PART 1: Motlanthe’s report flags critical ills but fails to make natural links to red-card a lusty CR22 interest, supplanting the organisational agenda

By: Clyde Ramalaine

The Constitutional Court ruling on the application for a postponement as sought by setting a  date of the next local elections for no later than 1 November. It also ruled that the Independent Elections Commission ensure voter registration takes place before the date of the elections. Last Saturday and Sunday, therefore, became voter registration weekend. We subsequent saw the official launching of manifestos as many political parties took to the streets to solicit the votes of South Africans. Given the reality of COVID as the new normal, it is fair to say that political formation and organising by the participating parties and independent candidates for the last 18 months were severely hampered. Notwithstanding this, South Africans can also accept that the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance, faces its unique challenges and is anticipated to suffer in some critical spaces as a result.

However, if the official opposition faces challenges, the ANC, the majority party, is perhaps drowning in a sea of what appears insurmountable challenges. The ANC attests to a cacophony of organisational incapacity that failed to register its candidates’ lists for the upcoming elections timeously. It is an entity bed-ridden with financial woes, an organisation that has not paid its staff their rightful salaries for the last three months. It equally is a party that experiences its branches and regions resolving to take protests action and court cases to seek relief for candidate lists.

The ANC in its usual arrogance will tell you it’s not the first time it had challenges with finalising candidate listing. However, ANC Chairperson for Elections Kgalema Motlanthe delivered his scathing report on the ANC and its readiness for elections. Despite the often straightforward claims of renewal and self-correcting as advanced by some of its leaders, the actual status of the party in electoral preparation and organisational nucleus was laid bare last week by  Motlanthe.

In this musing, which details three parts instalments, we hope to do three things.

Also read: Motlanthe’s Report – Ramaphosa’s reluctant concession- cum self–exonerating defence for a response

Firstly, we attempt to understand Motlanthe’s report in its key highlights. Secondly, we analyse the simultaneous response of Ramaphosa. Lastly, we point to what Motlanthe failed to say. With that, we attempt to conclude, the report will change noting materially, and the issue of factionalism will continue because it’s now an economy for some. Therefore, it will be reduced to another report muddled in obfuscation and duly filed in the proverbial file 13 because the ANC in programme and expression is supplanted, confirming an organisation with CR22 interest at its epicentre as directing its daily operational and visionary reality all.

What did the Motlanthe Report Say?

It is flagging and implicating Ramaphosa leadership for its gross failure to meaningfully work for unity. 

In his report to the NEC last week, Motlanthe shared a more than a gloomy picture of what the ANC fundamental organisational sense depicts. We will attempt to make sense of Motlanthe’s report. Motlanthe’s report highlights several aspects of an organisation in self-destruct waylaid by the group and personality cult interest better understood in factionalism. His report took a direct aim at the leadership of ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa, with the following words:

“The ANC leadership, especially the president and all national officials, must intensify their efforts to quell factionalism by visibly and strongly condemning anybody who uses their names to push for factional and personal agendas.”

Organisations, as we all know, are as weak or strong as their leadership. To be flagged as not having done enough to condemn anybody, [regardless of faction] is a gross indictment, particularly since this leadership was elected at NASREC in 2017 on the fundamental mandate to work for unity. To unequivocally be told, there is a need for an intensification unity. Meaning the lip service hitherto paid has delivered nothing. This indictment against the National Office Bearers is the most unambiguous indication that a year before the ANC’s 55th Conference, this leadership has dismally failed to work for unity but instead worked for the festering of disunity in what is now more than a subculture of the ANC as an organisation.

Factionalism & Senior Leaders flagged in sowing division.

Motlanthe’s report also spoke about the party’s degeneration into an organisation where money and alcohol were used to buy votes. At the same time, senior leaders sowed divisions, and the youth and women were marginalised. His words in this regard:

“On the issue of factionalism, where comrades hid behind using other comrades name – my name, other comrades’ names – and its worrying that it goes as the as high as … that is worrying. If we don’t deal with that, the renewal will never take off. ”

The report again underscores the undeniable presence of the demon of factionalism as endemic in the current ANC and perhaps now part of modern ANC culture for its existence at all levels of ANC leadership. The phenomenon of factionalism in the ANC setting is best explained in idolising political personalities, which details the notion of ‘ANC members belonging to other members, some being ANC members.

If considered a regional and branch presence without appreciating the triumphalism of the CR17 crowd again, the act of dividing is misleading.

Also read: Motlanthe’s Report – Where Motlanthe’s Report falls short?

It is a given that the CR17 crowd never died post-NASREC. Still, in the typical USA, Donald Trump fashion continued to divide the organisation along personality and faction fault lines built around campaigns. When members and fellow leaders disagree with the leadership at Luthuli House and its NEC, they get ostracised and painted into labelled counter-revolutionaries. I’ll discipline and necessarily be part of an opposing faction. The triumphalism of the CR17 crowd was directly responsible for the 2018 repeat of a Zuma president recall despite the ANC knowing what the impact was for a Mbeki recall back in 2008. Exactly ten years later, the ANC repeated this emotional and thoughtless but self-serving error.

Motlanthe’s report identified areas of manipulation of ANC processes and called for the NEC to appoint a team to investigate this manipulation of candidate lists. Irregularities were cited in the North West, the Western Cape, Waterberg in Limpopo and Tshwane in Gauteng to cite a few.

“It will be virtually impossible for the ANC to achieve compliance with youth and gender representation if communities continue to be mobilised along factional lines  dominated by male and older comrades.”

Motlanthe’s report identified the presence of money and alcohol as the presence of money as means to buy ANC members to support a particular faction.

I wish to postulate that the ANC, since December 2017, never had a functional president but a president of a faction. Unfortunately, Ramaphosa has remained the CR17 now morphed into the CR22 faction that must win at all costs regardless of what it would cost the organisation.

Perhaps some in the ANC commit an error in an expectation of a Ramaphosa leadership to bring organisational unity. They do not appreciate that his presidency owes its existence directly to factionalism and continues to feed on ANC disunity for its upkeep.  That is simply a bridge too far.

*Clyde N.S. Ramalaine

African Global News resident analyst