**OPINION**
In the previous decade, there have been many voices inside the ranks of the African National Congress (ANC), the place an amazing measure of unhappiness has been expressed relating to the state of the ANC. The matter was raised fairly strongly by the motion’s stalwarts and veterans throughout the interval 2016-2017.
The involved members argued in 2017 that the coverage convention scheduled for 30 June that yr, needed to be transformed right into a consultative convention “to allocate time and space to diagnose the health of the organisation and attempt to come up with solutions and programmes,” based on the diagnostic organisational report that was delivered at the coverage convention by then secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe.
Mantashe instructed the convention that the nationwide govt committee had determined that the first two days of the coverage convention would concentrate on the health of the organisation, to accommodate the proposal of the stalwarts and veterans who needed a dialogue on the state of the organisation.
There was large hostility in the direction of Mantashe’s diagnostic evaluation of the organisation. At that point, totally different factions had been preventing to guard their pursuits vis-à-vis the management slates that had been drawn up resulting in the December 2017 convention.
Those who had been against the diagnostic report had been half of the NDZ17 base that was supporting Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. Their view was that the report on the health of the organisation was meant to assault President Jacob Zuma and, in the circumstances, undermine Nkosazana’s effort to be the subsequent ANC president.
Mantashe had raised the matter of corruption inside the ranks of the ANC. He spoke about state seize and the affect of the Gupta brothers. He mentioned, “It is, indeed, correct to state that the Guptas can do business anytime (and) anywhere with whomsoever. However, their relationships with the families of prominent leaders attract the attention of the people. When there are benefits that accrue to families of the leadership, it is assumed to be corrupt.”
Mantashe raised a quantity of points that spoke to the ANC’s maladies. He mentioned there was a severe decline in the ethics, values and traditions of the motion; that the high quality of the branches of the ANC and the membership typically, was very poor. He added that there was the fast collapse of the organisational self-discipline and that there was a decline in the ideological outlook of the Movement.
He mentioned the ANC was beset by divisions and factions that had turn out to be a seemingly everlasting function of the motion. Consequently, there was a rising belief deficit between the folks and their motion, which was impacted by the notion that the ANC was completely corrupt.
There was no severe engagement with Mantashe’s diagnostic evaluation of the state of the ANC. Any political analyst price their salt can not preserve that the ANC is healthier in the present day than it was when Mantashe did his evaluation.
In his foreword to the Policy Conference 2022 Special Edition, President Cyril Ramaphosa makes the following commentary: “Our Movement equally faces enormous challenges in this period, as witnessed by the decline in support with the 2021 local government elections. This mirrors the declining level of trust and credibility in us as leadership and cadres.”
But, the ANC’s electoral help has been declining since 2009. When President Mbeki was main the ANC in 1999, the ANC received 66.35% of the vote, increased than the 62.65% scored underneath President Mandela in 1994. The ANC’s help in 2009, underneath ANC president Jacob Zuma, was 65.90%, in comparison with the 69.69% throughout the third election, underneath Mbeki. In 2014, the ANC scored 62.15% and 57.50% in 2019.
The stalwarts and veterans of the ANC had been appropriate after they argued in 2017 for changing the coverage convention right into a consultative train, to do a correct evaluation of what is occurring in the ANC and treatment the ills afflicting the motion.
The scenario that Mantashe painted for the delegates in 2017 is worse in the present day, which requires a particular engagement by members of the ANC to organize the floor for a severe dialogue on the query of unity and renewal. When Mantashe spoke about “solutions and programmes”, he was speaking to technique and techniques.
The most cancers that the ANC should take care of is the hostility by some members to the themes of technique and techniques in addition to to principle and beliefs. Some members don’t embrace these issues as a result of they see political discourse as delays to their ascendance to positions of management and entry to sources. When they’re at conferences, they discuss sources – what tenders ought to go the place.
Mantashe put this matter as follows in his diagnostic evaluation: “Although the membership of the ANC is more literate now, the culture of reading policy documents of the Movement is dying, because political and ideological clarity is no longer the deciding factor for election to leadership positions and deployment.”
Leadership and deployment have turn out to be a method to sources. Both these features are purchased by those that need to be leaders. It is a matter of public data that hundreds of rands modified fingers at the 2017 ANC nationwide convention the place leaders had been shopping for help for the positions they needed. Those leaders mobilised big quantities of cash for them to have the ability to purchase help.
The forthcoming ANC coverage convention just isn’t going to vary the circumstances Mantashe pointed to in his diagnostic report. It is not going to even cease corruption. Huge quantities of cash will nonetheless be utilized in the nationwide convention in December to purchase help for management positions – one other sort of corruption, which appears to be acceptable in the ANC nowadays.
It would have been higher to organise, presently, a consultative convention, like the 1969 Morogoro Consultative Conference, the place a deep evaluation was achieved following deep issues in the motion occasioned by an incipient course of of immoral behaviour involving each leaders and cadres in the External Mission of the ANC. Revolutionary morality had flown out of the window.
Real renewal and unity occurred as a consequence of the Morogoro Conference. One of the younger attendants at the convention at the time, was Sindiso Mfenyana, who printed earlier than the coverage convention in 2017, and who attended that convention as a veteran, a e book entitled Walking with Giants.
He writes the following, amongst different issues, relating to the Morogoro convention: “The ensuing discussion and debate at the Morogoro conference provided the basis for the important document Strategy and Tactics of the ANC, (which) introduced a new way of analysing the struggle and charting the way forward.”
The second consultative convention of the ANC was held in 1985, at the small city of Kabwe, in Zambia. That convention did an evaluation of the highway travelled since the Morogoro Conference and, utilizing the choices of the first convention, mapped a brand new programme going ahead. That new programme resulted in the unbanning in 1990, of the ANC along with different revolutionary organisations and the resultant democratic breakthrough in 1994.
The ANC needs to be sensible and convene a consultative convention, the place it could decide up Mantashe’s diagnostic report and talk about it sincerely and with goal, the place a programme of motion could be devised to deal decisively with all the ills which are detrimentally affecting the ANC.
Charles Nqakula is a former minister and nationwide safety adviser to Cyril Ramaphosa, and is an ANC veteran.