The real reason why the ANC is unable to hold Zuma to account

The party's vision of itself as a 'revolutionary force' fails to acknowledge that power resides in an open society, writes Ray Hartley

It was there in the language of Gwede Mantashe. Rising for the umpteenth time to announce that the ANC stood behind President Jacob Zuma, he said:

"We are a movement. We are not a contentious organisation of people who are pulled together by their conscience, no. We are an ideological organisation; that’s why when we report on work we’re doing, it is to improve ideological clarity of members of the ANC."

This vision of the ANC as a "movement" which must "improve ideological clarity" of members is exactly what's wrong with the ANC.

There was a time, when the party was in exile with a military wing operating underground and through the mass democratic movement inside the country, when such a vision might have applied.

Such a situation demanded command and control, a heirarchy with military characteristics. It called for secrecy and the ability to operate through stealth. The consequences of doing otherwise would be severe - jail or even death at the hands of the apartheid government's death squads.

In 1994, South Africa held its first democratic election and in 1996, it signed off on a new constitution.

The introduction of a constitution as the "supreme law of the land" meant that no political party would ever be able to claim supreme authority in the way in which liberation movements had when seizing power in other countries.

The political measure that had been subjective - based on an assessment of the "balance of forces" and who was seizing which "terrain of struggle" - was supplanted by an objective measure: whether or not political actions built an open democratic society within the framework of the constitution.

It was at this moment that the ANC ought to have understood that it needed to reform. It needed to cease being a "movement" operating in the shadows. It needed to become a modern political party that mastered the new terrain of open democratic contest through the open structures of a free society.

In the mid-nineties, I covered Parliament for the Sunday Times. What was striking to me was the attitude which the party adopted towards this institution. It was not the country's supreme organ of democratic expression so much as just "another terrain of struggle" which had to be manipulated to best implement the party's "revolutionary agenda".

As journalists, we very quickly learnt that all the crucial decisions were taken at a session of MPs which met behind closed doors once a week - the ANC caucus. Here the ANC's factions fought it out and agreed on a common front. After the internal blood-letting, an illusion of unity was projected to cover the wounds, and so no ANC MP ever spoke their mind freely on any matter. If they did, they were hounded out.

A young progressive ANC MP named Andrew Feinstein broke ranks and questioned the arms deal. He was hounded out of the party and eventually left the country.

The ANC caucus was the real parliament. What unfolded in the National Assembly chamber was a charade where the likes of Marthinus van Schalkwyk - then the leader of the official opposition - and his tiny band of MPs participated as a side-show with Tony Leon holding an even smaller proportion of the vote.

So you had the grand democracy, the best constitution in the world, an open and transparent Parliament and institutions of accountability. But down in the engine room was an entrenched majority party which prevented its members from freely expressing themselves and which regarded Parliament as a mere "terrain of struggle" to be manipulated into implementing its agenda.

Of course, there was a reason for this lack of reform. The old hyenas of apartheid were a fading force, but there were new hyenas keen to manipulate the party into creating an environment in which their shady accumulative deeds would have political cover.

The Marxists and the hyenas shared a common enemy: The "bourgeois" democracy and its structures of accountability that had replaced apartheid.

Who better to lead this war against the open society than a man matured in the ANC's security infrastructure, one with a serious grievance against the organs of accountability? Jacob Zuma was a natural.

That was then. This is now.

The ANC remains unreformed and doggedly continues to believe that it is the "motive-force" which makes the country tick. But the reality has changed.

It turns out that the force of openness, accountability and transparency that was released in 1994 is far more resilient than the Machiavellian party bosses believed. Despite two decades of being sidelined, ignored, openly questioned, attacked and contradicted, the constitution stands taller than ever.

The increasingly outspoken Constitutional Court remains its defender, not hesitating to tell the ANC's supreme leader when he has overstepped the mark.

The judiciary, despite the clumsy efforts of the partisan Judicial Services Commission to install faces more friendly to the ANC, is more independent than ever. Day after day, it rules against the attempted malfeasance of assorted ministers and securocrats attached to the president.

Parliament is no longer the charade it once was. These days, it is host to powerful political expressions from the opposition.

It is as if the democratic society fashioned in 1994 will be born, no matter how inept or devious the obstetricians.

Why is this so? The answer lies in the nature of the society that was born alongside the new constitutional order.

The majority of South Africans experienced freedom for the first time. The freedom to buy property, start businesses, admit their children to schools, read or watch the products of free expression in the media, travel freely, associate with whomever they wished to associate, join trade unions.

When this freedom was interfered with - when business could not be conducted freely because of corruption, or jobs were lost because of poor economic performance, or the constitution that had granted freedom was threatened - the people reacted through the structures of the free society.

They protested, they aired their opinions on talk radio, they started NGOs that challenged unfair taxes, they tweeted their anger and frustration, they shared their unhappiness on social networks.

Then, in the 2016 local government election, in several of the country's major urban areas, they voted for someone else. And, in rural areas previously safe zones for the rural party, majorities were downsized.

This restless, free electorate now holds the fate of the country's political parties - and its destiny - in its hands.

The failure to understand this profound shift in where power lies, renders the ANC unable to focus its energy correctly. It fulminates against the CIA when it is criticised by the residents of Soweto over e-tolls.

What the ANC appears not to understand is the "ratchet effect" of this growing movement to return the country to its core democratic values. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle. Repression, closing down a free press and limiting free speech in Parliament are no longer options. They may be attempted, but they are bound to be defeated.

In this environment, seeing this outbreak of free expression as a CIA plot by "counter-revolutionary" forces condemns the ANC to a diminishing share of the popular vote and limits its ability to manoeuvre in the fluid environment of this open society that is being born with or without its consent.

It is extremely doubtful that the ANC is capable of reform. It is like an addict promising herself that everything will change tomorrow. For now, one last act of nihilism. For such beings, tomorrow seldom comes.

This column first appeared on RDM