Change the ANC voting system

By Fumani Mboweni

When a person goes for a job interview, it is to ascertain if he/she is good enough to fulfill the requirements of a particular role. The incumbent is drilled to see if he/she is best suited from among other candidates to do the job. This process can go on for a while as the interviewee is called in more than once to meet different people who are at different levels in the organisation.

The ANC is robbing us of this opportunity to make an informed decision as to who is best suited to be the president of the organisation and, therefore, the country. I do agree with the ANC Youth League that the succession debate needs to be opened up so that the individual candidates can begin to lobby within the organisation. I would like to take that suggestion even further and propose that this process be made public, with the masses the incumbent intends leading also getting to air their views as to the suitability of the candidates. Just like in a job interview, the candidates need to show us the qualities they have and convince us that they should lead this great country of ours.

I believe it is for the same reasons of screening the candidates to decide upon their ability to lead the ANC and the nation that the ANC itself is in the process of establishing an in-house electoral commission. We are told that part of the commission’s duty is to screen the nominees in elections and to see if they are fit for office. It is a noble process that the ANC is embarking upon, but a few challenges exist. One of the biggest challenges in the face of the current ANC is that only a few will determine who is fit to run for office and who is not. This may lead to an even bigger divide as some might believe the electoral commission is being used to make sure that only people belonging to certain groupings run for office. By allowing people to openly lobby and state their positions I think the ANC members will eventually get to make informed decisions on who should lead – decisions that are not based on just the popularity of a candidate.

We need to take into account that the decision on the final candidate should be taken to a vote by the ANC members at an electoral conference. Another innovation should be to let members vote instead of branches voting. The branch system is flawed in the sense that it does not allow democracy to fully prevail. It allows the strongest individuals to dictate the way the branch will vote. Allowing individual members to vote will go a long way in eradicating the divide that is currently killing the ANC. The ANC cannot see themselves as the custodians of democracy when their internal voting system is not fully democratic.

Our country and our democracy need to grow, and what better way to do so than by instilling the values of democracy within the organisation that is claiming it will lead until Jesus comes back? Before the local elections of 2011, I attended an ANC function at the Sandton Convention Centre where President Zuma alluded to the fact that the reason the ANC is always in the papers is because their processes are so transparent. I disagree with him as we do not know what happens in the back offices of the branches and Luthuli House. We only know what the media tells us and this is not in the best interest of the ruling party. We hear now that Tokyo Sexwale wants to be president, but we do not know how factual that is. We hear that Kgalema Motlanthe will decline his nomination to run for president, but we do not know how true that it is either.

Why not open up the succession debate so that we can stop hearing from the rumour mill? We need a more transparent nomination system and voting system for the leadership of the ANC. The people of this country deserve better than what we have been getting. We need a ruling party that understands that as much as it is an autonomous organisation, it represents each and every South African.

Fumani Mboweni is a businessman from Gauteng with a strong interest in politics and current events. Read his blog at www.mabutana.wordpress.com