ANC elective conference all about power, and forgetting policies

With a month left before the ANC national conference kicks off in Nasrec, there is so much talk about nominations for the top positions and not much else.

As usual, the conference is about power – what positions matter and which individuals must occupy which positions. It had become a platform to test which faction is stronger than the other.

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More than anything, each individual is concerned about the prospects of being elected on to the party’s national executive committee and nothing much about policies – or the people who should benefit from such policies.

Despite the policy conference having deliberated about policy proposals in July, little is said about these policies and their impact for the society.

Of course, you might say there is a discussion about policies when considering the raging debate around the step-aside rule.

No, it’s not a policy about the people and its impact on them but a debate about power for the elite. Step-aside saw some leaders being removed from their positions and that became the bone of contention.

They prioritise power mongering above everything else. You will notice that between general elections, politicians place society at the bottom of their agenda.

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The citizens will matter close to the election time, when the so-called door-to-door campaigning begins.

Politicians suddenly become loving “uncles” and “aunts” who kiss frail senior citizens at their dilapidated homes and grab infants from their mothers’ laps or backs to give them a fatherly smooch on their tiny cheeks.

It’s not about love for the people but about themselves and their power – as a voter you become the stepladder for them to climb to the top – to be forgotten for another five years.

Adopting policies and implementation are important for the voters. From Nelson Mandela’s reconstruction and development programme and his much-vaunted growth, employment and redistribution strategy, and Thabo Mbeki’s broad-based black economic empowerment, among others, huge progress was made on that score.

But that progress has been undermined by the scourge of factionalism that emerged as a big issue among those in power.

I miss the ANC national conference at Stellenbosch University in 2002, where an air of unity and camaraderie blew among delegates.

It was simple for them to just agree on the top six and lobbying each other for the additional members, with no tension as is the case today.

But that’s history that would not be repeated for a very long time because selfishness, greed and individualism have taken over at all levels of the party.

This is contrary to the aspirations of some to strive for a fully fledged socialist society contained in the two-stage revolution theory of the alliance to transition to a socialist economy, that was abandoned in favour of neocapital economic approach.

The prospects of having coalition governments once gave us hope that power accumulation would be challenged and defeated. We were so wrong.

The coalitions themselves have proven to be the centres of power mongering as if defying former US political scientist, Rudolph Rummel, who said “concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth”.

We thought the smaller parties that joined the ruling parties as co-governors in our metros would help to dilute, or even weaken, the power of the bigger parties.

Instead. they have become part of the power struggle – regularly changing allegiances depending on who is willing to share the spoils of power with them. For now, forget about stability in our coalition politics, they are about filling their big stomachs.