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ANC clean-up: No quick fix to the party’s discipline problem — it’s a quagmire that could take a while to sort out

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Susan Booysen is Director of Research, Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), and visiting and emeritus professor, Wits School of Governance.

As the gates continued closing on the Magashule empire and the arms deal saga reached a milestone with Jacob Zuma entering a high court plea, bittersweet victory surrounded the ANC this week. Victories were noted in favour of building a cleaned-up, or at least cleaner, ANC. Yet complications were rife as plans to apply discipline came face to face with real people, on both sides of factional divides. It was a quagmire.

Advances converged to hint at a historical turn. 

The Cyril Ramaphosa renewal brigade notched up the appointment of the Free State interim provincial task team, testifying to a political solution to the province’s factional stalemate around branch corruption. 

Zandile Gumede stepped down (aside) as a KwaZulu-Natal member of the provincial legislature. 

The ANC National Working Committee pronounced against Ace Magashule, Carl Niehaus and Tony Yengeni, consolidating Ramaphosa’s stronger position in the National Executive Committee. 

The National Youth Task Team had middle-aged Zumaists exorcised from its ranks. 

Former president Jacob Zuma took that unprecedented step at the Pietermaritzburg arms deal trial.

It could have been an unadulterated historic moment of celebrating a new, cleaned-up African National Congress. 

Yet, in the wings, there is a rogue parade of corruption-tainted leaders from across ANC factions. They range from the newly implicated to those bearing longer-term question marks related to engagements on contracts, procurement and favours to friends. 

The list includes many who have, or have had, an eye on higher ANC and national office. There is mud on their aspirations. Beyond the leadership list is an avalanche of comrades who have benefited in some similar, favoured ways, or are guilty in their silences and complicity. 

In the months and years ahead, this diverse group will test the ANC’s disciplinary apparatuses. Two certainties rule: wrongdoers will not be going down alone and the ANC’s disciplinary systems appear poorly equipped for what lies ahead. 

It may be edifying to assess how robust the ANC’s clean-up apparatuses are. Is there a sense of urgency and enabled processes that would help the ANC deal with these problems in good time, for example, before new leadership elections will take place in December 2022? By available signals, a quagmire of interlocking corruption definitions, processes and institutions define the battlefield. 

Three years-plus after the ANC and South Africa’s Ramaphoria, four dynamics drive the already mauled ANC clean-up architecture: there is obfuscation in the ANC’s classification of degrees of corruption; uncertainty rules on whether sanctions against wrongdoers should apply in the party or the state or both; the party vacillates in determining who the disciplining agency will be (the ANC or the sites of state and government deployment); and confusion rules in what the intra-ANC hierarchy of authority is in executing the disciplinary processes. 

These questions are germane, especially in light of Ramaphosa’s dictum of letting “the processes run their course”.

First is the differentiation between levels of deeds on the spectrum of corruption. For example, the ANC is battling to draw the lines between those alleged to be involved in corruption and those implicated in corruption through direct benefit being gained or benefit accruing to comrades and friends. 

Ideological corruption, such as being entrapped in white monopoly capital, is a pervasive category. 

A potent type of corruption is whether political oversight has been exercised and when to call it out for “a calculated blind eye being turned”. 

Accused but not charged (yet being investigated) is next on the escalating scale of wrongdoing. Then follow “charged” and possibly “out on bail”. Next, “case in progress”, followed by conviction and ultimately the nature of the sentence and whether there is an option of a fine. 

The sliding scale is at the centre of the ANC’s corruption morass.

The second ANC discipline indecision is whether sanction for wrongdoing should be applied to positions in the ANC or the state. This can mean the difference between political life and death. 

Yet, the ANC still needs to stabilise its thinking on the difference between being disciplined through sanctioning position-holding in the party or the state, including holding of legislative positions across Parliament, provincial legislatures and councils. 

Further differentiations that cry out for clarification across ANC structures is with whether the implicated or charged may hold on to ordinary membership in the legislative institution, or ordinary membership of the ANC, but have to relinquish leadership positions. Perhaps they will be allowed to sit out existing terms. 

KwaZulu-Natal has opened the door to people in the disciplinary maelstrom being allowed to contest for office. The sanction may also range in general status from “temporary suspension”, to suspension, to expulsion.

