Dark Lords, horcruxes and the lost soul of the ANC

The recent lamentations about the “lost soul of the ANC” reads like something from penultimate instalments of the Harry Potter series. The Dark Lord, which in the ANC, some claim, appears to be Mammon, has split the soul of the organisation. Subsequently various little splinter groups have emerged in possession of the true soul and character of the movement. Indeed, if horcrux lore is true, this doesn’t bode very well for the party.

Those familiar with JK Rowling’s best-selling series would know that the Dark Lord can only be destroyed if and when all these little pieces of “soul” are destroyed, so the best bet is to bring them all together and send them into oblivion. Luckily, this shouldn’t prove to be too difficult and definitely an adventure not quite like that of Harry and his “comrades” — the tripartite alliance seems to be doing a fine job at it themselves.

Bring the nationalists, the communists and the reformists together and, as has been publicly displayed in recent months, they do a fine job at attempting to destroy one another. I’m wondering when we’ll see the introduction of a tripartite sorting hat — the post-apartheid equivalent of a pencil test — to determine which faction members belong to and who should accordingly be purged, boo-ed or publicly attacked.

Very little information is readily available about the horcrux, a form of dark magic, with both wizards and muggles remaining largely uninformed and unschooled in its intricacies. In brief, it is held that this powerful object requires a murder to be committed and then, upon capturing a fragment of the soul, grants immortality to the horcrux-making wizard, something like “until Jesus comes”.

This, when Tokyo Sexwale claimed the Congress of the People was parading and harbouring witches.

If the ANC is serious about regaining its lost soul, it will be well-served by remembering that there are means of destroying a horcrux which would send the piece of soul eternally into oblivion. In particular, it is known that the venom of a basilisk — a mythical giant snake monster — has the potential of bringing such a fate about. For some reason this reminds of the “dead snake” Thabo Mbeki, according to Gumede, embroiled in a “battle for the soul of the ANC”.

The other more sensible option would be for the movement to show “deep remorse” for its actions to undo the horcrux, while unfortunately being exposed once again to the possibility of death. The Dark Lord suffered this fate following a duelling defeat, the equivalent perhaps of an electoral defeat for the ANC.

Cope famously claimed that the ANC’s soul no longer resembles its glory days under Tambo, Luthuli and Mandela, Indeed, the piece residing in Winnie Mandela’s wig seems to have undergone a magnificent transformation.

The present location(s) and state of the ANC’s soul remains elusive, apart from the occasional glimpses captured in the history books. These utterances consigned to dusty books inspire nostalgia and provides quite a bit of “food for thought”.

It makes one wonder what happened to sentiments like those captured in Luthuli’s “If I were Prime Minister” article in Drum, December 1961. The then-ANC president quite movingly claimed that his vision for South Africa does not include expressions like “all-black government” or the “African majority”, preferring instead to use “a democratic majority”. This, he had hoped, would be a non-racial majority, “a non-racial government, consisting of the best men¹ — merit rather than colour counting”.

I find this, personally, to be a far off dream even 15 years into elections in which “a democratic majority” have voted into power a government, but maybe I’m missing something and it warrants further investigation on my part.

There is indeed never a dull moment in this country as the ANC’s internal turmoil and politics more broadly increasingly resembles magical fantasy. One might be tempted to conclude that the Freedom Charter has been replaced by the Harry Potter series.

¹ Luthuli did not, in his article, probably out of convention, include the option “and women”.