Egoism is killing the ANC

When a governing party, supposedly with all the resources at its disposal, is unable to do what is supposed to be the simplest of tasks – that of registering its candidates for a crucial election – you must doubt if it could rule for long.

I tend to agree with those who say the ANC has been in a mess for a long time but nobody outside of the party had noticed.

The crisis that the ANC is in would soon precipitate its loss of power – which has been predicted by many analysts.

When considering the candidates mayhem, the ANC running out of cash and unable to pay staff salaries, its secretary-general forced to step aside (a polite term for suspension) over allegations of corruption, and its former president in and out of courts on a series of graft charges, you wonder whether the ANC should be in government in the first place.

Realising that it was unlikely to win in its initial court bid to force the Electoral Commission of South Africa to reopen the candidate registration, the ANC withdrew its application to the Electoral Court.

Now it’s pinning its hope on the IEC Concourt application to postpone the 27 October election, which would give them a reprieve and a chance to correct its mistakes.

With the precedent of the National Freedom Party which had lost an IEC appeal to register the party for the 2016 local government election after it was late to pay registration fees, the ANC feared the embarrassment of also losing its case.

Besides, the penniless party would not be able to afford any costs of losing in court.

Of interest is the fact that the ANC today survives on crowd funding. That’s a disgrace for a party that boasts of being Africa’s first liberation movement.

Perhaps those who claim that it has been in a mess for long have a point. In the early 2000s many ANC branches died after funds were embezzled in the lower structures.

A case in point was the former SEK Mqhayi branch, when members could not get membership cards after having paid joining fees because an official at the Mdantsane constituency office stole all the funds (he was never punished for the transgression).

Those who brag of the ANC being a so-called “broad church” must rethink. It’s time for a lean, mean, more efficient and manageable ANC.

Alternatively, it should break up into smaller entities that all forge new alliances. The tripartite alliance, which served its purpose during apartheid, has become a liability.

There is no real need anymore for the Congress of South African Trade Union, South African Communist Party and ANC to stay in an alliance.

The current ANC funding crisis could partly be traced to the purging of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), the biggest affiliate of Cosatu.

Numsa was a cash cow with its subscription and investment funds.

The establishment of the Zwelinzima Vavi-led South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu), which took Numsa with it, drained the alliance of its financial muscle.

Today, the ANC is a shadow of its former self, a giant that must live on handouts. Egoism is killing it.