Tensions within the ANC about electoral lists are nothing new either. They have always been the bane of an ANC secretary-general’s job. With a position on a list or a mayoral candidacy comes both power and access to resources. It is therefore no surprise that there are many come-latelys who join the local branch only to seek positions which may take them out of unemployment. That is the stark reality.

Every now and again, stories of violence breaking out at ANC branch meetings are reported upon. We also hear the whispers of “political assassinations” in places such as Mpumalanga. This is attributed to “warring factions” or perhaps simple criminality. In a society so wracked by crime, that can become a handy excuse. And so this week when mayhem and arson broke out in Pretoria, it was half expected that the ANC would go into defensive mode and cite “outside forces” or “agent provocateurs” for causing the violence. It partly did that and did what it usually does by trying to pretend it is a united party without deep divisions. One wonders if anyone actually still believes that?

Had one been watching the SABC, however, most of the horrific visuals would not have been seen. The public broadcaster has now followed the diktat of its COO, the seemingly unstoppable Hlaudi Motsoeneng, and will continue to black out coverage of protesting crowds. In doing so the SABC has shown itself to be in breach of its mandate as a public broadcaster. Motsoeneng has the requisite political cover but he will need to defend his decisions before independent body Icasa this Friday as NGOs lodged numerous complaints about the broadcast ban. Either way, in a modern world, it’s hard to have a news blackout. The world is too small and connected for that.

The visuals are one thing but trying to understand what was happening in Tshwane is quite another. It demands far more than a “one size fits all” “sound bite” analysis and diagnosis. It’s a toxic mix of a political party that has lost its moorings against the backdrop of corruption and patronage and easily combustible communities, some of which have over 50% unemployment rates.

What we know is that this conflict did not happen overnight. As far back as 2007, then secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe warned of “the cancer of corruption eating away at the ANC”. In December 2005 then President Thabo Mbeki addressed an ANC staff lekgotla and spoke at length about the “new cadre” of the movement. Mbeki’s analysis then described how at successive intervals in the ANC’s history, a “new cadre” was required. Mbeki pointed out then that the challenges for the ANC was then dealing with “being in power”: “we have seen these people attracted to join the ANC as a bee is to a honey pot. They come with the view that they will use access to power for personal benefit.” He goes on pointedly to say, “We have been trying to raise this matter for some time now”, before listing examples of those who may carry an ANC membership card but, in their actions of stoking violence to gain positions, “are not ANC”.

So the complexity of the liberation movement dealing with power and attempting to become a modern political party, constrained by free and fair elections and then the transparency and accountability required in a democracy, has found the ANC sorely lacking in depth and in its ability to keep the rent-seekers out. This challenge is of course not unique to the ANC as a liberation movement.

Enter Jacob Zuma, who ascended to power in a way that shifted things within the ANC quite dramatically. At Polokwane the deep strains of intolerance that had been building across the tripartite alliance during the Mbeki years were felt almost from the first day of that ANC conference. Ahead of the conference there were already significant gripes regarding membership numbers and whether some delegates at Polokwane were members of branches in good standing or not.

“Slate voting”, where delegates vote en bloc for a group of individuals, thus distorting voting processes and entrenching factionalism, became the order of the day and set a pattern for voting at subsequent elective conferences. Motlanthe, ahead of the ANC’s Mangaung conference, lamented that slate voting was the “worst form of corruption” within the party.

But, who was listening then and who is listening now? Jacob Zuma became president of the ANC as a result of slate voting and it is not in his interests to make any attempt to open the Pandora’s box of change. One person alone cannot solve the ANC’s challenges though one cannot help but look to Zuma as the embodiment of all that is wrong and corrupt within the ANC. He has taken the corruption Motlanthe and Mbeki bemoaned to new and far more brazen levels, endangering the very democratic project of 1994 as well as its institutions.

Earlier this year, deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa said, “In the 2016 local government elections we will not play zama-zama with our people’s future. So we will not allow our municipalities to be turned into a lottery. We will not allow our municipalities to be employers of last resort and provide jobs for pals. We want sound, dedicated and skilled personnel in our municipalities. Let it be known that if you abuse power, you will lose it. If you do not deliver, you are out. If you are caught with your fingers in the till, you will go to jail.”

Ramaphosa himself knows that he serves at the behest of a man who himself has done everything in his power to escape more than 700 charges of fraud and whose friends are capturing the state through state-owned enterprises. His words thus ring decidedly hollow.

The depth of rot within the ANC can also thus not be solved overnight. Its failure of internal democracy and consistent inability to weed out the rent-seekers has become a governance challenge across most of the country. There is no doubt that trying to change the wishes of the branches was a feeble attempt to root out some corruption and create a sense of internal control.

However, parachuting Thoko Didiza in was simply too little too late. The ANC leadership, after all, has been well acquainted with the deep divisions in Tshwane for a while now. These divisions relate to factionalism, “slates” of supporters, those who would seek to destroy rather than give up power and who would seek political power to gain access to resources and tenders.

South Africa needs a governing party that is strong, sure-footed and able to deal with electoral and other conflict effectively. That is currently not the case. We are in dangerous territory when the ruling party is unable to summon the moral authority to deal with their organisational challenges in ways that are non-violent. In the past two days, the ANC has seemed weak and limp-wristed while arsonists and looters run amok. In some instances we are told the police simply looked on. As usual, in South Africa we can rely on denialism and obfuscation by the ruling party, saying that ANC supporters had not started the violence.

Was it however orchestrated by a faction of the party as some media reports suggest? Of course, given South Africa’s high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality, the time is always ripe for instability, violence and breaches of the law. We ignore the xenophobic element to some of the violence in Tshwane at our peril. Somali shop owners were attacked and their goods stolen. In times of scarcity and violence, “the other” is often targeted. One has yet to hear a condemnation of this aspect of the past few days’ events.

In times like these we look to the state to provide both protection and guidance. That was sorely lacking yesterday. The problem is that the state is the ANC and the ANC is the state. Much of it feels simply like Zuma’s fiefdom. The ministers of the Justice and Crime prevention cluster appear weak and without authority. Our State Security Minister, David Mahlobo, always claims to “know who the culprits are” yet somehow never manages to use this intelligence to prevent acts of violence. In Vuwani he claimed also to know who started the burning, yet to date nothing has been done about that.

The ANC, long detached from its founding ideals and its members’ voices, is in serious trouble and no amount of papering over the cracks will show otherwise. How does it therefore rejuvenate itself and is that even possible? It has managed to do so over successive generations and mostly had the calibre of leadership when it mattered most. That cannot be said of the current ANC, a shadow of its former self.

Do the good men and women within the party simply continue trying to effect change from within – until now unsuccessfully – as the tenderpreneurs and those with undemocratic instincts fight for the last scraps? Or, will we see another split in the ANC that gave us COPE and the EFF? The latter has shown itself to be a rather more dangerous alternative.

The immediate effect of Tshwane will be a call for calm ahead of the elections. Yet, we can expect a violent election challenging the apparatus of state and the IEC. How will the ANC and its supporters deal with electoral losses in key areas for instance? Tshwane and Vuwani suggest a rather “all or nothing” approach to problem solving and accepting unfavourable outcomes. The language of violence has already been writ large on our body politic and its manifestations are infusing our democratic processes in ways that make conflict resolution difficult.

We won’t know whether the ANC can fix itself yet; all we know is that it is broken and that Yeats’ words, so loved by Mbeki, seem apt. Often it was asked whether Mbeki meant the country’s centre or the ANC’s. Today we might answer, “both”.

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

The line Mbeki didn’t get to asked, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” DM