Renew, rejuvenate, enhance

EARLY SUPPORT: A young spectator watches the proceedings at the ANC's centenary celebrations at Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein, attended by thousands of ANC supporters. Picture: Antoine de Ras

EARLY SUPPORT: A young spectator watches the proceedings at the ANC's centenary celebrations at Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein, attended by thousands of ANC supporters. Picture: Antoine de Ras

Published Jan 12, 2012

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The proposed overhaul of the operations and management of the ANC will, if carried through, turn it into a fully-fledged political party, but does also run the risk of transforming the ruling party way beyond what its leaders might have in mind.

The ANC said in its January 8 statement, which traditionally sets the tone for the party’s political calendar, that it planned to “renew its internal systems and processes” to create “a rejuvenated organisation” with new organisational and strategic capabilities.

It also promised to review its leadership election systems “to enhance internal democracy, credibility of the process as well as the integrity and suitability of candidates”. Changes to how the ANC chooses its leaders would reduce what the party refers to as the tyranny of “slates, factions and money”. They would also ensure, the party said, that it was by the most experienced, most committed, most talented and best collective across generations.

Among areas of focus for the overhaul are the party’s membership system and communication with members, core constituency and society in general.

“We should take urgent and practical steps to professionalise and modernise the operations of the ANC. We shall take full advantage of the advances in the information and communication technology and management sciences to continue to reorganise the ANC in the best possible way that facilitates the realisation of historic mission,” the ANC said.

It called for “progressive modern management methods” to be introduced in the running of party offices as well as the building of well-trained, professionally competent, decently paid and highly motivated full-time staff at all levels of the organisation. Traditional methods of organising, as in recruiting and mobilising of members, would be combined with the effective use of information and communication technologies.

The January 8 statement is crafted by the national executive committee (NEC), the party’s highest organ in-between national conferences. The proposed remake of the party will still require approval by the national conference to be held in December in Mangaung.

Details of the overhaul and how it will be implemented remain sketchy, but should become available as the ruling party makes public discussion documents for its policy conference in June.

One significant detail, for example, is what will happen to the current party structures. For example, will the office of the secretary-general remain in its current form or will it be scaled back to become a supervisor of the professional management team. The same question applies to that of the treasurer-general. In theory, the treasurer-general’s position can be collapsed so that the finance function (which will have been professionalised) reports to the secretary-general.

Then there is the issue of the national working committee (NWC). Will it be reconfigured to make it smaller than the 31-member body that it is now? It consists of the president, the deputy president, national chairperson, secretary-general, deputy secretary-general, treasurer general, plus 25 others who are elected on to the NWC by the national executive committee.

In theory, the NWC can be scaled back to the top six officials (the president, deputy president, national chairperson, secretary-general, deputy secretary-general and the treasurer), whose task would be to give political guidance to the management of the party.

The NWC, which meets twice a month, would, as is the case now, then report back to the NEC, which meets every two months.

How the ANC decides to reformulate its governance structures to deal with the professionalisation of its day-to-day management will have huge implications for how Luthuli House relates to party members, especially provincial leadership.

In other countries, the overhaul of the kind proposed by the ANC was brought about by changes in the sociopolitical environment. The ANC makes the same point, but provides no details.

It merely refers to the fact that it is fully aware that the world into which it was born a hundred years ago has changed.

The changed environment to which the ANC refers relates to those changes in SA society that will most likely determine the behaviour of the electorate.

These include changes in demography, income and living standards, which will, over time, mean that the traditional fault lines of race and the Struggle no longer matter the way they used to, or still do today.

These changes call for a more professionally run political party, one whose election campaigning and political marketing strategies are in tune with the changed sociopolitical environment.

Such a party, as political scientists Paul Webb (University of Sussex) and Justin Fisher (Brunel University) point out, calls for certain types of professional expertise, which is not to be found among party activists and functionaries.

“Indeed, there is nothing particularly novel in the argument that election campaigning in the televisual era relies far more on centralised professional resourcing than on local party activism,” Webb and Fisher said.

Political parties have two options. They can either hire such expertise from outside the party, or they can develop it through the development and training of activists. Each option has its advantages and disadvantages.

Bringing in outside expertise could sit uncomfortably with some leaders as well as the rank and file, but it will make such expertise immediately available to the party. Growing own timber will obviously take time and thus delay the transformation of the party and its operations.

On the increasing use of information and communication technologies in political communications and marketing, Pippa Norris, a lecturer in comparative politics at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, observes that studies suggest the growing reliance on technology has come at the expense of party members and activists. These have been replaced by a growing use of media managers, press officers, marketing and advertising experts, survey analysts and political consultants.

Ralph Negrine, a professor of political communication at the University of Sheffield (UK), makes a similar point. By the end of the 20th century, communication had become central to the pursuit of political power, Negrine wrote, not simply in terms of communication policies to an electorate but, more significantly, by influencing and controlling the flow and direction of communication from the centre.

“This, it could be further argued, would not have been possible unless political parties had become organised, centralised, leader-directed and focused on achieving political power, that is, had taken on the form of either the ‘catch-all-party’ or ‘cartel party’,” he wrote in The Transformation of Political Communication.

This means that for the ANC to succeed in taking advantage of advances in information and communication technologies, the ruling party will have to reconfigure internal power relations such that the centre, as in Luthuli House and more specifically the party leadership, assumes a much bigger role than it has historically.

The opening up of the leadership election system will not be as easy flowing as the ANC leaders might want to believe. A more open election system, which is implied by the ANC’s reference to internal democracy, will certainly be more inclusive, but does open the party to risks of infiltration by people who are not as committed as the party might want.

Yet, as associate professor of political science at the University of Houston Susan Scarrow cautions, if rules for vetting candidates are strictly applied, they can become tools with which party leaders strengthen their own internal power bases.

What might also impact on the remake of the ANC is the debate about the future of provincial governments. Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi most recently added his voice to the call for the scrapping of provinces. Were that to happen, it would significantly weaken the position of provincial ANC structures, shifting even more power to Luthuli House.

What all of this points to is that organisational questions, as Scarrow has pointed out, are often more practical than they are straightforward moral and there is no one-size-fits-all model for how to run a party.

In that case, of key concern to ANC activists will be whether the proposed professionalisation will lead to an enhanced grip of Luthuli House over the party organisation. For the party’s national leadership, the crucial question will be to what extent the professional management will undermine their control of the party machinery.

l Jabulani Sikhakhane is the group political editor for Independent Newspapers.

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