An organisation in transition

Despite the predictions of many of its detractors and considering it is in the midst of a fundamental transition of its core mission at the start of an internal leadership election-year, the African National Congress’s launch of its year-long centenary celebrations went off quite well this past weekend in Bloemfontein.

When the ANC was established in 1912 it was for a specific purpose, to secure for black South Africans the same democratic rights and access to land, education and economic opportunities enjoyed by white minority South Africans. In short, it was a liberation movement striving to rectify the major flaws contained in the 1910-constitution which saw the creation of  the then Union of South Africa.

On January 8 1912 the then leaders of the organisation declared its aim to be to “bring all Africans together as one people to defend their rights and freedoms.” At its heart however it was, as its name indicates, a black nationalist organisation.

Two year later South Africa saw the birth of another purpose-made organisation with the establishment of the National Party, ironically also in Bloemfontein – and that is not where the similarities between the two ended. In fact, in terms of how political processes play themselves out, the history of the two are in many ways mirror image of one-another.

The main purposes of the NP at the time were to uplift Afrikaners from the lingering effects of the Boer War, mobilise Afrikaner nationalism, maximise political and economic control, and above all to regain independence from Britain.

Even in terms of the detailed methodology used, there are more similarities than some people realise and some othes care to remember. The way black economic empowerment is implemented by the ANC-government is not much else than a variant of a process the NP-government called job reservation.

Many of those who nowadays complain about socialist tendencies by the ANC-government do not know, have forgotten or don’t care to remember that state corporations (today’s state enterprises), such as  the then South African Railways, in their statutes of establishment were also given a very specific social mission to employ poor whites. That’s where the baggage handlers with their long steel trolleys at major railway station came from.

On the political-process front  the ANC has already had its break-away by the Congress of the People (COPE), just as  the NP had its Herstige Nationale Party (HNP) and others. And one does not have to be a prophet to predict that COPE will not be he last breakaway attempt.

Over the years †he ANC has been through various phases, adapting, mostly successfully to changing conditions. Its first three decades saw it follow a careful approach as a rather narrow nationalist, conservative organisation rejecting militancy, strikes, protests or cooperation with communists.

The 1940s and 1950s saw it change tack to become, in its own words, a “mass movement,” while the establishment of the ANC Youth League in 1944, infused it with militancy. Action programmes and defiance became the order of the day, as did close cooperation with trade unions and communists. But it remained non-violent.

In response to the NP-government clampdowns came the armed struggle of the 1960s. Throughout it all the ANC remained above all a liberation movement striving to be a “broad church,” uniting people over all other divides.

In 1994 everything changed fundamentally when freedom was achieved and at least formally the ANC moved from being a liberation movement to being a political party.

Winning the first election also gave it the right to form a government. And this is one of the most important fronts on which the ANC is clearly finding it difficult to make the transition from movement to party – coming to terms with the fact that in a constitutional democracy government and party are two very distinct entities -- complementary but two different sovereign spheres of functions and competencies.

Dealing with the next phase

To what extent the ANC succeeds in managing this transitional process  -- with problems evidenced by the ANCYL’s economic liberation rhetoric and, the practice of cadre deployment in the public service -- will determine if it can achieve the unprecedented and be around for another half a century or more.

It would probably do well to study the history of the NP and how it dealt with or did not deal with the political processes that shape history.

Having achieved its core goal of statehood independence by the establishment of the Republic of South Africa in 1961, there followed about a decade of consolidation and strong economic development. The ANC after almost 18 years in power is just about in terms of its hold on power where the NP was after 20 years in government by the end of the 1960s.

By the early 1970s it was clear that the apartheid ideology (both small as in separate facilities and big as in separate development in homelands) could not handle the realities of the country or the world around it.

Another almost a decade of reform followed, culminating in the so-called tri-cameral parliament of 1983. But as the world around it was fundamentally changing with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was constantly a case of too little too late.

To its credit and luckily for South Africa the NP made its peace with the inevitable and entered into negotiations with the ANC and other parties that would eventually deliver the 1994-constitution.

The NP did try  then to re-invent itself as a multi-racial party to establish itself as a player under the new constitution, but by then it was again a case of too little too late. Another decade later in 2005 the NP finally, 91 years after its establishment in Bloemfontein, became an institution belonging to history.

Likewise the ANC today faces probably one of the toughest challenges of its existence as the emotions and political currency of the liberation struggle are             fading almost by the day. Performance, delivery, development opportunities, and the like are the stuff of survival.

At the same time, yet again, global financial, ecological, resource and other crises coupled with major shifts in global power relationships are making for a sea change in the relationships between people and their rulers.

At the start of the second century of its existence, the ANC’s ability to adapt is about to the tested to the limit.

Its future, and for better or worse that of the country and its people, is linked to the adaptive abilities the ANC will display over the next maybe five to 10 years.

Stef Terblance and Piet Coetzer