The ANC: a broad church no one has the courage to reform

ANC leaders experiencing Damascene conversions on President Jacob Zuma should take a leaf from Martin Luther’s book, argues Tony Leon

Coinciding with the dark times that this week's budget painted of our national condition came a spat that was, literally, bilious in content if not exactly Socratic in its refinement. Interestingly, both participants in this dialogue of the deaf are members of the same political movement, the ANC.

On the junior side was Edward Zuma, son of you-know-who.

Rather laughably, he claims to "write in his personal capacity" though of course were it not for the luck of his choice of father, no one would pay the slightest attention to his utterly merit-free ramblings.

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But when the son of the president of South Africa describes a senior statesman of the ruling party, former Mpumalanga premier Mathews Phosa, as "a traitor who makes me want to vomit", then indeed notice is taken.

Repaying Zuma jnr in coins from his own limited rhetorical currency, Phosa refused to engage, describing Edward as "a little piece of vomit".

But the outrage in the presidential circle that led to this mutual loathing had been commenced by Phosa with a headline inaccuracy.

Phosa had detailed a long list of ANC decisions and the president's calumnies and inadequacies of character. He wrote that the decision of parliament's speaker to decline a moment of silence for the families of the "Esidimeni 94" had led to his own "Damascus moment".

A dramatic declaration, except that it wasn't.

The scriptures remind us that the Pauline conversion to which Phosa referred did indeed happen on the road to Damascus.

But Saul, who was a zealous Pharisee persecuting early Christians, following the "sudden light of heaven which flashed around him", fundamentally changed.

He became the Apostle Paul, switched from being the persecutor of Gentiles to becoming a Christian. In the process he became the most important founder of the fledgling Church.

Phosa rather limply ends his philippic against Zuma snr with the lame reminder that he "remains a member of the ANC" - simply one who despises its leadership .

You could fill a fairly large room with ANC eminences - from Trevor Manuel to Ahmed Kathrada to Sipho Pityana - who have called for Zuma to quit, but decline to leave the party that keeps him at its helm.

Perhaps Phosa and Co, particularly with the business interests to which Zuma jnr alluded, actually agrees with Zuma snr on one thing at least: "It's very cold outside the ANC."

block_quotes_start Neither Phosa nor the Save South Africa campaign are exactly made of the stuff of Martin Luther. And one lives in the hope that fundamental political change in the future of South Africa can occur tolerably peacefully block_quotes_end

More benignly, and less cynically, and to push the analogy a little further down an ancient road, it's like the Catholic Church and the pope.

You do not need to be a theology student to know that some pretty ghastly or deeply inadequate people have been elected over the years as supreme pontiff.

But a bad, even a corrupt, pope does not mean dissenting cardinals or even lay members depart the church.

Perhaps, for many, attachment to the 105-year-old ANC is akin to religious affiliation.

It was noteworthy, maybe even rather apt, that in its January 8 statement this year the ANC offered congratulations for the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, which occurs later this year, on October 17.

Appropriate, since the communist rule it ushered in failed within 70 years. Equally, many true believers remained loyal until the bitter end.

But far more significant in terms of both endurance and meaning is October's 500th anniversary of a revolution that endures to this day and which, unlike communism, did remake the known world.

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On October 31 1517, Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg.

Luther was a true believer, appalled at the Catholic Church's essentially fundraising device of selling indulgences.

For his efforts he was convicted as a heretic by the pope, who in turn Luther denounced as the Antichrist.

But Luther split the church and fomented a revolution in Europe that cost a vast number of lives.

Importantly, he also ushered in the conditions for the Reformation.

If the Catholic Church had maintained its monopoly of power then, this seminal event in human history, which led to the intellectual and cultural flowering of Western civilisation, would not have happened, or would probably have been long delayed.

Neither Phosa nor the Save South Africa campaign are exactly made of the stuff of Martin Luther.

And one lives in the hope that fundamental political change in the future of South Africa can occur tolerably peacefully.

But it is difficult to see how, without a fundamental break in the broad church of the ruling party, the change and the much-needed political reformation this country desperately needs, will happen.

Any doubting Thomases only need refer to this week's budget. Plenty of new taxes, zero ideas of how to charge the growth engine needed to drive us forward.

• Leon is a former leader of the opposition and ambassador to Argentina