Nkosikhulule Nyembezi
Cape Town - The ANC members opposed to corruption and factionalism do not need any new information to judge whether individuals implicated in the Zondo Commission’s reports or standing trial on criminal charges are fit to stay in office.
Since the ANC hasn’t removed them yet, there is a good chance it never will.
How should ordinary citizens receive the news that ANC treasurer-general Paul Mashatile sent a document entitled “Terms and Conditions” to provincial and regional structures?
The document, which makes official the “step-aside rule” that members indicted in a court of law cannot stand for election in any leadership position in the party or hold government positions, illustrates an already known story.
It says its contents are just proposals, not “rigid rules”, not to be applied strictly and urgently, but mere “guidelines”.
At the centre of government, the ANC disregards constitutional values, laws, and ethical standards that citizens and societal institutions uphold to ensure accountability, responsiveness, and openness.
The elected persons in the ANC ultimately responsible for upholding values – the number one lawmakers – are themselves lawbreakers.
The reprobate character of many in the ANC has been on display for years. That makes two categories of ANC cadres whose influence has a bearing on implementing the “step-aside rule”.
Some were appalled when they realised there were scoundrels among their leaders, and those who never objected to the malpractices of these leaders because they were former liberation fighters, but worried that they were an electoral liability.
If the first group was large enough to force their corrupt leaders’ resignations, voluntarily step-aside or prevent their re-election in regional and provincial party conferences ahead of the 55th ANC national conference in December, they would have done so already.
The second group has enough data to infer the imperilled ANC majority in government if these tainted individuals continue to lead the party into a general election, but have no way of being sure.
By-election defeats, opinion polls and lost council seats in the November, 2021 local government elections prove that voters are unhappy now. Still, there is always the possibility they will cheer up again in the 2024 national and provincial elections and return the party to power through a narrow victory or coalitions.
Besides, there are no substitute leaders to bankroll the bankrupt governing party’s election campaigns to make ditching the incumbents a low-risk gamble. The stakes feel higher as the December conference, and the next elections draw nearer.
Also, postponing action by saying ordinary public representatives affected by the step-aside rule will be allowed to attend and vote in councils, Parliament and in its oversight committee meetings reinforce the impression that they are master political escapologists.
It is a feedback loop: the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) quails before the difficult decision and narrates that cowardice as evidence of their corrupt faction’s uncanny knack for survival.
The ANC leadership’s weakness is the strength of the corrupt faction, as it has been all along. The threat of prosecution for corruption feels existential.
Party members who had previously sworn to obstruct the re-election ambitions of tainted politicians suddenly decided instead that they were their only hope of salvation, and voted them back into senior leadership positions.
The reward for that choice has been evident in the ANC conference delegates’ bank balances and those benefiting from government tenders.
The NEC’s reluctance to decisively implement the step-aside rule is the prop supporting these tainted individuals today.
This reward might hold corrupt politicians in place for the December conference and the 2024 elections. It might be not from any realistic expectation of another massive victory or sentimental loyalty, but because the whole point of keeping them in power is to avoid confronting questions of corruption that their removal will raise all over again.
The dread that continues to protect them is seeing the cracks, the crumbling plasterwork, the mould and dampness that the vivid “organisational renewal” call at the 54th national conference in 2017 papered over.
There are glimpses of it in every corner, where the paper has already come unstuck, as demonstrated by delegates at regional and provincial conferences.
Even the ANC in government has no responsibility for the damage these tainted politicians continue to cause to the economy of this country, because the NEC and the conference delegates cannot agree on who should be removed from leadership and prosecuted, and when and how to do the stepping down.
There was a moment earlier in Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC presidency when the weight of public outrage over corruption was crushing the political life out of these tainted politicians.
Still, the NEC failed to finish them off directly. It tacitly declared that it was not ethically wrong for an elected party member to loot public funds or commit murder while in office, with that stay of execution.
It sent a message that it was unwise to get caught and that for as long as the opinion of conference delegates says corrupt individuals must stay in power, so be it. If conference delegates at the December conference can change their minds against the “step-aside rule”, wrong can become right.
It is too late now to go back to the point of the principle that the “step-aside rule” intended to uphold.
If the NEC sacks the tainted individuals ahead of the December conference, it would have to give a reason.
If the offence is corruption, it must describe the corrupter and the corrupted. Where does that end, seeing the glaring evidence that the ANC has been the beneficiary of looted taxpayers’ money?
Ramaphosa cannot pull the stray thread for fear of unravelling the whole shoddy weave catalogued in the Zondo Commission’s reports and elsewhere. Perhaps there are enough ANC members with the courage to enforce the step-aside rule, if not over the scandals already tainting the individuals we know, then the next ones yet to be revealed in the treacherous power struggle path to the December conference.
Ramaphosa cannot shame these tainted politicians into resignation, but that shamelessness is contagious. Some have resorted to threats of taking the commission’s reports on judicial review, while some have adopted bully tactics by throwing mud at it.
The source of resilience makes many in the ANC believe their current corrupt leaders have power that no other candidates could match. And once they have indulged that thought, they become unable to judge whether the absence of conscience in these corrupt politicians is a reason to sack them or take them back in the name of party unity. Indeed, the future is certain, it is the past that is unpredictable!
Nyembezi is a policy analyst and human rights activist.
Cape Times