The ANC is holding itself to account, but only on paper, writes Mpumelelo Mkhabela.
The phrase “social distance” was part of South Africa’s political lexicon long before the deadly Covid-19 came into the picture.
As a political concept, its post-apartheid meaning is contained in the ANC’s 1997 Strategy and Tactics document. This is the verbose SWOT analysis the party adopts at its elective conferences every five years.
The document cautioned against the threats posed by “social distance”, which is the extent to which ANC elites enjoy trappings of political power at the expense of serving the people. Put simply, it is political selfishness – the most undesirable type of social distance.
“It should not be ruled out that this could render elements in the [ANC to be] progressively lethargic to the conditions of the poor,” the document warned. “This is not a distant and theoretical possibility, but a danger always lurking as we pursue fundamental change from the vantage point of political office.”
Preventing this danger from occurring was not going to be a small appendage to the tasks of “the National Democratic Revolution”. The NDR is the ANC’s anti-apartheid struggle concept for the achievement of non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society.
The document advocated for an “all-round vigilance” that the ANC ought “to continue to exercise”. To back up the warning to itself, the ANC, through the document, said there was evidence of leadership in former colonies that had lost touch with their core constituencies.
If this were to happen in South Africa, the document said, it had a potential to perpetuate apartheid-era racial, gender and class inequalities.
Politically selfish and corrupt
These apartheid inequalities would be topped up with “a coterie of mainly black men co-opted into the white courtyard of privilege”. This would be a potential source of instability and insecurity for all of society, “deriving from the same social grievances that underpinned the anti-apartheid struggle”.
The contributors of this part of the document could not have been more prescient. The ANC, has in many respects, become exactly what the drafters clearly warned against: Politically selfish and corrupt.
The consequences are exactly as the ANC “itself” had predicted: Inequalities have not been addressed and a coterie of a politically connected blacks have joined the “white courtyard of privilege”.
Covid-19 has graphically exposed this reality and more, revealing what statisticians told us many a times about entrenched inequalities.
The drafters of sections of the 1997 document were also correct when they predicted that, if the ANC’s behaviour leads to the continuation of apartheid inequalities, it would trigger anti-apartheid type of grievances even under democratic rule.
The question is whether the anti-apartheid grievances should be blamed at the abhorrent racial system that was abolished in 1994 or on the ANC, whose behaviour perpetuated this. The answer is that, in the 1997 document, or at least in terms the aspects quoted here, the ANC created a framework for it to be held accountable for failure to fix apartheid-era legacies.
This failure is as a result of social distance – the very danger the ANC warned against.
Yet, current rhetoric suggests that the ANC wants South Africans to believe that it is not responsible for the continuation of inequalities, including the co-option of a coterie of the politically connected blacks into the “white courtyard of privilege”.
But the drafters of the 1997 document missed the possibility that even the dominant players in the “white courtyard of privilege” – the anchors of the productive sector of the economy – would feel threatened by the ANC’s failures. The drafters did not anticipate that international friends of the ANC would also be dismayed by the social distance that manifests in the rise of the currency of corruption.
But the 1997 Strategy and Tactics document was not the only one through which the ANC issued warnings to itself.
In 2001, the party published “Through the Eye of the Needle”. In it, the party strongly advocated for leaders who would lead by example.
These leaders would be above reproach in their “political and social conduct” – “through force of example, [a leader] should act as a role model to ANC members and non-members alike”. This includes not only being free of corrupt practices, but also actively fighting corruption.
Note that there is no reference to whether someone should be found guilty by a court of law first for the ANC to arrive at a conclusion on whether someone had led by example or not. The leadership by example is a political and moral duty that the ANC imposed on itself.
ANC’s failure to act
But, in an interview with Newzroom Afrika, Ace Magashule, the ANC’s secretary-general and custodian of ANC policies, defended the ANC’s failure to act against those who clearly failed to lead by example.
Strangely, he said that insisting the ANC should act against those who failed to lead by example, such as VBS-linked Florence Radzilani and Danny Msiza, would finish off the ANC.
Was he implying that the ANC’s survival is dependent on the perpetuation of corruption and the negation of everything else it has over the years claimed it stood for in its policy documents?
