JONATHAN JANSEN | Oh how the mighty ANC has fallen

The ANC’s 55th national conference offered a powerful teaching moment for those open to learning about the state of the country and the once powerful movement that promised us freedom. The first lesson I learnt was just how far the movement had fallen from its high ideals as the moral beacon of the liberation struggle. As one commentator pointed out, the problem is not so much that Cyril Ramaphosa won re-election as president of the party, it is that his competitor, Zweli Mkhize, came so close. Former minister Mkhize has been credibly accused of corruption in the so-called Digital Vibes scandal and yet had the temerity to stand for high office in the ANC with the possibility, had he won, of becoming the next president of the republic. Think about that.

The primary lesson learnt is this: in the modern-day ANC it really does not matter that you are criminally accused because right and wrong is no longer of importance. Small wonder that those who were forced to step-aside cried "hypocrisy". They were right, for what matters more than anything else is the raw quest for power while pretending that you are against corruption. How the president can, with a straight face, speak out about corruption while more than one member in the newly elected "Top 7" has serious ethical and legal questions hanging over their heads is beyond me. But here we are. Up is down, out is in, and wrong is right.

The second lesson is that the ANC cannot organise the proverbial piss-up in a brewery. The chaos late into the night and early morning, when nominations were being made, was something hard to observe. No scheduled meeting started on time. Shouting and screaming and dancing from the floor interrupted the nominations process for hours on end. No doubt some of the comrades were drunk. It was cringeworthy to watch officials trying to count waving name-tags in the melee on the ground. 

A party older than a century cannot in 2022 get itself to organise in an efficient, professional manner something as simple as counting. Utter incompetence, and as I said on social media, for the first time I understood how we landed at stage 6 in the still unresolved management of the electricity crisis. What I did wonder as I watched the chaos was why we were not already at stage 26. You want to understand why Durban has sewerage in its beach waters at the height of the summer season? Here’s the reason: raw political power matters much more than service to the people; a telling example from the conference is how few people showed up at the scheduled commissions because the real battles were not about policy position but about personal power and slate politics. 

There was a third and, for me, very sad lesson. All of the top 7 were black African comrades. In a perfect world, who cares and who counts people in this way? Except our reality is anything but perfect. Many of us were attracted to the ANC precisely because of its policies of broad-based inclusion and social cohesion. There was once a place in the sun for all South Africans whether white or black, Christian or Muslim and so on. What message does this sad picture send? To hell with the rest of you. Power first, people second or not at all. 

Many of us struggle hard to build inclusion into the cultures and appointments of our companies and campuses. When we struggle to do this perfectly, any number of government departments come down on you like a tonne of bricks. But without a hint of blush, here a powerful movement does the exact opposite in the public representation of itself. 

The fourth and important lesson I walked away with was this: the ANC is no longer the centre of the political universe. In moral authority and political reach, it represents a smaller majority than before. The party is likely to experience a huge shock in the 2024 elections pushing the country into coalition politics which has its own problems, if any lessons are to be learnt from the metros — a subject for another day. The sooner we dismiss the nonsense from party agitators that the country will fall apart unless the ANC leads, the better for SA.