The ANC’s 55th national conference — which convened on 16 December at Nasrec — is crucially important for all South Africans. This is because, in South Africa’s one-party-dominant democracy, the real power resides not in parliament, but in the ANC’s five-yearly national conferences.
It is at the national conferences, and not in parliament, that the leadership of the country is decided, and future policy guidelines are laid down.
The conference adjourned on 20 December and reconvened on 5 January to adopt its resolutions — the contents of which have still not been disclosed to the public.
The centrality of the national conferences emerged very clearly at the 52nd national conference in Polokwane in December 2007. A “coalition of the wounded” — led by the South African Communist Party (SACP), trade union federation Cosatu, the ANC Youth League and others opposed to then president Thabo Mbeki — won the support of 60% of the delegates — and was thus able to seize control of the ANC.
Their victory quickly led to the demise of Mbeki and his orthodox Gear macroeconomic policies and to the end of the Xhosa ascendancy in the ANC. More seriously, it opened the way to accelerated radical economic transformation, to rampant corruption and to then president Jacob Zuma’s attempts to capture key institutions of the state and state-owned enterprises.
At the 54th national conference in 2017, Cyril Ramaphosa won the presidency of the ANC by a handful of votes against Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, who many observers believed to be a surrogate for her former husband and the factions that had led the ANC since 2007.
The 55th national conference will similarly have a crucial impact on South Africa. The 4 426 voting delegates elected Ramaphosa for another term as president of the ANC with a comfortable majority of 56.62% against former minister of health Zweli Mkhize – who was widely regarded as the candidate of the RET (radical economic transformation) faction.
The delegates also chose the ANC’s seven top leaders, including Paul Mashatile as deputy president; Gwede Mantashe (SACP chairman and minister of resources and energy) as national chairman; Fikile Mbalula (minister of transport) as secretary general; Nomvula Mokonyane (former premier of Gauteng) as first deputy secretary general; Maropene Ramokgopa as second deputy secretary general; and Gwen Ramokgopa (former mayor of Tshwane) as treasurer general.
The strengthening of Ramaphosa’s position — with solid support in the new leadership team — was generally welcomed by markets and by most South Africans as the best of a number of far worse outcomes. Anomalously, the top seven do not include a single representative from KwaZulu-Natal — despite the fact that the province sends more delegates to the national conference than any other province.
Ramaphosa emerges from the national conference in a much stronger position. The ANC is rallying around him as its best election prospect for 2024 and the Phala Phala scandal — which seemed to pose such a deadly threat to his career only a few weeks ago — is now receding rapidly into the background.
However, his campaign to restore the integrity of the ANC — which is the central plank in his platform to “renew” the organisation — will be seriously, and perhaps fatally, complicated by the election to the top seven and to the 80-member national executive committee of a significant number of cadres who have been tainted with corruption by the Zondo commission.
The outcome of the national conference’s other principal task of charting the ANC’s course for the next five years will not be clear until it publishes its resolutions, which have yet to be released. Of particular interest will be the resolution on the ANC’s “step-aside” policy for members who have been charged with criminal offences.
The general line that the resolutions will take has, however, already been spelt out in the proposals of the July 2022 policy conference and in Ramaphosa’s statement at the end of the conference’s first session.
The policy conference based its recommendations on the latest iteration of the ANC’s strategy and tactics document, which sets out the organisation’s ideological assessment of the progress that it has made with its national democratic revolution (NDR) since the previous national conference.
This includes an analysis of the balance of forces and the steps that must be taken to correct errors that are impeding progress toward the national democratic society — the ANC’s shining city on the hill — which will have a mixed economy in which jobs, land and wealth will be shared on the basis of demographic proportionality, thus resolving the national grievance caused by colonialism and apartheid.
The strategy and tactics document includes heavy dollops of Marxist class analysis, criticism of the West, capitalism and neoliberalism, as well as expressions of concern over the impact that corrupt “lumpen” class elements have had on support for the ANC.
The bad news is that the ANC is still doggedly committed to the NDR and, 29 years after 1994, to a continuing “struggle against colonialism of a special type (white South Africans) in which the liberation of blacks in general, and Africans in particular” is the strategic intent.
The good news is that the ANC remains committed to the Constitution and constitutional democracy — against increasing demands for “parliamentary democracy” in which the majority in parliament would be able to do what it pleases.
In his speech, Ramaphosa recommitted himself to the NDR. He referred to the conference’s discussions on proposals “that will accelerate radical social and economic transformation” and to its deliberations “on the actions we must take to, once and for all, address the original sin of land dispossession”.
The conference had “agreed on measures to accelerate land reform … not only because justice demands it, but because it is a necessary condition for the growth of an inclusive economy.”
As is now so often the case, there is a yawning gulf between rhetoric and reality in the ANC’s suggested way forward:
- There are visions of accelerating “the rollout of mobile infrastructure and fibre in rural areas and townships” in a country with a diminishing ability to generate basic electricity.
- There is recognition of the “need to resolve the load-shedding crisis” at a conference that had just elected as national chairman Mantashe – who had precipitated Andre de Ruyter’s resignation from Eskom by accusing him of conspiring to overthrow the state. Mantashe, who opposes the transition from coal-powered stations, also disagreed vehemently with De Ruyter’s view that green energy is the only long-term solution to the energy crisis.
- The president, who had for years presided over the ANC’s deployment committee, insisted that “we need to employ people because they are competent and committed, not because they are connected”. At the same time, his call for a “new cadre” of recruits raised serious doubts regarding his willingness and ability to address one of the main causes of dysfunctionality within the state and state-owned enterprises.
This sense of unreality has continued into the ANC’s key 8 January anniversary statement, which is a melange of nostalgia for the revolutionary struggle and a wish list of all the things that need to be done to achieve a better life for the increasingly desperate majority of South Africans.
One comment that rang true in Ramaphosa’s closing statement to the national conference was his recognition that “corruption within the ANC is a dire threat to the continued existence of our organisation and to the future of the NDR”.
In his second term as ANC president, he will have to consider how he will be able to achieve his two apparently contradictory primary goals of bringing integrity and renewal to the organisation on the one hand — and maintaining the unity of the ANC on the other. If previous performance is any guide, he will simply continue to give lip service to both goals.
The reality with which the president will have to contend is the continuing presence of so many people in the top leadership of the ANC who have been tainted by corruption. But, as he warned, “this conference has recognised, we have no choice — we either deal with corruption or we perish”.
He is quite right. If the ANC does not address corruption — and if it does not reconsider the disastrous impact of its NDR ideology on prospects for economic growth and social wellbeing — the 55th national conference might well be the last occasion on which it will have the power to determine the future leadership and policies of the country.
Winning back the trust of South Africans will be the hardest task ahead for the ANC and will require decisive action that puts the interests of the people and the country before the party.
Dave Steward is chairperson of the FW de Klerk Foundation
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