A little lie, then nothing sacred anymore
It is in the nature of revolutions for them to be contested. Ours is no different. Even though we are no longer, for the moment, pointing guns at one another, there is no law stating that we won’t again. Our country is poised precariously, on a precipice. Anyone who thinks there are quick fixes to our challenges is profoundly mistaken, or possibly even irresponsible.
Recent developments; the court cases involving the National Treasury and the Guptas, the Cabinet reshuffle and the calls for the President to resign, come on the back of a series of other controversies related to the President of the Republic and the ANC. With real legacy challenges facing us, such as the call for the return of the land to the descendants of its original occupiers, the failure of business to transform in any significant way, continuing inequality and massive unemployment figures, to mention but a few of the most obvious, such self-inflicted pain is terrible for the movement and our country.
The social grants debacle, the collapse of many state-owned enterprises and other own goals, such as the recent decisions by the President to reshuffle the cabinet in the manner he did, herald a new and negative period in the life of our democracy and in the history of the liberation movement. But such controversies are not unprecedented. The Guptas and the President are not the causes of our woes, but the symptoms of a far deeper malaise.
In the French Revolution, the renamed calendar, designed to transform people’s relationship to time, the 11th month was given the name Thermidor. Thermidor means heat and it was in this summer month that the coup that overthrew Robespierre and his comrades took place. It resulted in their execution. Many have named what has occurred in our country in the last few days a coup. They have railed against the President for his actions.
Even for those who disagree with him, there is one inescapable truth. The President has the power to hire and fire his cabinet, so this was no coup. The issue is rather whether he gets his power solely from the authority of the state, or from a combination of his legal power and his legitimacy, popularity and the trust people have in him. That is now being put to the test.
Rather than being a coup, these events are the inevitable result of past choices, mistakes and weaknesses in our movement, in our system of government and in the failure of leadership that has allowed this type of delinquency to carry on for as long as it has.
Most countries that go through revolutions have experienced the Thermidor effect, where factions of the revolutionary movement turn on each other. Our first experience with this phenomenon was the events surrounding President Zuma’s election as ANC President and the removal of Thabo Mbeki, the then State President soon thereafter. This was accompanied by the purging of many cadres from the structures of the movement, mass resignations and a breakaway party, COPE.
Soon after that there was a further breakaway with the formation of the EFF. As we now enter the next phase of the Thermidor, it would be foolish of anyone to argue that the problems we face were all caused by the Guptas and their relationship to the President and his family. While this is the crudest, brazen and clumsy form of state capture, the same situation pertains at several levels in our society.
We have various institutions and departments of government captured by a variety of elements-business, criminal and even foreign. Given its ubiquitous and pervasive existence, we need to have a proper and thorough debate about state capture, lest we rid ourselves of the Guptas only to have them replaced with someone else, possibly even worse, even though that may seem difficult to believe.
We also have to begin a thorough debate about the character of the ANC and the Alliance, since it has brought us to this moment. For if we remove the President only to replace him with a carbon copy or a mini-me version, what would be the point? If we remove him and don’t deal with the deeper problems, things could even get worse than they are.
For now, rightfully so, all eyes are on this family from abroad and the first family. But the false perception is being peddled by some in the movement and in the opposition parties that this is our only problem, so that we mobilise to get rid of these people and we go back to business as usual.
The reality is far more serious and far more dangerous. For starters, state capture is nothing new. The apartheid regime was captured by certain elements of capital, as were the colonial regimes before them. Rhodes was not very different to the Guptas and President Zuma, except that for a considerable period he was both of these at the same time.
The resilience of South African slaver, colonial, monopolistic and oligopolistic capital has seen it morph and cohabit with every regime, including the democratic government. Clearly, one of the major challenges we face is that despite all our new democratic institutions, the constitution and our policies, we have not transformed the state or economy in any real or substantial sense.
It is this superficiality of our revolution that allows state capture. Any seriously focused business or criminal entity with the right amount of money and the right access can capture part of the state or even the whole of it. It is an open secret that many in business even cost corruption into their business plans.
