Following the 2007 ANC Polokwane Conference there has been an uneasy political trajectory running through the African National Congress, riddled with a silence between songs and a space between slogans.
This internal rupture marked a turning point in the organisation’s political prospects since the advent of democracy, culminating in the formation of a number of splinter organisations, beginning with Congress of the People (COPE). That moment was not just a split; it was the birth of a trend that would later result in the loss of the ANC’s hegemony in the realm of South African politics.
These developments reflect a painful reality: once-loyal freedom fighters now find alternative homes for their revolutionary convictions.
The splintering of the movement over the years is a contemporary reminder that if political grievances are not resolved amicably they have a potential to delay the realization of the National Democratic Revolution.
But equally these challenges, impress upon us to reflect widely and objectively on the existential crises confronting the ANC.
The crises of neo-patrimony, political clientelism and careerism as reflected by President Nelson Mandela in the 1997 Elective Conference, only to result in the establishment of the State Capture Commission and recently the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, decades later.
Even the recently published 30-Year Review of Democracy by the Institute of Race Relations reflects this sobering reality. It speaks to the erosion and the decline of the moral compass that once defined this glorious movement as well as its intellectual prowess since the Polokwane Conference onwards.
The downtrodden masses of our people have been left in limbo, confronted with a plethora of service delivery challenges, high unemployment and poverty levels.
And as Africa’s revered novelist, Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo, opines in The River Between; “when the water that once nourished the people becomes polluted” … “the river rejects its own….” And people will flow elsewhere to survive.
But this not a peculiar phenomenon. The ANC has faced a similar crisis before, the difference however is that it was not a governing party.
In the harshest years of exile and banning, Oliver Reginald Tambo, the organisation’s longest serving President, became the glue that kept the movement intact. With calm strength, he guided the ANC not through purges, but through reconciliation.
A diplomacy of unity that can be defined as rapprochement. Even when confronted with the internal dissent of the Group of 8, who challenged the direction of the movement, pre and post the 1969 Morogoro Conference, Tambo did not initially agree to their expulsion until the mid-1970s, as recently remarked by President Thabo Mbeki during his interview with Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi on African Renaissance Podcast.
This gives credence to his leadership philosophy which was centred on organisational counselling, not banishment; persuasion, not persecution. That is how he ensured the ANC remained a broad church, wounded at times, but unbroken. Today, we must ask ourselves: Where is that Tambo spirit now?
One by one, comrades are leaving the movement that once held the dreams of a nation in its hands. They are crossing to other parties, carrying with them not only membership cards but memories, experience and pieces of the ANC’s soul.
This may very well have far more serious ramifications for the longest liberation movement on the continent particularly during this epoch, when the masses of our people particularly the marginalised and downtrodden no longer locate themselves within their own liberation movement.
So what does it mean when veterans, the thinkers, organisers and activists who kept the flame alive in forgotten corners of our democracy begin to lose faith? It reflects a widening disconnection. A revolution that once uplifted ordinary people from despair now seems estranged from those very people.
There is an uncomfortable truth here: one cannot preach unity while nurturing division. Moreover, renewal while side-lining renewal-minded voices remains a futile exercise. Unity and Renewal were meant to restore discipline, dignity and purpose. Not to shrink the movement until only factions remain.
Before we misuse President Thabo Mbeki’s words, we must return to their origin. Lenin’s idea of “fewer but better” was not a justification for dwindling membership. It was a call for ideological clarity, ethical leadership and revolutionary discipline and to transform quantity to quality.
Mbeki, drawing from Lenin, meant that quality must triumph over mere quantity. But today, that slogan has been repurposed as an alibi for quiet decline. We cannot applaud fewer if the better are the ones who feel forced out.
Fewer only means better when ethical leadership is restored, branches become centres of political education, corruption is confronted without fear and the organisation listens when the people whisper their pain.
We must choose cleansing of bad habits, not cleansing of good comrades. We must revive the values that guided Tambo; patience, persuasion and unity in struggle. The ANC must look in the mirror, not out of the window.
Renewal must therefore move from resolutions to reality, from the Conference hall to the community street as well as the disfranchised who sacrificed their lives in the attainment of our democracy.
A revolution must always remember the people who carried it.
Because a revolution that forgets its people will eventually be forgotten by them.
Gomolemo Mothibi is an activist and co-founder of the Maf-town Book Club. She writes in her personal capacity about politics, people and the continuous work of South Africa’s democratic project.
