[DEBATE] : Powerless in the corridors of power

[Ran Greenstein]

You won't hear it on the SABC...

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Posted to the web on: 23 June 2006
Business Day
Powerless in the corridors of power 
Vukani Mde and Karima Brown

THE battle for the soul of the African National Congress (ANC) is a red herring. To judge by 
the experience of the past 10 years, the ruling party is no longer the site of power that it 
used to be. The real battle is the one for the state. No doubt political influence in the ANC is 
still heavily contested, and the current controversy around the leadership succession is one 
example of this. The ANC commands 70% of the electorate. It is a social movement whose 
tentacles reach into every area of public life. It also commands an historical legitimacy that is 
the envy of all opposition parties and lesser liberation movements on the continent and 
beyond. Even its allies, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of 
South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), have launched discussions that focus on how they 
can "recapture" the ANC for the interests of their constituency.

But the nastiness of the ruling party´s succession tussle is, in fact, proof of the ANC´s 
declining power, especially in its ability to determine government policy. No longer is control 
of the ANC an end in itself. The real prize is the state as both the centre and dispenser of 
power and patronage. The nature of the state - not the personality of President Thabo 
Mbeki - lies behind complaints by the ANC´s allies over the centralisation of power in the 
presidency. SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin recently observed that at least 
half the succession problem was about an overconcentration of power in the state, and 
especially in the presidency.

While criticism of the "imperial" nature of the presidency may be overstating things, that the 
state has usurped a role that once belonged to the ANC is not the fevered imagining of the 
alliance.

The past 12 years contain many examples of policy about-turns, engineered within 
government before being canvassed for in the policy-making forums of the ruling party. The 
Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) macroeconomic strategy is a case in point. 
Hastily put together by government economic departments working with consultants 
seconded from multilateral institutions, Gear represented a paradigm shift in the economic 
thinking of government and the ANC. Irrespective of its merits, its introduction needed the 
crucial buy-in of the ruling party and its allies. Its failure to deliver on some of the more 
extravagant promises is in no small part due to its undemocratic birth.

More recently, the ANC national executive committee reportedly was given less than an hour 
to watch and examine a slide presentation of Asgi-SA, a major government economic 
initiative. No doubt the complexities of a developing modern country are such that 
governments at times make adjustments and even wholesale U-turns on policy. The ANC, 
and more so its allies, cannot expect to micro-manage a democratic government in its 
everyday functioning. Nor is it desirable to fetishise the democratic process to the point 
where paralysis sets in, as government finds itself unable to act for fear of leaving behind its 
popular machine.

However, what has occurred over the past 10 years is, many in the party feel, tantamount to 
a declaration of independence by sections of government, particularly those responsible for 
the economy. In its own internal reflections, the ANC acknowledges this and the 
consequences it has for democratic accountability and party oversight.

Party critics say this trend, coupled with the simultaneous incapacitation of the party´s 
internal policy formulation processes, has led to an ANC that looks increasingly like a 
division of government.

ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe has even said the tripartite alliance is an "alliance 
of nongovernmental organisations" that, at best, could only make recommendations to 
government, but not control it. The alliance, he suggested, was therefore a lobby that could 
queue up with other interest groups to get at senior government functionaries and engage 
them on unemployment, monetary policy and other key economic portfolios. Thus, dragged 
hither and thither by its own government, the ANC has become a policy chameleon.

While it is all too easy to identify "combatants" who lead or belong to various factions in the 
ANC in order to show that there is a fight over control of the party, the battle for the state is 
not as easily identifiable, hence the absence of big newspaper headlines. It is hard to call its 
final outcomes, or even to know whether it is likely to ever have an outcome. But we can see 
glimpses of it in the skirmishes that do sometimes spill over into the headlines.

It is in Judge Sisi Khampepe´s commission over the mandate and location of the Scorpions. 
It is in the recent purges of the domestic intelligence service. It is the attempts to "transform" 
the judiciary. It is there in the current furore over the alleged political manipulation of the 
SABC.

To conservative lobbyists, the further the distance between the state and party the better. 
Business, in particular, commends Mbeki´s ability to ignore the unions, communists and 
even the ANC in pursuit of "sensible" economic policies.

But there may be two immediate problems with the creeping "independence" of the state. 
First, such "independence" extends beyond economics, sensible or otherwise. Mbeki´s 
government has pursued inexplicable and bad policies on HIV/ AIDS, and a fruitless 
diplomatic strategy in Zimbabwe. On both these issues the ruling party has deferred to the 
Union Buildings, even when it was clear that government was hurtling in the wrong direction.

Second, to whom is the state accountable? No one, if you consider that the very concept of 
a "state" is amorphous and refers loosely to a discrete set of institutions defined by ever-
changing power dynamics. Political parties on the other hand - while imperfect, power-
hungry and subject to the whims of politicians - are accountable to their electorate. For the 
ANC, that means the 70% of voters who back the party, but are sometimes puzzled at what 
government does in its name.

Mde is political correspondent. Brown is political editor.




Ran Greenstein
Johannesburg, South Africa