'ANC no longer ANC'

In the aftermath of the hullabaloo surrounding Jacob Zuma, the question must be asked if the African National Congress has any real political identity left.

The ANC was born and forged in the wake of the formation of the Union of South Africa by the white settler colonialists after they had defeated the African people in the last war of land expropriation with the defeat of the Zulu Chief Dinizulu at the battle of Ulundi.

The defeated African nation came together to fight on another level, not that of armed resistance. It took the form of protests, petitions, demonstrations, strikes, appeals - all non-violent forms of struggle.
But the ANC, as the name denotes, was the national movement of the African people at the time, when the coloureds, too, largely saw themselves as an African people.

The historic task of the ANC was the national liberation of the African people from colonialism. Key to this task was the recovery of the land that was expropriated from them in the many armed battles.

Today, the ANC can hardly be called a national movement of the African people. It has departed from the aims of its original formation, and in the process has lost its sense of what it really is.

Hence the confusion about its relation to the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), who to all intents and purposes have taken it over, and who are the most organised force within the Alliance, sidelining the national aspirations of the African people.

The national aspirations of the African people include giving all the country's nationalities equal rights and status as Africans living in an African country and continent.

The relationship between the SACP and the ANC has been fraught with tension since the SACP began to infiltrate the ANC in the name of an alliance.

Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) leader Robert Sobukwe accused the SACP of interfering with the national aspirations of the African people and subsequently led a breakaway from it.

The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) consciously chose a pro-PAC ideology, in opposition to what the ANC multi-racial politics of the time stood for.

Thabo Mbeki also pursued an Africanist line, and openly said that the two organisations should go their separate ways when he returned to the country.

In exile, the African nationalists also opposed the SACP takeover of the ANC.

They were expelled from the ANC as the SACP in exile took over the ANC with the support of Oliver Tambo.

The SACP-Cosatu alliance is the latest attempt to take over the ANC and blunt the national aspirations of the African people in a nebulous working class-led struggle.

The ANC has now been completely replaced with concepts like non-racialism and has seemingly lost all sense of an African identity. In its embracing of non-racialism it has become anathema to even speak of an African identity, and you can quite easily be accused of racism.

Was not Mbeki's alleged Africanism surreptitiously looked down upon and did not Nelson Mandela openly tar both the PAC and BCM with the brush of racism?

The ANC has rightly been described as a centrist movement and it has gone out of its way to placate white interests. In the wake of the rise of the BCM, the ANC did everything to try to smash it.

Many have remarked on the leadership crisis in the ANC, and no doubt in several provinces the ANC appears to be tearing itself apart. It is clearly divided, as a slow purge takes place of Mbeki supporters.
There are clear signs also that there might be a mass abstention in the next elections by the ANC's many supporters.

There is intense dissatisfaction within ANC ranks, and the attempts to create some kind of civil movement to guard the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution from elements who are sympathetic to the ANC is an expression of this dissatisfaction.

Many hardline supporters of the ANC are turning away. But in the race to gain positions and power within the ANC, this does not matter to opportunists within it.

While there is no serious opposition to the ANC, the greatest danger to its future is an ideological hollowness that is expressing itself in a leadership crisis and a division that could actually lead to a serious split and breakaway within the organisation.

The present crisis within the ANC might lead the country, its people, its various political parties and organisations towards a deep re-think of what should be, towards more unifying concepts of Africanism-Pan-Africanism, black identity, decolonisation, non-racialism and non-sexism and reconciliation of a new type (incorporating the views of both African/black identity and white liberalism) that should also attempt to change the traditional prejudices of whites and bring them on board.

These are the challenges facing the South African nation as the ANC divides and begins to disintegrate.