In fact, many of the ANC’s leaders were deeply influenced by Christianity. They put morality and ethics at the heart of their leadership.
Although started mainly by Africans, the ANC transformed into an organisation which embraced South Africa’s diverse communities, including whites. The ANC was also allied to various social, civic, student, traditional and professional organisations. These organisations all influenced the ANC and this helped the movement to avoid becoming ideologically rigid or too narrow in its policy outlook. It was forced to come to terms with diversity, something which time and again helped to revitalise the ANC by providing it with a regular stream of new ideas, leaders and funding.
Historically, the ANC has also been able to successfully incorporate virtually all civil movements and grass-roots activism in South Africa into the party, frequently taking over some of the ideas and campaigns of these organisations and even of its rivals, such as the now almost defunct Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). This has helped the ANC to put itself at the centre of the official history of the South African liberation struggle.
For instance, ANC leaders actively sought to recruit Steve Biko and after his death they lured most of the brightest young talent from the BC movement to the organisation. This generation of black activists and intellectuals, with fresh ideas on genuine participatory democracy, helped the ANC to reach out to a younger, more radical black generation, who at that stage might have perceived the ‘old’ ANC as irrelevant.
In the 1980s, the organisation brought the new generation of democratic trade unions that had regrouped under the umbrella of COSATU into the ANC fold. It did the same with the 1980s ‘civics’ movements – where black communities formed their own councils and tried to manage their municipal affairs in a participatory manner.
The ANC also swallowed up the UDF, one of Africa’s most effective grass-roots civil movements. The UDF had galvanised a broad range of groups across different classes and races, including black professional organisations and the growing black middle class, who by the 1980s were starting to become sceptical of a ‘radical’ ANC. It also incorporated liberal white issue-based groups who opposed the apartheid government, such as the End Conscription Campaign.
Compared to other African liberation movements, the ANC had the unique ability to unite diverse groups within South Africa against apartheid. Most other African liberation movements were formed around one ethnic or regional group, and could never transcend this. The ANC created a broad-church alliance that spanned the ideological spectrum, from shopkeepers to communists, and became what was called a ‘multi-class’ organisation.
The ANC is also one of the few liberation movements that embraced minority communities, including what other liberation movements referred to as ‘settlers’ (white groups). Joel Netshitenzhe, former editor of the ANC journal Mayibuye, once said that ‘over the years, the organisation projected itself as a parliament, first, of the African people; and it later sought recognition as the legitimate representative of all the people of SA’. This was the strength of the ANC: the ability to portray itself as a more racially inclusive alternative to colonial and apartheid governments.
Three other constituencies – organised women’s groups, trade unions and churches – have also been influential in the ANC’s long history. In many other African liberation struggles these constituencies may have been present, but were not as prominent as in the ANC.
Of all the African liberation movements, the ANC had the most influential and organised women’s wing. Yet, when the ANC was formed it did not accept women as members.
In 1918 when the white-controlled government of the Union of South Africa threatened to introduce pass laws for black women, the ANC was going through one of its most vulnerable periods. Supporters and members of the party were disillusioned with the leadership’s ineffectual strategy of petitioning the Union government and the British monarch to give concessions to the oppressed black majority. The militancy of black female activists and their strategy of mass protests against the pass laws filled the conservative ANC male leadership with awe.
The Bantu Women’s League was formed in 1918, and joined as a branch of the ANC. It was later succeeded, in 1948, by the ANC Women’s League (the ANC first accepted female members in 1943). Women activists also played a part in the penning of the Freedom Charter of 1955.
The ANC has had an extraordinary number of capable churchmen – or lay clergymen – who cut their organisational teeth within the church, but became brilliant mass campaigners. James Calata, who was refused the bishopric of Transkei because he was black, stands out. During one of the ANC’s most lethargic periods just before the Second World War, when its finances were in a mess, James Calata was elected general secretary of the ANC. He set up new branches, re-energised dormant ones and balanced the books.
The ANC’s alliance with trade unions not only brought the trade-union emphasis on internal democracy, broad consultation and sensitivity to bread-and-butter issues, but also boosted the organisation at critical moments when it seemed to lose direction. The ANC’s alliance with the SACP bought funding, resources and training for ANC members from the SACP’s main backer, the Soviet Union, and brought dedicated strategic thinkers, such as Joe Slovo, into the ANC.
Unfortunately, as the ANC celebrates its centenary, antidemocratic leaders and groups seem to have a stranglehold on the party. Members are deeply divided over the spoils of government and its current leader Zuma is being accused of using state resources to enrich his family, friends and political allies.
Key ANC leaders wrote South Africa’s post-apartheid Constitution, which set out a clear framework for a new South Africa. Globally it is accepted as among the most progressive, but the ANC appears to find it very difficult to internalise its democratic value system and apply it to its own day-to-day practices. The intelligence and security forces, as well as the police, are routinely used in ANC leadership battles. Corrupt officials appear to be selectively prosecuted as part of campaigns to sideline opponents. One fears that these cloak-and-dagger-style operations are a sign that rogue elements within the ANC’s military and intelligence wings have now become dominant.
Control of the leadership of the ANC has now become a no-holds-barred war between different factions. Winning office increasingly translates into control of state patronage and the ability to put oneself above the law. Or, at least, some ANC leaders seem to think this way.
The contrast between the moral authority of a Nelson Mandela, an Oliver Tambo or an Albert Luthuli, and the murkiness of a Jacob Zuma, who is seeking re-election as party leader this year, shows how far the ANC has regressed. In his 2007 campaign to become leader of the ANC many Zuma supporters went ‘100% Zulu’ in their support for the man from KwaZulu-Natal – out of the window went the inclusive ethos of the ANC of old.
The DA is currently appealing to the Supreme Court of Appeal to have corruption charges against Zuma, which were dropped in 2009 on a technicality, revisited. If successful, Zuma, a standing president, may have to reappear in the dock.1
In the midst of the grinding poverty endured by the ANC’s bedrock constituency, levels of corruption, wastage of public resources and conspicuous consumption by elected officials have rocketed. The ANC in government appears to have made the mistake that all the failed African liberation movements have made – enriching the few, mostly those who are politically connected, rather than the poverty-stricken masses.
Increasingly, top leaders in the ANC are chosen by small cliques – and at lower levels on slates attached to the top leaders. Leaders are elected not on their holistic leadership merit, but for how best they can balance factional and patronage interests. This means that the most dynamic leaders are unlikely to reach the top.
Blade Nzimande, the general secretary of the SACP, and a close ally of Zuma, has said publically that leaders of the ANC, COSATU and his SACP are now regularly using money to buy votes in internal ANC elections. ‘It is blood money, often gotten corruptly. They go around buying delegates. If those people can capture our government they will sell this country to the highest bidder,’ said Nzimande.
COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has warned: ‘If we do not do something about corruption we will find ourselves in a predatory state,