INLSA

As the ANC celebrates its centenary, questions have been raised over what part of history belongs to the ANC and what belongs to the country as a whole.

Jabulani Sikhakhane

The Collins English dictionary defines selfless as having little concern for one’s own interests. So, the ANC’s use of the word in its slogan, Celebrating 100 years of Selfless Struggle, is betrayed by its conduct over its centenary celebration.

Many commentators, including Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, have complained about how the ANC had airbrushed the non-ANC contributions to the Struggle for liberation in its historical record. In that sense, the ANC’s conduct has been self-centred.

Joel Netshitenzhe, a long-standing member of the ANC’s national executive committee, highlighted this issue in a speech in September last year, “A Continuing Search for Identity: Carrying the Burden of History”. He said that the challenge of how to celebrate the centenary brought out in bold relief the current posture of the ANC in relation to its history and how that history related to the ANC as a ruling party.

The ANC had over the years projected itself as a parliament of the African people, then as the legitimate representative of all South Africans, and later as the primary agent of change and the central protagonist in the processes aimed at resolving the antagonisms in our society. These formulations have since been confirmed by the ANC’s 1994 and subsequent electoral victories.

“As such, it can be asserted that the history of the ANC is in essence about the Struggle of the South African people for self-determination to achieve a united, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous society – ideals that are now codified in the country’s constitution and are part of South African society’s DNA.

“Yet, in assuming the status of an equal participant in elections and of the leading force in government – and proceeding from the perspective that, under democracy, all the other parties reflect legitimate opinion within the bounds of the constitution – the ANC somewhat also diminishes its status to become just ‘another party’ in a democratic dispensation,” Netshitenzhe said in a speech to SA History Online conference on the 100 years of the ANC.

He then highlighted two challenges facing the ANC. The first was that most events of national importance in the country’s history were associated with the ANC’s own history.

The ANC sought to attach its current “brand” to these historical moments, a move which tended to confound the relationship between the movement, the party and the state.

“Quite often its electoral opponents shun some national commemorative events for fear of promoting an adversary, or adopt some of the ANC’s historical symbols and personalities in a manner that the ANC deems opportunistic and offensive, as reflected quite intensely in the discourse around Cope in the 2009 general election and the DA during the 2011 local government polls.”

The second challenge had its roots in the first, and related to the ambivalence regarding the development of history curricula.

“Studiously, an attempt is made to avoid definitive moral judgements especially about the liberation movement as a whole; and we resort to sophistry to evade issues about the critical role that the ANC – now the ‘ruling party’ – has played in the evolution of the SA nation.

“This is a tension that requires continuing reflection – both in terms of professional management of the teaching of history, and in relation to the ANC’s own psychology about whether it should cede to all of society a part of itself in order to win ‘non-partisan’ allegiance to its long-term ideals.”

In other words, are the ANC’s pre-1994 historical milestones and their celebration a property of ‘the ruling party’ or of the nation as a whole?

Raymond Suttner, another ANC stalwart, also brought to light the dangers associated with the projection of the ANC as representing the nation.

Encapsulated in the national liberation model is the notion of the ANC, for example, as the nation or a nation in the process of becoming.

Like other liberation movements, the ANC had earlier sought, and various international organisations accorded it, the status of the sole and authentic representative of the people of SA. Some though did accord the same status to the PAC as well.

Suttner cautioned that the ANC’s overwhelming electoral support since 1994 brought into sharper focus the dangers associated with a national liberation model.

“The ANC, and for that matter no political party or organisation, can ever be equated with the nation, no matter how popular it may be or what electoral success it attains,” wrote Suttner in “Transformation of Political Parties in Africa Today”, an article published in the Transformation journal.

“There are interests within the nation that require representation outside of the national liberation movement model.

“The consolidation of democracy in South Africa is not the task of the ANC as majority party/organisation alone,” Suttner wrote.

As the ANC’s conduct over its centenary celebrations have shown, the ruling party has no intention of donating to SA any of the milestones in the Struggle against apartheid that are associated with it.

Nor does its current psychology permit it to open up space for other formations, whether they be civil society groupings or political entities, to contribute to the deepening of South African democracy.

The reason is the ANC believes that its associations with the historical milestones in the Struggle for liberation benefit it at the hustings. Indeed, the ANC has benefited there.

But that is not selflessness as is commonly understood.