policies he designed.
In the ANC, Smuts Ngonyama, head of the presidency, holds part of a R1,4-billion stake in Telkom through the Public Investment Corporation.
The M&G understands that the presentation to the NEC was two-pronged. Firstly, it focused on the general degradation of the party’s value system that the culture of personal enrichment, an unintended consequence of BEE, is causing. Mbeki elaborated on this theme in his speech at Wits.
The second and more substantial part focused on the development of a code of conduct to regulate the ”corporate capture” of the ANC by business, said an NEC member.
While the code is still in its infancy, it would include a ”register of interests” for ANC officials to declare their business interests. This would mirror the parliamentary and Cabinet register of member’s interests.
An NEC member described the response to the discussion on a code of conduct as a relief. ”This has been a no-no topic for so long. Cadres in business have been described as sell-outs while there is an acknowledgement that they’re allowed to be. This discussion has brought that all into the open,” the NEC member said.
The NEC paper included a focus on private political party funding — entirely unregulated terrain.