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A system in need of reform: The stage is set for a showdown between the ANC’s ‘inzile’ and exile political cultures

Paul Trewhela
By Paul Trewhela
22 Jul 2021
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The ANC’s sub-Soviet political model has passed political authority exclusively to ANC party headquarters as the real government, unaccountable to voters. Not surprisingly, in the post-Soviet era, this passed licence to the ANC political elite after its return to capitalist South Africa for extreme corruption. Who was to stop them?

Inziles or exiles? This is certainly a major theme in the history of South Africa and the ANC of the post-Sharpeville period, which comes to mind when reading Carien du Plessis’ acute investigation, “The aftermath: ANC set to take a broom to its own house when party leaders meet on  Monday” (Daily Maverick, 21 July 2021).

The basic reality is clear: when we talk about “exiles” in relation to the ANC, we are talking primarily of a political culture dominated by the South African Communist Party. It’s important to examine the differences here.

When the ANC was founded in 1912 — as far as I know, the first such organisation in Africa — its founding ethos was Christian, anti-tribalist (in that sense, national) and looked directly to the Westminster and US electoral systems as the model for a future democratic South African Parliament. Basically, the founders of the ANC wanted the current South African parliamentary system (then in its second year) to be extended to black people on the same basis — ie to all black adult males, given that adult female suffrage did not yet exist in the UK, the US or South Africa.

The Communist Party of South Africa was founded by whites in 1921, nine years after the ANC. By 1929 it had its first black secretary-general, Albert Nzula. As explained in an article about Nzula in the SACP journal, The African Communist (No 65), published in London in 1976, this radical change took place 100% under the direction of the Soviet regime, then headed by Stalin, working with Bukharin. As the article explains:

“Nzula’s entry into the Communist Party took place at a time when the slogan of an Independent Native Republic was being fiercely debated in Party circles. The slogan had been adopted after lengthy discussion both in South Africa and overseas, at the 6th congress of the Communist International held in Moscow in 1928, and was later to be formally incorporated in the new programme of the Communist Party of South Africa at its conference held at the Inchcape Hall, Johannesburg, from December 28, 1928, to January 1, 1929. The full slogan read: ‘An independent native South African republic as a stage towards a workers’ and peasants’ republic, with full equal rights for all races, black, coloured and white’.


“This is not the place to set out again the arguments for and against the slogan. Suffice to say the slogan speeded up the decisive shift in Communist Party orientation from the ranks of the white workers and intellectuals to those of the millions of unorganised black workers and peasants, the leading elements of which began to enter its ranks in increasing numbers. Among those who joined the Party in these years were many black intellectuals and militants rebelling against white domination and seeking a political philosophy and an organisation to implement it...” (p 92)


By comparison, the non-racial Liberal Party was only founded in May 1953, adopted a programme for universal adult suffrage as late as mid-1960 following the Sharpeville massacre the previous March, and dissolved itself permanently in mid-1968, under pressure from the apartheid regime.

It is not hard to see why the ANC shifted decisively between 1953 and 1960 from a UK-type model of parliamentary democracy, with MPs elected by voters as individuals under their own names in local constituencies, to a Soviet despotic mentality, with repression of any member regarded as a “dissident” and imprisoned in a Soviet-model gulag at Quatro during the Cold War in Angola.

This was the dominant culture of “exile” — a political culture which the ANC transferred successfully to post-apartheid South Africa through the new electoral law, in which the electorate votes in elections to the National Assembly and provincial councils, and in half of all municipal seats, solely for a political party... and not any individual candidate. No MP or provincial councillor has been dependent on voters over the past 27 years.

Inevitably, this sub-Soviet political model passed political authority exclusively to ANC party headquarters as the real government, unaccountable to voters.

Not surprisingly, in the post-Soviet era, this passed licence to the ANC political elite after its return to capitalist South Africa for extreme corruption. Who was to stop them?

In my view, it is this semi-Soviet system of a government unaccountable to voters which has now exposed itself as a catastrophe for the huge majority of the people in the present crisis.

The reality is that following the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, the ANC went through a huge ideological and philosophical change through its fusion with the SACP in the creation of Umkhonto weSizwe, which largely (but not entirely) excluded its Christian philosophical origin and the Westminster/US political culture of rule of law and accountability to voters. Those seeking electoral reform — whether in the shape of the Slabbert Commission/Electoral Task Team report of 2003 or not — are in fact seeking a return by the ANC to its philosophical and moral foundation.

It remains to be seen whether the ANC and the people of South Africa can now go through a process of fundamental political reform in a return to the ANC’s founding vision of parliamentary democracy on the basis of MPs and provincial councillors dependent on voters for election to office as representatives of the people.

The advocates of reform at present do not have a common platform, which needs intensive work to bring into being. But given South Africa’s powerful history of politics, I don’t see why it should not be possible. The present conditions — set in place by the returning exile leaders — are not in the interest of either the current black middle class or the mass of the poor and unemployed, or of workers. It is only a very small minority who benefit. That should not be difficult to explain to the population at large.

Alliance with the SACP gave the ANC by far the best option for making a military challenge to the apartheid regime, and for gaining the respect of the majority of black society. A fundamental change to representative democracy is now essential.

In the present harsh conflict within the ANC, it’s a great strength of Cyril Ramaphosa in his defence of rule of law that he was never in exile. And unlike Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, he was also never a member of the SACP. DM

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