ANALYSIS:Some within the ANC fear that unless the party embraces change, it is heading for an irreversible decline
ALTHOUGH THE African National Congress is this year basking in its proud history, holding numerous celebrations around South Africa to mark its centenary, the party is under no illusions about the crisis of credibility it faces among the electorate.
It would be hard to feign ignorance of its precarious position when every week a different community launches a violent protest to vent its collective anger at the appalling living conditions the residents find themselves in.
Eighteen years into democracy, both corruption and incompetence seem endemic in local government, as well as in the ANC, which controls the vast majority of South Africa’s municipalities. Last month the auditor general confirmed that only 13 municipalities out of 283 received a clean audit in the last financial year.
Educational services are also a shambles, with more than half of all learners who enter the school system failing to pass the final year exams.
The public is calling for the head of basic education minister Angie Motshekga, the leader of the ANC’s Women’s League, for her failure to deliver school books to tens of thousands of children in Limpopo province even though the school year is half over.
In an April discussion document on the need for organisational renewal, the ANC acknowledges that since it took power in 1994 it has struggled to change from a resistance movement to an efficient governing party that succeeds in “effecting fundamental socio-economic transformation of our society”.
The paper goes on to say the party’s elective conference in Bloemfontein in December must be a turning point for the movement, “because unless we halt the decay” – which it blames on factionalism and ill-discipline within its ranks – “we will soon reach a stage where it becomes irreversible”.
Respected political analyst and author Allister Sparks believes this tipping-point could be reached when the ruling party’s national vote falls below 55 per cent of the electorate, as a sense of real vulnerability would then set in among party members.
In a recent column for South Africa’s BusinessDay newspaper, he surmised this drop in support could be reached as early as the 2014 general election, given that recent electoral trends showed the ANC was steadily losing voters.
It will also be the first election when South Africans born after the end of apartheid, who only know the ANC for its governance role, can vote.
From 69.69 per cent of the vote in the 2004 general election, support for the ANC fell to 65.9 per cent in 2009 and 62 per cent in last year’s municipal election – a loss of 7.69 per cent over the seven years.
The opposition Democratic Alliance party has been the main beneficiary from this voter disillusionment. Over the same period its share of the vote has grown from 12.3 per cent in 2004 to 23.9 per cent last year.
And the party led by Helen Zille is already gearing up for the mother of all election battles, releasing its own economic vision for the country late last month that plays on the ANC’s policy weaknesses.
Aside from electing new leaders at December’s Bloemfontein conference, the ANC will also adopt a raft of new policies it hopes will speed up the economic transformation the country seeks, and as a result reverse its own dwindling fortunes.
To that end the ruling party held a policy conference towards the end of June where a range of economic and political strategies put forward by ANC provincial structures were tabled for discussion.
However, rather than ending the four-day conference held near Johannesburg with a coherent way forward in terms of economic policy, many local analysts maintained that uncertainty and confusion were the only concrete trends to emerge.
A document initially called Second Transition was one of the main strategies under discussion. South Africa president Jacob Zuma said in opening the conference that the second transition (it refers to economic freedom for the masses rather than political) would make the country a “true democratic developmental state”. “The time has come to do something more drastic to accelerate change towards economic transformation and freedom,” he said.
Zuma maintained the current willing-buyer willing-seller approach to land reform needed to be changed because it was not working.
The government claims that up to 87 per cent of South Africa’s agricultural land is still in the hands of white farmers, and its original plan to have 30 per cent of disputed arable land transferred back to the black majority by 1999 has failed.
The notion that some form of nationalisation in the mining sector may still emerge was also prevalent among those who watched the proceedings closely, despite an independent report commissioned by the ANC stating that such an approach would not hold favourable outcomes for South Africa.
Zuma cryptically said that South Africa had to “go deeper” than nationalisation and that the state needed to capture an equitable share of mineral resources. This has been interpreted by many international investors and South Africans that more state involvement in the economy is imminent.
One person who claimed to know exactly which direction the ANC is heading in is FW de Klerk, South Africa’s last white president.
At an FW de Klerk Foundation discussion in Johannesburg in late July, he said the ANC and its alliance partners, trade union federation Cosatu and the South African Communist Party, wanted to transform the country into a communist state.
“The Mandela and Mbeki era of reconciliation is over,” he said. “White males are quite unjustly blamed for the continuing triple crisis of unemployment, inequality and poverty.”
So now all eyes have turned to Bloemfontein and the ANC leadership battle. The ANC’s national executive committee has insisted that nominations for the party’s top positions won’t be discussed until October.
But the factionalism the ANC blames for much of its woes has already reared its head, with a number of senior members backed by branch structures apparently willing to challenge incumbent party president Zuma if nominated.
For the ANC facing into a factional leadership battle, the 2014 general election appears a long way off. But if the party fails to adopt clear and coherent economic strategies at that elective conference in December, its 2014 election campaign trail could well be the most treacherous it has travelled.
BILL CORCORANwrites for The Irish Times from South Africa