Nkosikhulule Nyembezi
Cape Town - Have you ever noticed that, at first glance, everything looks normal in all the best horror movies? It is a classic scene of the South African spring season.
Look at the events leading to the ANC’s 55th national conference at Nasrec in Johannesburg in December: candidates campaigning in branch meetings across the country, social media buzzing with slate tables emblazoned with candidates’ smiling faces, and other behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings.
Even the predicted election outcome fits a template as familiar as blossoming plants.
Most experts agree that most delegates will re-elect party president Cyril Ramaphosa, even though he will probably lead a sharply divided executive committee.
He will return because he is the incumbent leader – and incumbent leaders almost always secure re-election – and because times are uniquely tough for the party.
Perennial internal divisions, dysfunctional structures, and corruption scandals are all up. Couple that with a president’s entanglement in the Phala Phala farm scandal, a president whose public approval ratings have often plumbed the depths.
All the elements are in place for the ANC to take an election beating in the 2024 national and provincial elections, losing ground even in communities the party once counted as solidly its own.
But look closer at the ANC leadership contenders and the profile of identifiable conference delegates, and you see something else: muted voices that should be calling for accountability.
Because the conference decisions will decide more than just whether the Ramaphosa camp takes greater control of the party – it will also materially affect the daily lives of ordinary people, we have reasons to take notice.
They will also determine whether and how long the party will remain a genuine force to be reckoned with in electoral politics.
It sounds hyperbolic, and that, too, is an ANC tradition. Candidates always tell party members how important it is to get elected.
Many would have heard Ramaphosa’s warning that the party’s ability to retain power was in doubt. He delivered the warning the same week his camp announced a leadership slate packed with his close allies in Luthuli House, excluding all other hopefuls.
They would have assumed that he said in his weekly letter to the nation, “this moment of renewal is upon us”, it was so much campaign talk accompanying the submission to Parliament of his 76-page implementation plan for the State Capture Commission recommendations. But Ramaphosa was scarcely exaggerating.
Worryingly, many candidates for the national executive committee have joined Ramaphosa in his extensive evasion of accountability by refusing to provide clear answers to questions about his involvement in questionable acts of corruption and mismanagement of public funds.
Through their silence, they either cast doubt on or wholly reject the legitimacy of the national anti-corruption crusade.
It is comforting to pretend those who will vote as conference delegates are withholding their demands for accountability solely to soothe Ramaphosa’s ego, to avoid further exposing him to ANC factions determined to undermine the party’s renewal programme.
Keeping Ramaphosa sweet is necessary for the ANC and influential business circles. He remains the dominant figure trusted to prevent the paralysed ANC from collapsing the state and the economy. Ramaphosa sustains their hopes for prosperity beyond 2024.
But the ANC’s denialism of how impactful corruption is on its dwindling electoral support is not confined to the past; it applies to the future, too.
Several identifiable conference delegates have refused to publicly commit that they would act against individuals implicated in corruption should they be elected in December.
Instead, they are hiding behind the chaotic step-aside rule that has become an arsenal for various factions to eliminate rival contenders for leadership positions. Some might spin that as mere election eve bullishness.
But democracy cannot function without a firm commitment to remove corrupt individuals from the party and government leadership positions, and support their prosecution and conviction.
If all of this seems too abstract, consider the ANC’s new attitude to political violence, which has extended its tentacles to whistle-blowers and traditional leaders.
Once, it would have been a matter of bland consensus in provinces previously unaffected by political killings that no one should ever secure a political objective by brute force and targeting whistle-blowers.
But only a handful of ANC leaders publicly uphold that fundamental position at a time when our society is witnessing a spate of attacks over the past 24 months alone.
The rest refused to vote for the suspension of implicated individuals from the political office. Their scarce condemnation of the alleged violations of the electoral code of conduct has usually been qualified and mealy-mouthed.
Ramaphosa’s reluctance to account and the ANC’s further shift away from accountability norms are no longer confined to one politician or a group of indifferent conference delegates, even if they embody it and accelerate it. It is embedded in the ethos of the party now.
Reversing the trend is a daunting prospect, considering another apparent shift taking an incredibly vivid form before the conference. It is the polarisation of information regarding national efforts to combat corruption, so South Africans exist in two distinct spheres of knowledge, each barely touching the other.
The polarisation poses a danger to democracy. Because without a collective, agreed-upon basis of facts, there can be no collective decision-making and no collaborative exercise of power by the people – which is what democracy amounts to in our society.
Suppose we cannot first agree that the house is on fire because of corrupt individuals. In that case, we cannot begin to talk about putting out the flames by focusing on implementing the commission’s recommendations.
Whatever the conference’s outcome and the long days of preparing for meaningful contestation of independent candidates in the 2024 national and provincial elections that may follow, this is a moment of peril for South Africa.
Our fledgling democracy is losing the reflexes and habits that make democracy possible. And, as in all the most terrifying horror movies, the threat comes from inside the house. Ukufa kuse mbizeni (death is in the pot).
Nyemebzi is a human rights activist and policy analyst.
Cape Times