LWANDA MAQWELANE
THE ANC’s 55th Elective Congress similar to that of the Morogoro Consultative Conference in 1969 must be considered as a watershed moment.
When a party has degenerated to the extent in which the ANC has allowed itself to become, calls for renewal can only be defined within the context and/or ambit of back-to-basics principles, values and organisational cultural practices.
Now more than ever, the collective is under immense pressure to firstly consolidate power,
secondly bring stability to the centre and thirdly, and I believe most importantly in a race
against time – regain public trust.
Therefore, the debilitating ideological paralysis in the over-reliance on the governing party’s historical legacy has since been saturated. In that it has failed to enthuse critical rigour and commitment to its own founding principles. Instead, what we have all been democratically subdued to endure has been the debase of ideological thinking that has been squandered by political vultures.
It would be, however, extremely naïve to limit the corrosive elements of factionalism and patronage within the top structures bilateral to party and state governance.
The calamity has permeated and transgressed socio-cultural and political values that have
prompted many to critically engage the degradation of moral consciousness from stratifying sectors.
And so we are here. This is it.
There are no more last chances remaining. The exigent crisis for survival in which the ANC finds itself has been underpinned by the dangerous combination of leadership deficits, poor quality membership and intra party factionalism that has embolden and fuelled interests based politics.
Therefore, the curation of the January 8th statement must strike a delicate balance between the organisation and the state.
The statement must unequivocally and comprehensively address competitive and degenerative factional battles intra ANC organisational politics that threaten organisational stability, continuity and unity; address the excessive use and manipulation of patronage networks; clearly articulate a plan for branch activity revival in order to ‘reassert the
centrality of the branches in the structures of the ANC’ aimed at the day-to-day struggle for socio-political and economic transformation.
Principles and values inculcated in the founding ethos of the ANC; effectively and coherently re-address issues of legitimacy and credibility.
Simultaneously, the statement must provide a candid analysis of an unmistakably regressive economy with a clear plan of action.
Similar to the composition of a symphony, the President [Cyril Ramaphosa] must set the tone for the re-imagination and re-contextualisation of the role of the ANC in society and as the governing
party through policy and governance.
Lwanda Maqwelane is a PhD candidate at Rhodes University and also serves as a research assistant to the SARChI Chair in Global Change and Transformative Social Learning.
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