Dear DM168 readers,

Most of you will be on holiday from today, but we at Daily Maverick are not. We’ve been busy on this week’s edition of the newspaper and we’re frantically putting together a super-sized, super-special bumper end-of-year and New Year edition with unique stories from our talented team of writers. The bumper edition will be on-shelf from Christmas eve till 15 January.

In this, our second-last edition of DM168, DM political reporter Queenin Masuabi has written a story that gives you the lay of the land in the contest for power in the ANC as members of the governing party gather for their elective conference at the Nasrec Expo Centre from today, 16 December.

Queenin explores how the political tide has shifted in ANC branches since the release of nomination lists, but that despite increasing support for Zweli Mkhize, it seems that President Cyril Ramaphosa still has the upper hand.  This despite the Phala Phala scandal in which an independent panel recommended he face an impeachment hearing.

Why should we care? Well, there’s the small matter of the ANC still being the most popular party by far among the majority of voters. Yes, the party’s incompetence, corruption, cadre deployment, in-fighting and dirty  contestation for power has severely dented its electoral support from 62.15% in the 2014 election to 57.50% in 2019.

But no other party came close to the ANC, even if they all gathered to form a coalition (which is highly unlikely, considering they are poles apart ideologically), with the Democratic Alliance attracting 20.77%, Economic Freedom Fighters 10.80%, Inkatha Freedom Party 3.38% and the Freedom Front Plus 2.38%.

For me, in all the reports in the build-up to this conference, there is one slight sliver of a silver lining. And that is that the ANC is moving away from amassing mass membership. In 2020 when suspended Secretary-General Ace Magashule was responsible for the administrative tasks of the party, the membership numbers climbed to 1.4 million.

Now, as Queenin has reported, the latest tally shows the party has just over 600,000 members in good standing — those who have paid the required membership fees.

I see a sliver, just a teeny tiny sliver of hope in this because the ANC has attracted some pretty dodgy characters who have joined the party for a sure ticket on that almost three decades long gravy train that has us limping on a stage 6 load shedding track.

Their reason for joining the party is very different to those stalwarts who joined when the party was formed in Bloemfontein in 1912 to campaign for the rights of black people excluded from having any say in the Union of South Africa, established in 1910. And also very different to those who joined when the ANC embarked on the defiance campaign in the 1952/53 opposition to racist and discriminatory apartheid laws.

There are many former freedom fighters in the ANC who have lost their way – choosing the quickest path to accumulation of personal wealth as opposed to the difficult slog of working towards the elimination of poverty, injustice, ignorance and inequality.

It is perhaps for this reason that the ANC attracted members who engage in sloganeering and grabbing tenders for which they have no skills or experience, or being cadre deployees for an easy salary, even though they have no desire to serve the people of  South Africa.

While ANC members at the elective conference will be focused on cementing their power, the question I wish they would ponder is why, when we have so many incredibly talented, competent, ethical South Africans from all backgrounds, are there only a few such people in the ANC?

I’m not sure they will care for the answer, which is that talented, ethical South Africans would not want to be like Shaun the Sheep following a party line they might in good conscience not agree with, or be put under a bus like Eskom CEO André de Ruyter was this week – the fall guy for the ANC’s bad appointments, rabid corruption, poor maintenance and poor planning decisions almost two decades ago. Well, De Ruyter has quit, ostensibly because he had no political support and load shedding will be with us for a looooong time.

Fasten your seatbelts, we are in turbulent times. But, the good news is that we are not the ANC, an ageing liberation movement which has run out of ideas and is so focused on its inner turmoil that it has lost touch with reality.

We are South Africans and we can try to make that fantastic ANC slogan “a better life for all” come true by using our skills, compassion and humanity wherever and in whatever way we can. Don’t forget to email your views to [email protected]

Yours in defence of truth,

Heather

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for R25 at Pick n Pay, Woolworths, Exclusive Books and airport bookstores. For your nearest stockist, please click here.