Saving the ANC from itself

Not too long ago I had a conversation with an ageing Bra Mike at Prestige Park, as Diepkloof Extension is known. I was gobsmacked when he asserted that President Jacob Zuma is the last of the African nationalists who truly believes in serving the people and putting their interests first.

“After him, this country is just going to be just another tragic African story of self-destruction,” he said.

“What we have now, especially in the ANC, is everybody for himself and no god for us all. After 2010, there will be neither the ANC as we have known it or African unity. We are headed for disaster.”

Much as I do not agree with everything that Bra Mike said, I can relate and identify with it. The thing is, freedom and democracy has destroyed the soul of the oldest liberation movement in Africa.

The African National Congress, which will be marking and celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2012, is now, rightly or wrongly, a morally dead organisation. It seems to have been better and noble during the decades of the struggle against apartheid.

For many people and increasingly disgruntled communities, it is one of the worst things, for one must call it that, to have happened in the history of African people.

Many of us are the children of this once noble organisation, whether we carried its membership cards or not.

It has always been the vehicle through which history and memory was preserved in the face of racism and exploitative capitalism that threatened to destroy the history and memory of a noble pre-colonial history and memory.

To be a member of the ANC, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, signified a high level of self-sacrifice, compassion, commitment and, above all, love for African people.

The ANC was the tie that knotted us all together.

It affirmed the best of what selfless and committed African men and women were in the worst of circumstances faced by man. Even when people were trapped in poverty, unemployment, disease, homelessness, hunger and all other evils of apartheid, they upheld and promoted values of love and selflessness as espoused and embodied by the ANC.

People connected to the ANC believed in integrity and … wait for it … giving oneself to the liberation of their people, first. And their people, both members and followers, looked up to them for leadership.

There were no stories of people joining the organisation to make themselves rich and pilfer the coffers of the organisation because they desired money, position, status and power.

It is important to remind ourselves of the past, without romanticising it, to allow people to see how low so-called ANC leadership has sunk.

Over the past nineteen years, with the release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners, the unbanning of the ANC and other political organisations and the return of those exiled, we Africans have seen the worst.

Many of those who stayed behind took risks to match the resilience and the commitment of those who were in jail and forced into exile. The 1990 historical turning point has afforded us the opportunity to know that former political prisoners and those exiled are just ordinary human beings.

Now we know that our former liberators are nothing special.

Ah, now we know that Thabo Mbeki et al are not gods but ordinary human beings. It is the last 15 years that have also unleashed the worst among “inxiles” — those who never left the country.

They, too, have embraced the new culture of looting from state resources. People that should be improving the quality of life of the people they purport to love and serve.

When we watch what has happened to the soul of the ANC, it is difficult to remain not depressed and normal. We live in a very sick country.
When the ANC is overwhelmed by a moral disease, it means the whole country is sick.

Of course, the major cause of this disease is well-known to everybody in the ANC and those outside looking in. There are a lot of documents that have been circulated which point to the deep-rooted problem of love for money and what it can buy.

The major problem with the ANC today is that it has lost its moral vision and values of selflessness, sacrifice and putting the interests of the people and country first.

Its leadership has, largely, succumbed to the lure of exploitative and self-serving capitalist values. The original values of integrity, self-sacrifice and putting the people first have been displaced by power struggles, interpersonal clashes and desire to gain access to money, money and more money in the state coffers.

This is what has reduced this noble organisation into the worst things to have happened to the history of the African struggle for self-determination.

The collapse of the ANC, especially its moral centre, means that everything the struggle was about has amounted to nothing. We have allowed this evil to continue by not doing anything about it, let alone speak up loudly and clearly.

The rot in the ANC is caused, largely, by the character of the people who make up the organisation today. For the past 10 years, the general secretariat of the ANC itself has delivered reports and produced documents that chronicle the sickness in the organisation.

It is time that we not only hope that it will be addressed by the time the organisation turns 100 years old but did something to help save it.
There is so much to do to heal the ANC and so little time.

The failure or disintegration of the ANC would be a serious indictment on those who truly believe in African liberation and self-determination.

Let us do something. It does help!