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ANC conference is an opportunity to enhance dividends for all Africans

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Otieno Okech.
Otieno Okech.

Fact: The ANC is a polity corporate with both ordinary shareholders (read South Africans) and preferential shareholders-foreigners (read Africans, Cubans and Pakistanis led by the late prime minister Benazir Bhutto).

And as in every business the balance sheet is the statement of fact on the profit and loss account and invariably becomes the instrument of immense importance to all the shareholders whose core objective is to get a competitively good and reasonable return on investment.

And for the ANC, the December elective conference is that revered annual shareholders introspection event.

Which begs the question: how has ANC employed its assets for the socioeconomic profits of its shareholders?

And in view of that rated performance what are the urgent and emergent strategic business decisions and directions that can bring smiles and shine on the faces of the esteemed shareholders going forward?

Who captains the ship and who are the competent crew members to help him or her steer the troubled ship from turbulent waters?

Thus the ANC December 2017 elective conference is at the heart of the matter and the matter at heart for both ANC members and Africans as a whole – thanks to both the ANC brand equity more prominently positioned in the global marketplace of ideals by none other than the late Nelson Mandela.

Ship of state

Without a doubt the anchor business of the ANC since 1994 has been the running of South African Government Inc. Other subsidiaries are its ANC Veterans Inc whose merchandise in the marketplace is values and historicity – premier goods by any standards! I will also dissect the forgotten subsidiary business of Foreign Relations Inc.

South African Government Inc in the last eight years has undergone serious turbulence against the backdrop of the Nkandla scandal and state capture baptised as Guptation.

The ship of state has surely been in trouble in high seas. If the apartheid Boer-capture was ruthless and cruel, the Gupta family capture of statecraft has been embarrassing and crude!

Whereas the Boers were exclusionist in resource distribution, at least they had an avid idea on how to create wealth. Now come to our Guptas who spectacularly excelled in scooping, streaming and shy-locking the wealth of ordinary South Africans.

Grace to yield

“Grace to yield” is the rarest raw material to leadership, especially on the African continent.

This could not have been more aptly described by the current deputy secretary-general of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed, during the annual Nelson Mandela Foundation memorial lecture on the 16 days of gender activism.

She posited that Nelson Mandela left political power when he was still loved after just five years in office, which is testimony to the greatness of Madiba.

However, the first person in recent times to have had the “grace to yield” in the interest of ANC unity before Madiba was then secretary-general, Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa!

Even though the legitimate expectation by all and sundry was that he needed to deputise Nelson Mandela as deputy president of the newly independent Republic of South Africa, his eloquent statement of grace – “I am done with the business of politics and I am now going for the politics of business” is as indelible as it is historic.

For your information, an earlier beneficiary of “the grace to yield” was Tanzania’s president, Jakaya Kikwete, when Julius Nyerere had to prevail upon him to leave the CCM presidential ticket to President Benjamin Mkapa.

Kikwete gracefully yielded – and he became president in later years.

My fellow ANC shareholders, it might appear that yours truly has abrogated to himself “delusionary” and not “visionary” ideas to prescribe qualitative variables necessary for ANC cohesiveness and purposiveness after the December elective conference, but as I had earlier alluded to my “preferential ANC shareholder status” – who actually contributed the equivalent of R10 while still a student leader at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, in 1990 – it is imperative that my two cents of ideas be donated to your “struggling” organisation.

Dear esteemed ANC branch delegates, you are intelligent, insightful and independent.

However, a good idea always gives way to a better idea. At times it requires someone on the outside to help you realise your innate good.

The ANC school of leadership under the tutelage of its most recent icons, namely Comrade-in-Chief Oliver Tambo, Comrade-in-Civility Walter Sisulu, Comrade-in-Hospitality Albertina Sisulu, Comrade-in-Resilience Govan Mbeki, Comrade-in-Indefatigability Winnie Madkizela-Mandela and Comrade-in-Grace Nelson Mandela taught us many things.

One outstanding lesson was to embrace external ideas and ideals. Another poignant lesson was never to hate your enemy but to embrace them and make them appreciate your point of view which must be collegiately purposeful.

Against the backdrop of the above and well aware of the serious campaigns on both ANC presidential position as well as the “top six national executive committee positions” may you find it in your heart of hearts to elect leadership that will leave the “once” prestigious organisation of global appeal reinvigorated, reengineered and reborn and fit for export to adoring consumers in Africa and beyond.

Diminished foreign relations standings

However it is not lost on progressive and pragmatic ANC cadres that your return on investment to Africa and Africans who supported your cause has been extremely low.

The other day a friend who knows how obsessed I am with South African polity issues sarcastically said that, notwithstanding your huge economic base, he has never had anyone access South African scholarships.

Which brings me to that little subsidiary business called SA Foreign Relations Inc.

In my humble and considered opinion, if Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma loses the presidential elections to CR17 may this situation ignite the fire in the belly of the ANC to deploy her as foreign affairs minister. Her unparalleled credentials as the immediate former Chairperson of the AU and the fact that she possesses the necessary maturity and gravitas to re-launch South Africa on both the continental and global map – whose last designate brand ambassador was the late Nelson Mandela.

What South Africans will appreciate is that a competent foreign affairs department has a direct correlation to credit ratings and its attendant benefits.

Legacy above legal tender

It is imperative to note that these five sagacious ANC icons are foundational stones upon which the invaluable legacy of the ANC is laid.

It is the shareholders’ legitimate expectation that the “legal tender” issues that have bedeviled President Jacob Zuma’s tenure through Guptation capture of the state must give way to a rediscovery of the ANC legacy compass.

It is a must that in this regard if delegates find it in their heart of hearts that CR17 is the president, may they consider the diminutive and determined Lindiwe Sisulu of the “it’s a must” campaign slogan fit to deputise him.

It also illuminates the gender equity room of political leadership.

ANC and Kenya

The 105-year-old ANC is the oldest political party in Africa and, as such, its influence on African political parties and, by extension, the governments and all citizens of Africa should not be underestimated.

Which brings me to our own Kenyan political crisis whose “symptoms” are described as electoral difference but the real disease is ethnic Kikuyu supremacism (same as Boer supremacism).

This was institutionalised in the late 1960s at the homestead of none other than the founding president of the Republic of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, the father of the current “illegitimate” President Uhuru Kenyatta.

They both swore that no Luo (read first vice-president Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and father of Raila Odinga) would be president of the Republic of Kenya.

This is evidentially contained in a recently published memoir of Reverend John Gatu called: Fan into Flame.

In it, he writes: “I was summoned by President Jomo Kenyatta and when I reached his Ichaweri home he proposed that I undergo an oath as all Kikuyu of goodwill were in order to solidify their unity against Jaramogi Oginga Odinga of Kenya Peoples Union (KPU) ahead of the upcoming 1969 General elections.”

The colour apartheid war was won by the ANC. You must, after your December conference, help Kenyans win the war on ethnic apartheid – which threatens to dissolve the great country Kenya.

A happy South African, a bubbly Kenyan, a boisterous Nigerian, a radiant Egyptian and an eloquent Zimbabwean are manifestations of Africans, “full angels, full Children of God”. Africa felicity galore! How I wish it starts from down south!

We are all Africans with more potential in unity than any other people in our global village! Grace to yield it is and grace to yield it shall always be!

Viva ANC, Viva Africa.

George John Otieno Okech is an energy economist who also doubles as a political analyst and an avid Pan-Africanist

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