By Aluwani Chokoe
Against the background of the dilemmas faced by the ANC as a (liberation) movement, it is a non-profit with the character of reliance on funding for its functioning.
It became a beacon political formation financed by motive forces, whom we can never remove from the fabric of South Africa’s fight for liberation against the fascist apartheid regime.
Formed as a tool of liberation and an effective vehicle of total emancipation of the people of South Africa, the ANC finds itself in a protracted battle against challenges that currently beset it, particularly corruption.
Distinctly, the neglect of cadre policy accounts for the lion’s share in the weaknesses and challenges faced by the movement since the advent of the democratic dispensation.
This follows the recent report revealing how General Siphiwe Nyanda irregularly received R95 million from Transnet without consequences.
The 2007 strategy and tactics document preludes that the ANC should appreciate the critical importance of political power as an instrument to address the ills of colonialism. It should negotiate and preside over the myriad problems of incumbency in a manner that ensures future survival as a principled leader of fundamental change, which is respected and cherished by the masses for what it represents and how it conducts itself in practice.
Pseudo-revolutionaries like Nyanda soberly and voluntarily signed ANC membership forms vowing this was without motive of material advantage or personal gain, yet they have directly stolen from both the terrain (state) that the ANC uses to advance the national democratic revolution, and donors supportive of the ANC.
The premise of my argument stems from the vilification of Geoff Makhubo, who, in his term as regional treasurer of the ANC, raised funds for the functioning and benefit of the party; stemming from office administration, staff expenses (stipends) to security and the general management of the office.
We find ourselves at loggerheads when the likes of Nyanda appropriate our struggles for their personal gain, and remain unassailable.
As a matter of fact, many known criminals continue to benefit from the good name of the ANC and are active participants in the morphing of the ANC into an organisation devoid of moral authority.
Perhaps then, the (inadvertent) ideological betrayal occurs because the criteria of representatives or those elected in conferences does not include detailed scrutiny of those seeking to represent the people. We unwittingly surrender ourselves to the hands of swindlers who masquerade as comrades of the ANC.
Notably, the 53rd National Conference of the ANC conceded the need to enter into a more radical second phase of the national democratic revolution towards the attainment of the envisioned national democratic society, through the implementation of programmes to achieve radical socio-economic transformation in a resource-scarce environment.
Given this, the ANC employs the contesting of elections as a means to advance the national democratic revolution.
In instances of local government, an elected regional treasurer, custodian of the funds and property of the ANC regionally, is tasked with fund-raising, receiving and banking all money on behalf of the regional executive committee.
The funds are further, among other things, used to fuel campaigning machinery in efforts to win local government elections, which we deem the nerve centre of service delivery, socio-economic development and of driving our efforts to build a truly democratic integrated, prosperous, non-sexist and non-racial society.
Members of the ANC as children of Africa’s determination to achieve and enjoy human dignity, freedom and national independence should, until new ways to make money for the ANC have been devised, fight against the vilification of (elected/appointed) fund-raisers earnestly.
Alwani Chokoe is a journalist and an activist. She was prominent in the Fees Must Fall campaign.
The Star