The ANC must stake claim to the shortcomings of its leaders

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The faction-riven ANC thinks South Africans are sheep — likely to jump off a cliff should one of them decide to. If one faction of the party puts out a narrative, they know there will be those who will lap it up and regurgitate it. 

Just before President Cyril Ramaphosa’s official visit to the United States, a voice note landed on a group I belong to. This half-baked conspiracy alleged that he was going to the US to “fetch his payment for advocating immunisation against Covid and receive a further mandate to punt a vaccine for the monkeypox virus. Yep, that’s how far the anti-Ramaphosa propaganda machinery will go. 

Granted, the man has been “busy,” but the citizenry does not know what he is doing. The country is flying on a wing and a prayer as infrastructure crumbles, state-owned entities are shadows of their former selves and throughout his leadership, we are in the dark — literally and figuratively.

Ramaphosa’s reign is considered to be flawed and lacking direction. His praise singers, the official opposition in parliament, started distancing themselves from him with the emergence of the Phala Phala business. 

Even the red berets, who were all cosy and offering “words of advice” when he came into office, have now pulled their usual flip-flop move and are baying for his blood. Only a fool will not believe that the Economic Freedom Fighters’ recent move on Ramaphosa is not influenced by a faction in the ANC.

But there is some short-sightedness about the anti-Ramaphosa sentiment. The man and his cabinet are deployees of the party that has been at the helm for 28 years of South Africa’s democratic rule. We cannot separate him, and by extension his shortcomings, from the ANC.

It was the ANC in Mangaung that fetched Ramaphosa from political obscurity and punted him as its deputy president, and by de facto the country’s second citizen. Some senior party leaders are said to be the ones who convinced Jacob Zuma to consider Ramaphosa as a running mate. 

It was ANC branches, regions and provincial leaders who, in 2017, presented Ramaphosa as a president who will save South Africa. Some even declared in song, “Phakama Ramaphosa, ixhesha lifikile” (Rise Ramaphosa, the time has come). 

In their typical fashion, the ANC delegates showed loyalty to the party, much like The Lion King‘s Rafiki, and cheered, ululated and continued singing as Ramaphosa won the party’s presidential race at Nasrec. It was an act that sent a message that we must all know this is the one who will redeem us all. 

And so it was that Ramaphosa was put at the helm by the vanguard that is the ANC.

How the party and its factions operate does not need one of credulous minds. If you approach its affairs with naivety, you stand to be the dupe the party wants you to be. 

If the public is of the view that an ANC leader is undesirable, the party builds a laager around that leader and will defend that person with all their might. They will go as far as unleashing verbose statements about counter-revolutionary elements and other anti this or that bile. The era of Jacob Zuma is a good case study here.

On the other hand, when internal party slates start their campaigns in a scramble for positions and to gain favour with the latest “popular” leader, you will be told of the failures of the incumbent and how that person is “dividing the movement”, “abusing power” and “favouring a certain faction”. These are motions that will be presented to the public. Ask Thabo Mbeki, he had to wade such a “tsunami.”

As if it’s Groundhog Day, now we are told, through ANC factional lines, that Ramaphosa is the worst. It said, to the gullible, that “he is serving his Stellenbosch masters”, “our people [read black people] are worse off under his leadership”, he is a “sell-out”, “a servant of White Monopoly Capital”. There are even online champions who will feed you anti-Ramaphosa dust without giving a balanced critique. 

Is Ramaphosa not an ANC deployee? Is the condition of people that is said to be made worse by his tenure in office not an ANC making? Was it not the ANC that unplugged him from his business life and served him to the people on a silver platter with all the garnishes of him being a noble leader?

We must not buy the factional stoked fire that shouts to all and sundry that Ramaphosa has been bad for South Africa. In fact, the nominating and conference voting ANC fodder and their party are the ones bad for South Africa.

We cannot separate Ramaphosa and all his failures from the ANC. We were made to do so with Mbeki and Zuma. To this day we spew hatred towards them as if they mushroomed out of nowhere and implemented policies that they dreamt up and implemented without the approval of all ANC structures.

If we separate any ANC-chosen leader from the party we stand a good chance that we will get another mediocre leader and absolve the party from the disaster we will find ourselves in.

Ramaphosa was hoisted by the ANC. Now we have him being the reason for all South Africa’s woes. 

I must repeat this. We dare not separate Ramaphosa from the ANC. Doing so will bring us full circle with every deployee of this party making excuses for the ANC’s collective failure and rather blaming one individual. 

Yes, there is an element of individual responsibility for any leader, but there is also the collective responsibility of those he leads with. In the case of the ANC, the deployee is sent out with party resolutions and policies and these deployees vote as a block in every legislature and municipality. The party’s top six sits every Monday to map out direction, which gets debated and agreed upon at its national working committee (NEC) and national executive committee. 

You might want to challenge this rationale by stating that there are often dissenting voices in the NEC to a chosen leader’s style of management, but before you do so you must remember that after a meeting a unanimous party statement is released to the public. The same happens after a cabinet lekgotla. So, it makes no sense to say Ramaphosa must account as an individual or that government failures are his and his alone. 

The ANC, like Ramaphosa, is the ingredient that has made South Africa what it is. I must put a disclaimer here and say that your perception is dependent on which side of the tender table you are seated. Where I am seated, it is just a country that will soon collapse like a lean starved animal in search of water and food.

Lack of policy and slow delivery at the height of the HIV-Aids pandemic is ascribed to Mbeki and corruption is a Zuma virus, while the economic growth under Mbeki and Zuma’s announcement of free education are an ANC achievement. 

The ANC must stake claim to the shortcomings of its leaders and any of its factions that want power must know that the time for their disinformation campaigns is a thing of the past.   

The inadequacies of any single ANC deployee, be it corruption, abandoning the electorate or lack of service delivery, must be seen for what they are, failure that is embedded in the DNA of the party. 

No matter what the result of the party’s December conference, it seems that come 2024 South Africans will declare, like the township linguist and say, “asisbhayi i-skelem” — we are not buying the dummy you are selling us. 

Thamsanqa D Malinga is a director at Mkabayi Management Consultants, a columnist, political commentator and author of Blame Me On Apartheid and A Dream Betrayed.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.