How a crisis-ridden ANC can reinvent its primary colours

23 August 2015 - 02:04 By William Gumede

Getting rid of Zuma will not necessarily lead to the renewal the party needs. Instead, real change will require that a majority acknowledge the problems, writes William Gumede Since World War 2, no African liberation or independence movement has managed to renew itself without first being voted out of power. Can the ailing ANC - which belongs to that family of African political parties - buck this depressing trend and successfully engineer a turnaround?The very first step needed is for a groundswell majority within the ANC to acknowledge that the party is in deep crisis and urgently needs to transform itself.story_article_left1At the moment, however, many ANC leaders and members believe there is no crisis and that the party is fine, thank you very much. Some say the troubles are temporary and the ANC will "self-correct" over time. Just be patient, they say.There are, of course, those who do not care about the chaos in the ANC, because it benefits them richly: they can grab government positions, contracts and assets.Others may readily acknowledge problems in the party, but blame this on a few "rotten apples" and say these can easily be fixed. In this vein, some argue that all it needs is to get rid of President Jacob Zuma and errant leaders and the party will be back on track.But so institutionalised is the crisis in the ANC that just getting rid of Zuma as leader of the ANC, however necessary such a step may be to overhaul the party, is unlikely to bring the required change.What will it take for a sufficient number of ANC members, supporters and leaders to "get it"? Kgalema Motlanthe, the former ANC and South African deputy president, said in an interview with the Financial Times in 2013 that the ANC crisis "must get worse first", before members, supporters and leaders act decisively.If one imagines that sufficient numbers of influential ANC members, supporters and leaders finally "get it", what should the strategy be to turn the party around?The reality is that, now it is in power, the ANC's culture - the rules, behaviours and attitudes daily practised by ordinary members, supporters and leaders in the party and government - do not correspond with the ANC's formally stated strategies, public statements and documents.full_story_image_hleft1Without an immediate wholesale leadership change, the ANC cannot renew itself. Not only should the president of the party be changed, but most of the current national, provincial and local leadership as well. A special elective conference is urgently necessary, or the party's scheduled national general council must be turned into such.Since its 2007 Polokwane national conference, the ANC has seen the election of "slates" around key leaders. The party now needs a "slate" of leaders for democratic change. This will mean that a "change" coalition of ANC leaders, members and supporters must be forged to lead a rejuvenation across the party's structures.story_article_left3A clean break from the current leadership practices in the party may mean the ANC will have to elect a new leadership that jumps a whole generation. The appointment of someone such as Gauteng premier David Makhura as party president could be part of a clean sweep. Any newly elected leadership collective must embody the best of the original values, behavioural patterns and practices of ANC culture.A new ANC "change" leadership will have to introduce reforms to give life to the party's best formal rules, practices and values - the ones that now are only nostalgically referred to as part of a bygone golden era.But the new leadership must introduce a new language for our times also. Speaking about the "national democratic revolution", for example, is really outdated, and does not speak to the challenges of our times. To signify the change, the party may have to rebrand itself: repositioning its colours, insignia and labels to signify a change of direction, ideas and future.A new leadership will have to engage with leaders, members and supporters across South Africa, selling to them the changes needed to the culture.These new leaders will have made strategic partnerships at the provincial and municipal level with like-minded ANC leaders, members and supporters, and will let them be the champions of the new behaviours at the local level.Leaders in the party who espouse the "good" culture, from the national executive to the lowly village leader, must be rewarded. Those who don't must be got rid of.To shift behaviour patterns the ANC will have to introduce accountability in its culture. To show their resolve, new leaders could target key leaders who are perceived as "untouchable", for public discipline for their transgressions - to discourage those on lower levels from such behaviour.block_quotes_start The situation in the ANC at present benefits too many leaders richly, so they will oppose any reforms block_quotes_endA core aspect of any renewal must be to democratise the internal workings of the ANC. A key reform will be to introduce the idea of merit - based on ability, hard work and honesty rather than political connections, long struggle years and patronage - into the ANC's internal election processes.The elements of such reforms must include transparency in ANC internal leadership elections. Branch elections must at all times happen by secret vote, rather than through a public show of hands.Any ANC member should be able to stand as president. And in such a new system, every ANC member must be able to vote in their individual capacity, not through a branch, or by sending a proxy to a national conference.A system could be introduced whereby nominated candidates must be able to have a minimum number of verified nominees. Let's take an arbitrary figure of, say, 1000 individual ANC members.story_article_right2Such a new system would be like the US primary system, or the method introduced by the French Socialist Party in 2011, which gave all members and supporters a chance to vote for the party's presidential candidate.The presidential candidates must publicly debate their policy positions. Nominated presidential candidates compete at provincial level through competitive elections. The winners of the provincial voting contests must then compete in a national contest.Changing the culture is not going to be easy. Gwede Mantashe, in his secretary-general's report to the ANC's 2012 Mangaung national conference, said the bad culture "had become institutionalised". As far back as 2005, in his secretary-general's report to the ANC's national general council, Motlanthe said the "cancer" had manifested at all levels of the ANC.However, bringing in an entirely new leadership is likely to be stiffly opposed: the situation in the ANC at present benefits too many leaders richly, so they will oppose any such reforms.It is likely that those who oppose transformation in the party will fight back, and it may mean more breakaways from the ANC. However, breakaways made up of rogues may help cleanse the party and set it on a better path.Gumede is associate professor, School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand. He is the author of the bestselling "Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times"..

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