ANC must clean up its act or else…

Published Aug 8, 2016

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Prof Ben Turok

Former ANC MP for two decades

THERE is a common belief that liberation movements which have been in power for a decade or two are bound to lose power, but there is nothing inevitable about this and the loss of support for the ANC in the recent elections is easily explained.

This is not history evolving, it is human failing which ought to have been corrected in time.

Many of us veterans of the ANC knew that support was failing, but few anticipated the shock defeat in the metros and the loss of support 
nationally.

Comparing the municipal elections with the last national election, the ANC has lost 8% of the vote while the DA has gained 4% and the EFF has won 4%.

What is clear is that this result is primarily due to the failure of ANC supporters to cast their votes.

Even though the ANC remains the largest party nationally, the loss of the metros and the size of the defections of its supporters are a distinguishing feature of this election.

The result seems to indicate that the ANC has now lost the aura of a liberation movement, not least because it has lost the support of alliance partners and thereby trade union members, and working class cadres who were the backbone of the liberation struggle. So where to now?

The ANC has become a conventional political party negotiating with smaller parties and making many concessions which are not part of its promises.

Playing the field of party politics and electioneering is bound to dilute its historic mission and the policies which led it to victory in 1994.

This will diminish the status of the ANC domestically and internationally.

But there are positives in the election outcome. The mass of the people rejected sectarianism and dogma.

They voted in favour of multi-partyism and non-racialism.

Since the ANC more or less neglected the inclusion of racial minorities and increasingly came to be seen as the party of Africans, it lost support among Indians, coloureds and whites.

Instead these groups seem to have swung behind the DA or abstained. It is also clear that the small groupings supporting Pan-Africanism and separation have failed to get any serious support.

All this is to the good and we can look forward to some new vigour in multi-partyism, in representation in Parliament and a more mature debate about the future of South African 
society and its democratic institutions.

Most important is that a large proportion of the public made it clear they were against corruption, cronyism and state capture.

These negative characteristics have come to be associated with some of the leadership of the ANC. The public have rejected this phenomenon. If the ANC wants to make a comeback, its introspection will have to address these three factors and there will have to be leadership changes.

The procedures of the ANC are normally extended and complex, but dealing with these three phenomena requires urgent attention and cannot wait for long meetings of the NEC, and the haggling that is bound to take place.

We have seen in the case of Thabo Mbeki that when a crisis faces the 
ANC, some of the leadership can act expeditiously. I wonder if the present situation does not require similar vigour, not only with respect to one individual but perhaps with others as well.

The truth is that there has been misconduct in some provinces and the deployment of unsuitable people to some senior positions in the party and the state.

If the party wishes to go before the electorate with a much cleaner image and style, it will have to review many of the deployments which have taken place in the last decade or so and present a much cleaner image to the public.

Let us hope that there are still enough cadres and supporters in and for the ANC to make these changes. If not we shall see the further decline of this once great movement.

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