The third ANC disciplinary puzzle to solve is to figure out which internal ANC or public-state disciplinary processes will be activated to deal with ANC wrongdoers who are deployed in the state. 

If the locus of discipline resides within the ANC, the fourth dynamic comes into play: which ANC disciplinary process unfolds exactly when, and with what implications for the rest of the processes and institutions. Plans on paper are easier than in practice, the ANC has been learning.

The Gauteng cases of Dr Bandile Masuku and Khusela Diko are instructive. The ANC’s internal structures (the provincial and national disciplinary committees) have had their contrasting verdicts; the state’s Special Investigating Unit had adverse findings on Masuku and the presidency’s own internal investigation into Diko is unfolding.

Clarifications will have to follow: who is the uber authority in the hierarchy (if there is a clearcut one) of disciplining institutions? What is the exact relation between the ANC’s disciplinary committees (national and provincial) and its integrity commission? 

A post-integrity commission appeals structure has now been established. What happens if state and ANC verdicts on wrongdoing diverge? The greatest challenge of them all will be for the ANC to keep track in this maze of moving parts and maintain equitability in its operationalisation of the system — if one, integrated system can actually be configured. 

Such vexed disciplinary dynamics have obvious implications for an organisation in which there is a wilful co-existence of the clean, those in the process of coming clean or claiming that they are trying, and a multitude of shades of not clean, cannot ever be clean and having faith in getting away with being corrupt. 

The ANC mantra appears to “be seen to be working on it”. 

The reality for voters and citizens who are watching this space is: do not expect a clean-up miracle to be lurking. What we see now is what we shall get, for a considerable time to come. The eye of the needle quivers, as the ANC works on it. DM

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  • Laurence Erasmus says:

    The solutions need not be so complicated. Surely the notion that there are degrees of corruption or immoral behaviour is a slippery slope. An independent body with legal standing should be established and it alone should be empowered to discipline all looting individuals in accordance with the laws of the land. Whether the looter is employed by the State or ANC should not matter. The extent, type, complexity of the looting should have little impact on who is disciplined. The easy or simple cases should be dealt with at speed. Those implicated in more complex cases must be suspended immediately, like in the private sector. The argument that one should only step aside when found guilty holds no water. Individuals who elect to participate in corrupt activities cannot cry foul when investigations implicate them. One must know that if you participate even by turning a blind eye, like Dr Mkhize, then you put yourself at risk and you must face the music.

  • Andy Miles says:

    The Constitution and the Judiciary have the mechanisms and processes to deal with matters of corruption, civil and criminal crimes against the State, and the people of South Africa. The issue much, and accurately, reported by DM is that the ANC whilst stating it abides by the Constitution and the law, in practice does not. The ANC places itself as supreme commander above and before anything else. Shades of downtown Moscow and communism. Look at what is happening in Hong Kong where Chinese communism is trashing democracy and human rights. What do we think the end game of the ANC is if not something similar. CR’s famous boiling of frogs strategy. Alarming when he is clearly one of the best amongst a bad lot. How we unpick the unhealthy power and misguided strategy of the ANC is vexing. In a functioning democracy the ultimate sanction is reflected at the ballot box. The history of SA’s political landscape and a lack of credible Government in waiting, coupled with a poorly educated and an ill informed electorate, provide a challenging landscape within which to get new direction established that will find broad support. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that around 30%of the economic activity is in Gov/public sector that has over the past 20 years been systematically denuded of skills and intellectual capacity. A valuable off balance sheet asset of SA Pty Ltd thrown down the toilet. That said, I believe in South Africa and in my own way work for a better future for all.

  • N Another says:

    Agree with Laurence. There also isn’t a need for a further body. The state is already equipped to prosecute corruption. Politicians are regular citizens who should face prosecution like anyone else. There isn’t a need for an ANC created body. The situation is ridiculous. The only reason guilty people aren’t prosecuted is because of vested interests protecting each other. This paper’s investigative journalism is doing a sterling job. Its readers already know who is guilty. It therefore shouldn’t be hard for the state to step in and just prosecute.

  • Ted Baumann says:

    Why do DM writers write so badly? “A potent type of corruption is whether political oversight has been exercised and when to call it out for “a calculated blind eye being turned”.” How can a question about oversight be corruption?

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