Christopher Akor
This must go down as one of the wildest political comebacks ever: from the verge of resigning a month ago over the publication of a damning parliamentary investigation into the Phala Phala “farmgate” scandal that accused him of holding undeclared foreign currency, tax evasion, and misusing state resources, Cyril Ramaphosa “snatched victory from the jaws of defeat” by clinching the presidency of the African National Congress (ANC) last week. For added measure, his victory this time around was emphatic. He secured 2476 votes while his challenger, former health minister, Zweli Mkhize and the arrowhead of the Jacob Zuma camp that are viscerally opposed to Ramaphosa, secured 1897 votes. In 2017, Ramaphosa only won with a meagre 179 votes over Dlamini-Zuma and the Zuma camp secured three of the top six positions within the party, making Ramaphosa’s control tenuous and his efforts to root out corruption from the party and the country, indecisive. This time, his allies control four of the party’s top six positions and 65 percent of the 80 members of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC).
Ramaphosa will now lead the ANC into the 2024 general elections, where the ANC is expected to lose its longstanding majority in parliament, but still retain power in a coalition government.
This is a truly stunning reversal of the fortune for the party – and one that has been in the making since 1994. The degeneration of the ANC from perhaps, the world’s most cohesive and disciplined freedom-fighting organisation to a thoroughly corrupt and vile party that has been hijacked by criminals will make a classic case study of the corrupting influence of political power. What the apartheid state with its sophisticated apparatus of repression and the Western world with its severest of sanctions could not accomplish for 80 years and counting (destruction of the ANC), exposure to political power has comprehensively done in such a short time.
No sooner had the party captured power than it sanctioned what looked like a rational policy of black economic empowerment, meant to deracialise the economy by injecting black Africans into an otherwise white-dominated economy. Under the veneer of that innocuous policy, ANC members who bore the greater brunt of apartheid brutality – and now feel entitled to the resources of the state – bought up stakes cheaply in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and through the policy of ‘cadre deployment’ turned these SOEs into “sites of transformation”, where nepotism, cronyism, and wanton corruption reigns supreme. When the government of Thabo Mbeki sought to cut waste and privatise the SOEs, he was viscerally opposed by the radical wing of the party which favoured government control of all SOEs – and together with its allies – the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) – plotted Mbekki’s downfall and replaced him with the populist, highly corrupt, and barely literate Jacob Zuma.
Of course, under Zuma, corruption, nepotism and state capture became the main principles behind governance. As the government stumbles from one corruption scandal to another, the ANC resolutely stood behind Zuma, thwarting every no-confidence vote brought against him in parliament. According to the Mail & Guardian, an “estimated $35 billion was looted from the state” while “institutions like the state airline, railway, and tax agencies were wrecked.”
The party only took notice after it suffered a severe rebuke at the 2016 regional elections, where its share of the vote dropped to a record low of 53.91 percent and it also lost Nelson Mandela Bay, an ANC stronghold, to the Democratic Alliance, a previously white-dominated party. Fearing defeat at the polls, the party pivoted to Cyril Ramaphosa to mollify an angry electorate and present an image of a party in transition and reform; a party that is capable of service delivery to the people.
While supporters claim he was hamstrung by the powerful and corrupt Zuma faction of the party in his first term, this renewed and emphatic mandate will strengthen his hands to move faster with the reform of the party, his anticorruption reforms, and service delivery.
Those hopes may appear too optimistic. If there is anything we have learned about the ANC in the last 16 years, it is that the party is terminally ill. It is almost irredeemably corrupt; it appears unable to reform itself, and it is increasingly obvious it lacks the capacity to govern the country, whether at the national, provincial, or municipal level.
The emphatic victory of Ramaphosa despite the scandal is an admission that no prominent member within its ranks, besides Ramaphosa, possesses the credibility and reputation to champion badly needed reforms and to lead the party to the next general elections. Ramaphosa may still retain the presidency in 2024 but it is obvious the party is in its death throes. The only thing keeping it alive is the lack of a credible alternative.
It is sad to see how the ANC – the foremost liberation movement organisation in Africa and the party of the venerable Nelson Mandela and other liberation heroes – has completely eroded its moral and political authority (built over 80 years of relentless, bloody, and tortuous battle over apartheid and white domination) just 27 years after coming to power. It is the atavistic attachment to the party and the past that is keeping it in power. But as a younger generation with no experience of apartheid comes up, the attachment to the party will continue to grow weak and the party will eventually face the fate of all corrupt political organisations.
