The ANC's renewal efforts are proving to be as pointless as a pen without ink.
You have heard it countless times, but remember: “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
This quote should not be printed and sticky-taped on the Luthuli House walls, but engraved on the entrance hall walls and pinned to every ANC group chat.
The ANC is a sinking ship, as is objectively clear from their decline in the last general elections where they lost complete control of government.
In response to that bruising defeat, the party’s leaders rushed to form a fancy-sounding, but materially quite useless, national coalition with other power-hungry politicians and repeat their cries of renewal.
They promised introspection, rejuvenation, accountability, and even unity. One of the central ideas flowing out of discussions in recent months has been to rally around a single set of leaders at elective conferences. This would remove factions and infighting over positions that have previously left the party bruised and battered.
The idea of keeping your energy for serving South Africans rather than using it to fight your comrades may seem like a breakthrough for the ANC, but it is simple for the rest of us.
But even if they wanted to implement this grand idea, they have failed spectacularly at the first hurdle.
ANC back to default settings
The ANC in Johannesburg has been so divided that it took nearly a year to finally hold an elective conference. When it finally kicked off, then-chairperson Dada Morero suggested it was not the end of the world if he lost.
He ended up losing.
This week, his camp kicked up a fuss, claiming fraud and vote-rigging at the conference. Mud has been slung by both his supporters and those of the newly elected chair, Loyiso Masuku, and all intentions to maintain peace and unity for the party’s sake have been thrown out the window.
A brewing motion of no confidence in Morero as mayor, and the Joburg ANC considering whether to forward a request to its national leaders to ask Morero to resign, are both signs that they have reset to the default setting of replacing the existing leader with their shiny new toy as soon as they can.
In the new leaders’ minds, it’s unfair that they have to wait to feed properly from the trough.
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Ramaphosa’s hypocrisy
The blatant hypocrisy runs all the way to the top, with party leader Cyril Ramaphosa preaching unity and collaboration with government of national unity (GNU) partners but making decisions unilaterally.
His opening speech at the recent ANC NEC Lekogtla once again blurred the lines between party and government, speaking often about successes the government had achieved as if it were a side office of the ANC.
Ramaphosa and his party need to do what they promised: be humble, collaborate, and negotiate in good faith.
This must be painful for them, but they just need to look at the testimony given daily at the Madlanga Commission and at Parliament’s ad hoc committee looking into alleged political interference and corruption in the police to realise how their patterns of governance have destroyed law enforcement in the country.
Another crime-fighting body?
They would have heard this week that the NPA has rot, and that the Hawks have been blunted under their watch. While there is still some public goodwill towards the Hawks, confidence in the NPA is on the floor.
The solution given: we need another independent body.
Another unit to sink taxpayers’ money into, with a fresh round of tenders to dish out and a, no doubt, large budget to attract experienced officers away from more lucrative private sector jobs. Where will we get the money, if not found in the couch?
If given true independence, it may finally be the solution we need, but in the darkness that has followed the New Dawn there is little to suggest that the ANC or those at the trough will allow that to happen.
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