Susan Booysen - The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power

The African National Congress is light years beyond the liberation movement of old. It remains a juggernaut, but its control and dominance are no longer watertight. The ANC lives the contradictions of weaknesses, cracks and factions while retaining its colossal status. As a party-movement it draws on its liberation credentials, and extracts immense power from its deep anchorage in South Africas people. It is immersed in electoral politics that marks the state of its overwhelming power cyclically. As government the ANC is the object of protest, but not protest designed to bring the ruling party to its knees. The ANC is in command of the state, yet fails to definitively counter the deficits that make South Africas democracy seem so diluted. Its incredulous and thus far trusting supporters condemn but only rarely punish deployees who do not pass through the eye of the needle.

The ANC and the Regeneration of Political Power unpacks these contradictions. It focuses on four faces of the ANCs political power the organisation, the people, political parties and elections, and policy and government and explores how the ANC has acted since 1994 to continuously regenerate its power.

By 2011-12 the power configurations around the ANC were converging to a conjuncture holding vexing uncertainties. This book presents insights into how South African politics in many ways synonymous with the politics of the ANC is likely to unfold in years and possibly decades to come.

Published in South Africa by:

Wits University Press

1 Jan Smuts Avenue

Johannesburg

www.witspress.co.za

Copyright Susan Booysen 2011

First published 2011

ISBN (print) 978-1-86814-542-3

ISBN (EPUB - IPG) 978-1-86814-781-6

ISBN (EPUB - ROW) 978-1-86814-782-3

ISBN (PDF) 978-1-86814-553-9

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.

Edited by Dick Cloete

Cover design and layout by Hothouse South Africa

Printed and bound by Ultra Litho (Pty) Ltd

Preface

In the 20 years of transitional and confirmed democratic politics in South Africa I traversed two worlds, having been both direct observer and analyst-researcher, and occasional research participant in the processes. First, there is the world of the African National Congress (ANC). When one enters the marquee in Polokwane, the hallowed halls of Gallagher Estate, Esselen Park or the Durban Convention Centre for ANC elective conferences, National General Councils (NGCs), policy conferences, or South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Union (Cosatu) gatherings, one finds the profound, emotive experience of struggle ethos, movement mobilisation against the forces that restrain and prohibit faster progress, and politico-intellectual engagement to explain and propel the present and the future. There is a sense of representation of the people and the advancement of the national democratic revolution, albeit in the contexts of elections and modern government.

A profound awareness in the movement of the responsibilities that come with being a spoke in the wheel of democratic centralism is omnipresent. Internal debates to advance the project of far-reaching transformation are embraced. The outside environment is often seen as hostile, embodying forces that continuously threaten the mission of the ANC as liberation movement-party. The ANC frequently faults that outside world for disregarding the impact of apartheid-racism and colonialism, and the profound progress that the ANC has recorded since 1994. Protection, consolidation and extension of gains made in the time since the early 1990s are as paramount as the projection of the tasks that remain. It is a central charge for the ANC not just to demonstrate connection with the masses, partly mediated by branch and regional structures, but also to persuade the people that the project of transformation is on track. In ANC parlance, this is the time of the national democratic revolution and there is continuous progress.

At times, such as in the aftermath of local government election 2011, there is profound trepidation that this world of the gradual revolution is becoming the subject of voter apprehension and that scrutiny in the electoral inter-party battleground is gradually penetrating the inner sanctum of the ANCs deep relationship with the people.

The other world is that of critical observation and analysis. Here the observer-researcher needs to negotiate the route between counter-truths, using both confidence and rootedness to link trends and occurrences. The world of critical observation constructs the bigger picture and discerns the trends, assessing how the building blocks of the ANCs hegemonic power project of close to a century have materialised in the period in government power. It is a shifting target that is being analysed. The answers are often at variance with the officially-projected ANC perspectives.

The book straddles these two worlds, but is unapologetically analytical. It builds on the empathy of understanding the struggles and achievements, along with deferred dreams and frustrations. It moves to analyses of power, victories, strategy, engineering, manipulation, denials and corrections, obfuscation and causes for celebration. Anchored in this world, the book focuses on discerning the bigger picture, which transcends the daily and monthly variances in who is in power and who in favour with those who are in power. It is a project on the ANC in elections and opposition, in multiple relations with the people, in government, policy and the state. The writing was finalised in the aftermath of the 2011 local government elections. There were just four months to go to the ANCs January 2012 centenary and just over a year to its Mangaung elective conference.

Upon reflecting on political power, I realised the extent to which much of my scholarly work over the years whether on transitional negotiations, elections and party politics, policy, the institutional configuration of government, or intra-ANC and alliance intrigues concerned aspects of the ANC aspiring to, and its use and regeneration of, political power. My research and analytical inputs over the 20-year period that the book covers ranged from scholarly articles and book chapters, to opinion pieces and many media analyses. One thread ran through them that of political power. It made sense to pull cohering observations, research and analyses together into the framework of the ANC and political power, the lifeblood of politics of state, party and people. Some of the chapters have their roots in previous analyses. In all instances these were extensively reworked to assess the ANCs contemporary processes of the regeneration of political power. They were supplemented with a range of analyses to deal with additional aspects of ANC power, to arrive at a slate of chapters that deals with four faces of ANC power (organisation, people, party politics and government). The chapters are all anchored in my 20 years-plus of ongoing research and monitoring.