As the ANC celebrates its 113th anniversary the big question is whether SA’s former majority party can renew itself, or whether it will continue its downward plunge until it bleeds so much support that it becomes just another opposition party.
Renewing itself will require shock therapy, which must involve getting rid of most of its ineffective current leadership.
The reality, which many ANC leaders appear not to have grasped yet, is that unless the ANC genuinely renews itself it is likely to be a sub-20% party after the 2029 general elections. Worldwide, in the past 80 or more years since World War 2 only one liberation or independence movement has managed to renew itself while in power, and that is Singapore’s People’s Action Party.
That party did so in the most dramatic manner imaginable — by forcefully retiring most of its corrupt, incompetent and tired liberation struggle heroes. It then hired a non-party-linked recruitment agency to hire competent, honest, educated members who were not part of the party’s patronage network or ideological and factional networks, who were then installed as the party’s new leadership.
In this way, it brought in fresh, competent, highly educated, non-ideologically fundamentalist leaders, many of whom were not even members of the party before they were recruited. It caused such a backlash that those who were pushed out broke away and formed a new opposition party. People’s Action Party leader Lee Kuan Yew, popularly known as LKY, barely survived the political fightback from the party’s furious cadres.
However, LKY’s approach produced results. Singapore is now a developed country that leads the world in many important metrics, whereas almost every other country in the world that is run by a former liberation or independence movement is now poorer, more lawless, more corrupt and more ethnically divided than when they took power.
In general, genuine party renewal is possible only if the governing independence or liberation movement party is ousted from office and is not distracted by state power and the bling and complacency associated with being in office.
In Africa only two liberation or independence parties have successfully renewed themselves in this manner since Liberia became the first African country to gain independence on July 26 1847. Both these movements — the African Party of Independence of Cape Verde and the Mauritius Labour Party — did so while they were in opposition, after they had lost power.
If it is serious about renewal the ANC has essentially three options. One is to fire en masse most of its national, provincial and regional executive committees and its parliamentary caucus, many of whom are in the eyes of the public glaringly corrupt, incompetent and tired — especially those who have been part of an ineffectual government for decades.
If the ANC chooses the People’s Action Party option to renew, it will have to appoint new, pragmatic and skilled leaders who have successfully run enterprises outside politics and the state, who are not aligned with any of the party’s existing factions and are not steeped in recycled, outdated ideology positions such as the “national democratic revolution” or blaming apartheid, colonialism and “white monopoly capital” for every self-inflicted failure.
The issue liberation and independence movements often struggle with is that most of their leaders have never worked in the real world outside politics, or managed anything — not even a spaza shop. Given that they have no experience of the real economy, they rarely understand how their country or the world economy works. As bad is that many leaders are not broadly educated, do not read, and have not spent any significant time in countries other than their own, which means they have not seen how functional governments operate, or what can be learnt from successful societies.
Singapore’s People’s Action Party brought in new leaders who had started or run successful businesses or state-entities and public institutions before and were well-read, well-travelled and educated, often abroad. In this way, the party broke the curse of liberation and independence movements being dominated by leaders who do not understand the workings of the real economy.
