The ANC is not a democratic institution: On party lists and democratic centralism

The ANC is not and never has been a democratic organisation. It may be democratically elected by popular vote but this does not mean the structures and institutions that govern it are democratic.

Criticism of the ANC is deemed to be “… giving notice to leave the ANC” as stated by ANC NEC member Jeff Radebe recently. And this is where Lekota is also wrong in that he says that the new leaders are steering the organisation “away from the established policy priorities and customary democratic norms of the ANC”.

Any organisation that cites ‘democratic centralism’ as a decision making strategy has Stalinist overtures at the worst and Trotskyist overtures at best. In ‘democratic centralism’ everyone can speak about an issue but when the central authority makes a decision it must be abided by or risk being disciplined.

When this is coupled with a part list system it means that the party has the right to remove anyone from their list at any time. So if you are ANC and you criticise the ANC publicly you may well lose your job. The party list system is flawed and arises from struggle politics internal to the ANC in exile.

The ANC abroad knew that if they demanded a representative system, local struggle heroes and local opinion leaders (including a number of Traditional Leaders) would have been elected over those who had been abroad. They set up a system to ensure they had posts to come back to. This is not meant to sound conspiratorial, just merely a move on the part of the ‘vanguard’ to ensure they would play a role in the New South Africa. The list system should be scrapped.

I would love to see a shift to a constituency based system of separate ridings where candidates are answerable to their voters. This would give rural communities much more voice in politics as elected leaders would arise from these communities. Today the urban areas dictate to the rural and national development is guided by urbanites.

Elected officials would be voted in directly and they would not have to answer to party structures if they disagreed. Sure the party in charge could remove party membership or even cabinet posts in this system but they would still sit in government and still have to represent their riding.

But of course the political elite have an interest in not being answerable to the public.