It’s amazing how much discretion the president of the ANC and the party give to party members in deciding how to handle their implication in corruption.
That Cyril Ramaphosa has to write a letter to the party is an indication that the party’s internal mechanisms for holding leaders and members accountable are not worth the paper they are written on.
Resolutions are meaningless if they are not enforced. And the tone of the letter betrays that the force of the governing party’s national conference resolutions are negated by the failure to implement them.
The letter is elaborate in describing and analysing the problem of corruption and its effects on eroding the legitimacy and capacity of the state. Ramaphosa is frank in identifying his ANC as deeply implicated and culpable for the widespread nature of corruption both in the public and private spheres.
It has become quite characteristic of the ANC over the years to be cutting in internal reflections about the state of the party. But there has not been anything revolutionary or groundbreaking about the steps that the governing party is taking and will take to clean up the mess.
Ramaphosa submits in the letter: “As the inheritors of the legacy of Luthuli, Tambo and Mandela, we must be honest with our people and ourselves. We must acknowledge that our movement, the African National Congress, has been and remains deeply implicated in South Africa’s corruption problem. We have to be sensitive to the concerns that are being raised by our people about our role as a movement in corrupt activities.
“Our lack of discipline and failure to deal with the issues in our movement have eroded our organisational ethos and standing.”
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Don’t hold your breath. Nothing is going to change. The ANC is not about to self-correct. The only thing that can correct any party that has let power go to its head, the only thing that can stay the tidal wave of the arrogance of the ANC, is to be kicked out of power.
The letter declares “now is the time for action ... As the NEC [national executive committee] has determined, we now need to draw a line in the sand. We need to act urgently, we need to be decisive and we need to demonstrate a clear political will. The time has come for the ANC to be unflinching in restoring the values, ethics and standing of our organisation. Our deeds must, always, match our words.”
What an insult to our intelligence. The South African public is once again being taken for fools.
We’ve heard it all before. This assertion is designed to plant the suggestion in our subconscious mind that we need to once again suspend our collective judgment and give the ANC and Ramaphosa’s “new dawn” yet another chance to get it right. This would mean succumbing to delusion.
The time of action in eradicating corruption has come and gone. The ANC failed to nip it in the bud and, in fact, chose to use the language of political conspiracy to discredit any attempts at dealing with corrupt comrades.
Ramaphosa goes on to outline what his ANC must do to address corruption. In my view, this point of the letter should have been titled: What the ANC should have done but failed.
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