The ANC political mansion has many ideological rooms. If it were not so, Shikota would win

People who complain about the suppression of individual freedom in the ANC often fail to notice that dissenters who want to do as they please are, equally, a threat to the organisation’s unity and African people’s political self-determination and power.

You can see this clearly with the resentment, anger and threat of violence aroused by the possibility of the yet to be launched breakaway party. The splinter of the ANC would, inevitably, mark the end of the ANC and the African unity as we have known it for almost 100 years. In fact, without the ANC, there is no faith, hope or political self-determination and power for the African majority.

The ANC ‘broad church,’ is, essentially, the political Fore-Father’s mansion with many rooms, irrespective of their ideological inclinations. If it were not so it would not have been ‘home for all’ and survived this long.

It is home to the militant, the radical, the liberal, the apathetic, the communist, the socialist, the capitalist, the sell-out, the self-seeker and the non-partisan. It is the glue that holds ALL Africans together. Yet none of this makes it capitalist, communist, socialist or liberal. It is still the ANC, that is, the broad church.

What it is not, just because it is broad and diverse, is homogeneous. In fact, you can find Africans of all persuasions and description in its political mansion with many ideological rooms. You can find the Communists, whose roots lie in white Eastern Europe and were infiltrated into the ANC through Jewish influence. You also find the two-faced, non-violent Indian philosophical strand that has gained a powerful role ever since Mahatma Gandhi set foot on African soil. Significantly, there are Pan-Africanists, too, who rediscovered their political allegiance to the continent after studying in America and Britain.

Yes, there are people and political ideologies from all the corners of the earth that can be found within the ANC, speaking to all people irrespective of race, creed, religion or class background. And while the dissidents claim to bring something new to what was deliberated upon and produced through the Freedom Charter in 1955, there have always been people inside the ANC who have been coming and going because of their subjective interpretation of what the premier documents should mean and represent. Those who understand this find it difficult to appreciate what is new that can be offered by Terror Lekota or Sam Shilowa, for instance. In fact, their political route is failure to learn from history and thus their stance is a repetition of the mistakes committed by PAC founder Robert Sobukwe or UDM’s Bantu Holomisa, if you will.

It is stretching against the elasticity of the ANC’s multi-faceted ideology that connects the so-called Shikota movement, if it is such, to what has happened before. But in terms of policy change they have nothing new to offer. If by new thinking or fresh interpretation of what the Freedom Charter represents we have in mind the old, tired and stale tirade against the liberation movement, then the ANC has absolutely nothing to fear.
It would need a greater threat than, as Women’s League president Angie Motshega has put it, “barking dogs.”

But if you have followed the ANC’s evolution since its unbanning and the release of Nelson Mandela, and if you believe that over the last 15 years it has not undergone any revolutionary change, then you will understand that both Shilowa and Lekota, for instance, are part of the leadership that has made it to be what it is today.

The African people who have voted for the ANC in the last three elections have, mostly, done so because they know and understand that it is, for now, the only unifying party for ALL African people and those who put African majority interests first. The people can see how the big, polyglot, diverse liberation movement is struggling to transform itself into a modern day political party.

However, they are not necessarily troubled because they can see how the Pan-Africanists, the liberals, the capitalists, the Black Consciousness adherents, the socialists, the communists, the sell-outs, the technocrats, the elite and the workers live, work and debate side by side about what is best for the future. They may or may not understand the genuine reason for the threat of the splinter except to see the development as clash of personalities and power mongering. But when you are talking about diversity and democracy, the people understand that it is the greatest outcome out of Polokwane.
In this way, the ANC is a broad church that allows different ideological strands to express themselves and thus it is inevitable that it will undergo stretches and stresses from time to time.

It is an organization that has stood the test of time if you consider that it has been around for almost 100 years. Thus when the people talk about the ANC, they understand that it is a “home for all”, which has enough rooms in its mansion for everybody to find accommodation without leaving the homestead to be a political street child.

It may be regarded as complacency, but the Shikota, for instance, were expected to pay their dues and contest their ideas inside the organisation before they could, like the prodigal son, take their inheritance to challenge and dare the mother body. It would seem there is a measure of disappointment and anger against them in some quarters because they should understand and represent the culture of the organisation better. Then again, the political or ideological elasticity of the ANC is not about sameness or homogeneity.
This is what provides the freedom for some of its wayward sons to want to tear away from its soul.

People who tend to do this are those who are connected deeply to its traditions and thus are not afraid to push and test its tolerance levels. This is the diversity that it is renowned for and has made it to be the ‘broad church’ that has been home for all with its accompanying contradictions.

In the era of the post-1990 ANC, various pockets of homogeneity have developed within the Party, which make up what is now considered ‘factions’ or cabals. Are these pockets or ‘factions’ making the organisation less distinct and posing a threat to its age-old unity?
Well, yes, but mostly in good ways. There is now more space for different voices to speak up and be heard. This has entrenched freedom of thought, speech, expression, choice and association within and without the Party itself.

More people, including the Shikota ‘faction’, can now do as they please much as they will, inevitably, face disciplinary hearings or break away from the mother body. Where, as it is has happened, they violate the rules and regulation of the organisation, this development is not something to be deplored but celebrated. It marks the dawn of freedom of political choice and association.

Whatever loss the breakaway may bring about, they are an outward expression of the ANC constantly reinventing itself into new forms that will, inevitably, see it renew itself into a formidable, modern day, African political party. No one can expect the oldest liberation movement in the African continent to celebrate its first centenary — which happens in 2012 – without undergoing fundamental internal transformation.

So why do some prominent leaders in the ANC feel that the dissenters threaten the unity or homogeneity of the movement? Because the world, their world, is changing and some of them don’t like it. Fortunately, there are others who are not frazzled by this development. They understand that the push for a so-called new ANC cannot come from people who are responsible for what the ANC is today.

If the ANC is to change into something that it has not been since 1994, this change may have to come from a new crop of leadership that is outside the organisation. This is what poses a serious threat to the emergence of a new party – their inherent and instinctive link to the old ANC, warts and all.

Of course, former ANC leaders may quit the party to pretend to be something that they have not been in the last 15 years. But the greatest challenge will be to convince ordinary folks and voters that they are not personally responsible for what the ANC has become, today, under their leadership.

The question remains: if the ANC has changed to be what it is not, where were they all along and what did they do? But there is no doubt that the ANC is changing.

When Nelson Mandela was a young man, the ANC was led by highly educated and snobbish Western educated men who were perhaps not interested in genuine African freedom and political self-determination. When Mandela stepped down from power, it was taken over by yet another slightly different breed of Western educated elite men who understood power and how to wield it on behalf of the people without necessarily consulting with them.

It has now become a true people’s party where the rabbles who are voting members are the ones who, in the name of genuine democracy, dictate the political direction from behind. Nowadays, everything seems to have changed with the bottom lot at the top; that is, the followers telling leaders what to do.
Of course, there always are new possibilities to what can happen to the ANC. Those who disagree with what it has become have, always, had a right to leave. But the African majority will, hopefully, not allow the ANC to be weakened by power struggles to change from its authentic goal, which is the total liberation of African people. To achieve this purpose, ANC unity is paramount and this can only be supported by massive African voter support. In fact, without a strong, united ANC African political self-determination may be a mirage.

It is for this reason that the African majority will, hopefully, continue to love, defend and support the ANC despite the changes and contradictions that it embodies. At the end of the day, the ANC can only be what its ordinary supporters, especially its membership, want it to be.

Whatever that is, it must be to give self-love, dignity and respect to the majority of African people all over the world.