Official ANC documents don’t support the views expressed by Magashule and the decision of the party’s national executive committee to reinstate tainted individuals.
Granted, some in the party leadership probably committed worse offences. So, it boils down to not whether someone’s “political and social conduct” is justified or not, but not on the relatively of wrong. There are, therefore, no standards to speak of.
The VBS scandal stands as the ANC’s grotesque application of “social distance”.
Another Strategy and Tactics document, adopted in 2007, stated that whatever positions they occupied in society, ANC members and leaders should become the most advanced in society, politically and technically. The document acknowledged that the ANC’s character was reflected by its membership and leadership.
We should add supporters because they are the ones who fail to punish the party when it doesn’t keep promises to itself and to society.
The document stated that the ANC should not, through the character of its members and leaders, be seen to behave like a shapeless jelly-fish. Instead, there should be a clear value system that attaches to being a member and to leaders.
It further argued that the ANC should be a party of substance, not an electoral machine.
Yet, reports that the ANC summoned SABC officials to stop them from doing the right thing in turning around the company, simply because it would hurt the ANC’s electoral fortunes, makes it clear which option has been chosen.
Indeed, the election into office of brazenly corrupt people in all spheres of government and the failure to act against politically connected thieves, who are perceived to be benefactors of the ANC, implies that the party has abandoned its own commitments.
In the 2012 Strategy and Tactics document, the ANC referred to “poor conduct on the part of sections of the ANC leadership, including new expressions of corruption and greed, which not only result in wastage of public resources, but undermine confidence of our people in government and our movement…”
Politically ironic
This document was adopted at the Mangaung conference, where the Guptas took the front seats to watch their captured men and women ascend to leadership positions in the party and the government. Nothing could be more politically ironic.
It was, of course, the beginning of the climax of the so-called wasted nine years that has now morphed into wasted years in progress during and post-Zuma era. There is no other way to describe the continuation of corruption, long after Jacob Zuma vacated high political office.
Like in the past, the continuation of corruption seemed well-foreseen by the ANC itself.
In the 2017 Strategy and Tactics document, the party once again complained about “social distance”, a consequence of “incumbency” – ANC speak for being obsessed with political office and its trappings.
“This creates fertile ground for corruption and a vicious cycle of illicit mutual dependence between some private and public sector elites,” the document states.
As usual, the ANC showed how good it was in rhetorically diagnosing its own illnesses, without seeking neither cure nor a vaccine.
The document stated in a strong language that post-1994 aberrations, such as corruption, started off as exceptions requiring tactical interventions.
“Now, deviant conduct has become deeply entrenched; and arrogance, factionalism and corruption have been identified by large sections of society, including ANC supporters, as dominant tendencies within the movement,” the document said.
It further stated that money, politics and fraud characterised most ANC electoral processes.
Underhanded practices increasingly defined interactions between various spheres of government and the private sector. And private interests seek to capture and control not only state organs, but also the ANC itself.
It was ironic that this Strategy and Tactics document, warning about “money politics”, was adopted at what was arguably the most expensive ANC conference since its establishment in 1912.
All sides vying for positions were well-oiled financially, largely because of the “underhanded” practices that the party was condemning.
Underhanded practices
We have now reached a point where, before any contract is awarded by any organ of state, an investigation must already be under way with a predictable outcome: Public funds were squandered.
A year later, the auditor-general would confirm it.
Nothing would happen to the looters.
The rise and rise of fruitless and irregular expenditure over the years in ANC-controlled government entities is an illustration of the extent of the damage caused by what the ANC itself describes as “underhanded practices” in its own ranks.
If ANC members and leaders can steal funds from President Nelson Mandela’s funeral, the only truly global icon the ANC has ever produced, and the party does nothing about it, what hope there is that the party will be able to do anything else right?
Rigging a contract there, feeding family with stolen food parcels there, among others, aren’t difficult things to do.
It is not enough to acknowledge endemic corruption to placate an increasingly skeptical public that feels the effects of “social distance”.
The ANC must flatten the curve of corruption that is threatening to take South Africa on the road to Harare, or else voters will have to drastically flatten the electoral support curve.
– Mpumelelo Mkhabela is a former parliamentary correspondent, editor of the Sowetan and political analyst.
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