Publications
Partners
Our real challenge is the cancer of corruption that has infected the ANC. The party’s structure has allowed and encouraged the wrong kind of people to join and take up positions of power.
Yet purging the party is not the answer. A more fundamental remedy is needed to change the way politics is practised, irrespective of which party is in power.
The party is still an important starting point. I learnt that from then president Thabo Mbeki, who decided to explain to his comrades what was happening in Zimbabwe.
“The problem,” he remarked, “is that, after independence in 1980, all the members of Zanu-PF ran to get into government. That was where they thought the action and the resources were. But Mugabe knew that the power lay in the party and he made sure he kept control as his colleagues discovered, too late, to their cost.”
I distinctly remember then deputy president Jacob Zuma, sitting next to Mbeki, paying careful attention.
Zuma had shown he understood the importance of the party. Between 1994 and 1999, he helped to end the bloody conflict in KwaZulu-Natal and laid the political foundation for the ANC to take over what was initially an IFP province.
He achieved that without many of the levers of power political office provides – his portfolio of economic development in an IFP-led province carried little weight or resources.
The issue is not only about who controls the party, but how that control can be achieved, by whom and why. The ANC’s decentralised democracy is both a strength and a weakness.
So, to give another personal example, I am a member of the ANC.
But after some leadership changes, my Johannesburg branch stopped contacting me, except in emergencies – such as when Luthuli House officials were coming to do a headcount to check whether there was a quorum at a meeting.
The branch leadership had their own agenda and later defected to the Economic Freedom Fighters.
Only 100 people are needed for a branch quorum. So if you can mobilise 200 000 people in strategic places, you can command a majority of the ANC’s 4 000 branches.
It is easy to keep control if you don’t invite other members to your meetings. And branch manipulation, such as the “bulk buying” of membership and “gatekeeping”, is a regular concern on the agenda of ANC national meetings.
One solution often offered is a “return to the founding values”. That is simply naive. When the ANC was a party of resistance, values of service and self-sacrifice drove people to join.
Many members are still true to those values, but today, power and money are too often the strong drivers for active participation in the ANC. Many good people just walk away, disillusioned.
It is also increasingly dangerous to stay and fight – people are dying in intra-ANC conflicts in contested communities. Faced with such threats, many people understandably opt for a quiet life.
A couple of years ago, I saw this process in action in a province headed by a man often named as a leading member of the Premier League.
He called his province’s mayors to a meeting to tell them they were to hand over their municipal infrastructure grants to a provincial organisation that would manage them, “for efficiency and delivery”.
Of course, he added, “you don’t have to. But if you don’t, we will have another meeting in the other place.” He meant the local party HQ, and mayors are appointed by premiers.
They got the message, he got their municipal money, they kept their salaries and everyone was happy – except the communities for whose services the money was intended, because at least 25% was being siphoned off for other purposes.
As long as power can enable such strategies of mutual protection and self-interest, the party will always be vulnerable to manipulation and abuse.
The solution cannot be to “go back” to the old values in the new situation. It has to limit the ability of parties to abuse power.
An even more important role than the Public Protector’s is that of the Public Service Commission. Corrupt politicians can only achieve their goals if they can place their people in government positions.
So the challenge is not to fix the parties but to change the framework in which they operate. The instruments are already there.
