Cape Town - Ben Turok has had a long-standing relationship with the ANC, starting in the mid-1950s when he first joined the Congress of Democrats, a future ally of the party. The former ANC MP retired from Parliament last year after the elections.
He tells a story of a political force that has achieved a lot, but is at the same time standing on the brink of the stronghold it has spent the last 103 years building, collapsing as corruption and inequality run rampant.
“You want me to tell you about (the ANC), I hope you have set aside 200 pages,” he said over the phone. “It hasn’t moved completely from a liberation movement to a political party. In many ways it still has characteristics of that movement. I mean, it is structured like one with its various branches… While it certainly functions as a political party in its modus operandi it does still have some of the features of a liberation movement.
“Has it achieved its objectives? The primary objective was political democracy and nobody can argue that we do not have a constitutional democracy. The idea of one person, one vote, majority rule - it has all been achieved.
“That said, we have the highest inequality in the world. This is really a total violation of the original objectives of the ANC. We never intended to build an unequal society.
“We have serious problems. Even President Jacob Zuma has acknowledged we have problems, not only in the Youth League, these are very serious and it would take a helluva lot of time to explain why we have these problems.
“I’m not saying anything other people haven’t said. There’s corruption, buying votes and abuse of positions.”
Near the end of his political career Turok butted heads with his party. In 2011, the veteran MP faced disciplinary proceedings by the ANC after publicly explaining why he broke ranks and did not vote for the Protection of State Information Bill.
He suggested at the time that some of his colleagues may have voted blindly for the bill.
Turok said the party had to change its ways, not necessarily for the good of South Africa, but for its own survival.
“The problem is that it’s not changing.”
He said the “distortions” that had crept into the party would be its undoing.
“If history has taught us anything, no party is permanent. It must mutate, adapt, change or it will be left behind.
“What I would say is this, that we need to learn in South Africa that having the vote is not enough, and while the ANC has given the vote to all the people on an equal basis, voting in itself does not lead to social change. The kind of changes that we need now will not come from the ballot box in any kind of mechanical fashion. They will come from the ground up.
“This is evident in the Economic Freedom Fighters’ (quick rise to power), spontaneous local actions. Things such as the (poo protests) are all manifestations of this.”
Have you achieved what you set out to do 60 years ago with the ANC?
“Well… we were all idealists, some were socialists, some were communists, many were committed democrats. We were willing to die for what we believed in, maybe we were utopian. We had strong hopes of creating a far better society, nobody can claim that we have not achieved some major changes. But, we have certainly not achieved what we wanted.”
Cape Argus