The ANC’s race to the bottom as its leadership abandons all semblance of revolutionary ethics

The ANC took an important resolution to renew itself at its 2017 National Conference. However, the ANC renewal remains a failed project when you read the open letters by two ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) members, Ronald Lamola and Lindiwe Sisulu.

How do two comrades who serve in the same structure engage each other publicly in the year of renewal and unity as was announced in the January 8 statement a few weeks ago? The ANC NEC members are the ones who are dividing the organisation and making sure that their organisation is not renewed. ANC NEC members over the years have been very disruptive and the situation continues to get worse. It is clear that most of the ANC NEC members, if not all, sing for their plates.

Being an ANC NEC member these days is not about serving people, but more about accumulating wealth for personal interests. The wellbeing of the staff of ANC headquarters shows how it is not a priority for the ANC NEC; you cannot say ANC is a voluntary organisation while you have a source of income and the people who make sure that the organisation is able to function are not getting their salaries. What kind of leadership is that, a leadership that does not care for its membership and staff?

The longest-serving president of the ANC, OR Tambo, said: “we are not fighting against the people, we are fighting a system.” Over the years some leaders of the ANC have been fighting against the people as they have become part of the system.

Service delivery challenges are a case study as is the lifestyle that some of the leaders live since they are now part of the system. They don’t care about the conditions under which the majority of people live, all they care about is being in leadership and enjoying the benefits that come with being a leader of the ANC. Which in the main is having access to resources in the private and public sectors.

Furthermore, this has led to a lot of political killings which continue to happen in the ANC. The ANC NEC over the years has failed to deal with the issue of political killings in the party and these killings remain at the centre of some of the challenges that the ANC fails to resolve.

How is it that a party that is 110 years old cannot find lasting political solutions to its political challenges? This shows the calibre of people who are leading at the helm of the organisation. Some have argued within the party that it was a mistake to elect secretary-generals from the trade unions and that this led to a weak organisation.

The challenges of the ANC did not start when Jacob Zuma became a problem. Some have further argued that Zuma was not actually the problem but those who led with him over the years. We must also not forget that former president Kgalema Motlanthe decided to be on Zuma’s slate in 2007 and, in the 2012 conference, he wanted out of the leadership with Zuma by contesting for ANC president.

This gave President Cyril Ramaphosa an opportunity to emerge as the deputy president at the Mangaung Conference. The question arises, why did Motlanthe work with Zuma politically building up to the 2007 national conference?

One of the biggest problems that the party faces is that most ANC leaders point fingers at each other, and no one ever takes responsibility for their actions. Everyone worked with Zuma and suddenly Zuma starts to be a problem building up to 2017 — as if all along he was not. This proves that there are no principles when people want to lead at all costs, and that they will do everything and anything to emerge politically against another faction that is not supporting their name. This is akin to a race to the bottom.

Over the years the ANC has talked about renewal — you can go back to the organisational report that was presented by then secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe, Lead us not into Temptation: the Challenge of Renewing our Revolutionary Ethics, at the National General Council in 2005. I don’t even think the current ANC NEC leadership understands what is meant when we talk about revolutionary ethics. 

One of the ANC discussion documents for the 2010 National General Council was Leadership Renewal, Discipline and Organisational Culture. The ANC has good policies, but the problem is in the leadership that is just there to serve their own interests. Every five years the ANC talks about using the document called Through the Eye of the Needle when it elects its leaders. Looking at the calibre of the leadership of the ANC from branch level to national, you can see that these people just select each other and none of these documents are used.

In an interview with British journalist Victoria Brittain, Lúcio Lara of Angola’s MPLA states that “in the Angolan struggle perhaps we didn’t have philosophers or sociologists, but we had the words of (Agostinho) Neto: ‘the most important thing is to solve people’s problems’.”

Lara goes on to state that “once in the Council of Ministers I heard someone say that we should stop using this phrase. I thought maybe he was right, because no one spoke out against him. In my opinion, this was when the party began to collapse. The leaders felt they all had the right to be rich. That was the beginning of the destruction of our life. Our people are suffering and no one cares. If you talk to our people, they’re all suffering. No one is smiling. But there’s no preoccupation with this from the leadership.”

The question arises for the ANC whether it understands that “the most important thing is to solve people’s problems” or whether the ANC itself and especially its current leadership has become the people’s problem? DM