London - The Comrades have spoken; long live the president, long live the ANC!
Despite the various scenarios of imminent defeat pedalled by some of the doom and gloom merchants of political punditry, 70-year-old Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa decisively won re-election as president of the governing ANC at its elective 55th National Conference on Monday in Nasrec in Johannesburg, perhaps more to the relief of his international supporters and financial markets than his bitterly divided party, let alone the country at large.
Ramaphosa romped home with 2 476 votes against the 1 897 votes of his only rival, his former health minister Zweli Mkhize. Pro-Ramaphosa supporters on the NEC also won many of the key positions, including transport minister Fikile Mbalula who is the new ANC secretary-general.
Paul Mashatile, previously the ANC treasurer-general, has now become the new deputy president.
The exception is Gwede Mantashe, Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, who was narrowly re-elected party chairperson, and as a signed-up member of the fossil fuel and nuclear energy supporters club, partly because his support base is in a coal mining constituency, is a direct threat to South Africa’s much applauded policy of just transition to clean energy away from coal.
The policy since Ramaphosa signed up to it at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 has resulted in Pretoria attracting large sums of concessional funding from the US, UK, the EU, and the latest funding in November – a R9 billion loan from the World Bank and €300m (about R5.4bn) each from the state development agencies of France and Germany.
Ramaphosa and the ANC have extremely difficult choices ahead, both for the party and for the beleaguered country.
Barring a catastrophe, he will lead the ANC into the next general election in 2024 and most likely into a second term in office.
The elephant in the room is the ANC’s waning popular support, especially among the digitised urban youth, who were born well after ANC governance and have no experience of the brutality of the apartheid state.
They increasingly no longer perceive the ANC as the natural party of liberation and transformation, but a party of largesse and self-enrichment.
That downward trend was evident in the November local elections when the ANC’s share of the popular vote sank to a new low at 46.04% – the first time it has dipped below the 50% figure.
It has also been evident in the popular vote in the past two general elections and in voter turnout and apathy, which is a bigger threat to the ANC, which has been in power consecutively for 28 years since the onset of democracy in 1994.
A plethora of pollsters and pundits predict the ANC will lose its overall majority to about 47% in 2024, making it the single largest party. Whether South Africa is sleepwalking into its first dose of wider coalition government is a moot point; 2024 may yet be an election too soon for that.
The reality is that no amount of casuistry and spin doctoring can detract from the fact that both ANC candidates for the party presidency are fundamentally flawed.
Both Ramaphosa and Mkhize are tainted with the stench of scandal and alleged corruption. Neither can claim a moral victory.
Whether Ramaphosa’s seeming triumph turns out to be a pyrrhic victory will depend on whether he can rebuild the moral authority of a 110-year-old party, Africa’s oldest surviving political movement and party, and arrest its flagging support in time for 2024 – a tall, if not impossible, order.
If he fails to rein in corruption and factionalism, then his “victory” could turn out to be very costly indeed.
Political infighting is as old as the founding of the ANC in January 1912 by the visionary leadership quartet of John Langalibalele Dube, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Josiah Tshangana Gumede and Sol Plaatje, together with a motley crew of other stakeholders.
Columbia-educated Pixley ka Isaka Seme, the founding treasurer, then lamented: “We are one people. These divisions, these jealousies, are the cause of all our woes today.”
Contrast that with the theme of the ANC conference last week: “Defend and Advance the Gains of Freedom –Renewal Through Unity”, amid the vitriol spewed by Jacob Zuma supporters and the stalling antics of Zuma himself directed at Ramaphosa, including a private prosecution that has no realistic chance of succeeding.
The factionalism in 1912 was driven more by the consensus-based social conservatism of the quartet nurtured by the missionary schools and churches, to whom anything radical was anathema.
That led to a schism between the ANC and the SACP, which wanted a more radical response to defend the rights and freedoms of all Africans as one people against the white colonialists that ruled South Africa at the time.
How ironic that more than a century later the SACP is still firmly rooted to the ANC, punching well above its weight and arguably co-stalling with others, including disaffected
Zuma supporters and the RET faction, the vital structural reforms needed towards a just transformation of the socio-economy.
There is this myth among the radicals that it was Madiba’s policies that led to the current dire state of the economy and a lot of ordinary South Africans. The evidence strongly suggests otherwise. The first 15 years after 1994 coincided with a remarkable economic recovery and sharp rise in living standards, despite the fact that the fag end of the apartheid state looted the Treasury coffers and rendered the country virtually bankrupt.
GDP growth averaged 5% between 1994 and 2007 (the first time it had done so for that number of years since 1970). Government debt levels halved and a budget surplus was recorded –something the ANC never received due credit or recognition for. This at a time when morally, post-1994 South Africa had an obligation to address the devastating legacy of apartheid.
Post Mandela, the ANC as a party lost the ubuntu values of its African heritage, its founding fathers, its freedom fighters, and the trust of its grassroots supporters.
This culminated in the moral decline of the leadership reaching its pinnacle in state capture, self-enrichment and entitlement – all at the expense of the very people they are supposed to serve.
Without moral renewal and a reversion to the values of ubuntu and the calling of Thuma Mina, no amount of neo-liberal concoctions, market solutions and radical transformation will suffice.
All eyes will be on who makes it to the new Team Ramaphosa, assuming a Cabinet reshuffle takes place.
Will a president tainted by diminished moral authority have the political will and nous to take the difficult decisions, including moving Mantashe from the energy portfolio?
The older generation of South Africans may have been hitherto too forgiving of ANC shortcomings.
The next generations are bound to be less generous and may well hold any future ANC leadership to much greater account.
Parker is a writer and economist based in London
Cape Times
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Media or IOL.