It is also a reality that this phenomenon of money having influence spreads across the trade unions, the communist party and the liberation movement. Even though it is far more sophisticated in its form, state capture is even found in the DA. The NP regime was thoroughly corrupt and in many ways created the modern, corrupt state we have inherited but not transformed.
Business must cohabit with any government, even a socialist or social democratic one. The issue is what the nature of that relationship is. For too long, South African capital, largely White owned, these days with a smattering of BEE, has had it too easy. Even those who are not corrupt in the crude sense can carry on doing business as if it is still 1979.
It is time we admitted to ourselves that we inherited a corrupt state, a corrupt economy, a corrupt society and this corrupt ethos has transformed our movement, whereas we were supposed to transform it. We need to ask ourselves, did we capture the state, or did it capture the ANC?
Politicians, whether in the DA, the EFF, COSATU, SAFTU, the ANC, the SACP or in any organisation can make populist claims because there are very real issues that have not been dealt with in any significant way, including poverty, inequality, unemployment, landlessness, crime and corruption, since 1994.
In many instances, they make populist calls cynically and not because they wish to transform the status quo in any significant way. Some will do so because they object to not being the pig closest to the trough. In other instances, such calls are made to defend themselves from consequences of their actions, such as criminal behaviour.
So, while we mobilise, march, protest and hopefully end the delinquency of the Guptas, we must be alert to the fact that many of those now calling for the heads of this cabal, were themselves central to the very operation they now so despise.
Some of them have since been casualties and find themselves in the EFF or SAFTU. But others are still in cabinet, in the ANC, the SACP, COSATU and the other Alliance and MDM structures, but are now on the periphery of power. We should be careful when feeding the crocodiles, lest we become the meal ourselves.
It all started with a little lie. Part of what has led to this current outrage and the call for action, is the fact that the actions of the President have been interpreted to have desecrated the values, traditions and culture of the movement. Even the recent cabinet reshuffle, while it was an exercise of Presidential prerogative, cut many of the senior leaders in the Alliance out of the consultation process.
Instead, a kitchen cabinet, like that which used to operate when Jacob Zuma was rising to power, composed differently today, is in charge. But again, this is nothing new. Back then, the allegation was made that President Mbeki was authoritarian, did not consult and was a neo-liberal, heading what was called the “1996 class project”. Fake intelligence reports were even being used then.
We were told that the incoming leadership that would replace him would bring left, progressive politics and a culture of debate and consultation. It did all this while purging all the opponents of this, new “2006 class project”. As President Zuma has slowly but strategically, removed anyone not part of his personal agenda, those who were dubbed the ‘pirates of Polokwane’ now cry ‘foul’! One cannot take such people at their word. The same goes for those who protest now but did nothing before, despite all the corruption and injustice in our country.
It’s not about whether people are Black or White, but it is about whether they are honest and principled. All have the right to march, but equally, all have the right to be cynical about their reasons. Seeking unity around a program to remove this President cannot be unprincipled and must ensure that in so doing we do not prolong the life of the very cancer that is eating away at the movement. It must go much further than a change in leadership figures. There are even those in the movement who are now adopting the populist and anarchistic tendencies shown in other parties, such as the EFF in Parliament.
It’s complicated, as the saying goes, but all is not lost. We have seen an increasing level of political activity on the part of citizens. Many are now embracing and defending the constitution. Previously some were demobilized into thinking that the ANC and government would “deliver” to them. The involvement of many in the Alliance was limited to marches against banks and trade union marches, all the while calling civil society ultra-left for mobilizing around other issues, such as government’s failure to deliver text books or its refusal to deliver essential medication.
It is often suggested, as is now the case by those defending the Gupta project, that this mobilisation is the work of foreign interests and counter revolutionaries. In any revolution, there is a counter revolution. But if one is caught doing wrong things-stealing public money, subverting state institutions-even by the counter-revolution, it does not make the crime any the lesser.
Without a strong, vibrant, democratic movement that keeps government accountable, that mobilizes for real change, that seeks to transform society and make it more democratic, more open, more just, and ensures more radical and equitable transformation, none of this will ever happen.
The leadership of our organisations, some of who have all gladly shifted from mass based organizations into government, have contributed to demobilizing our people by arguing that, given their role in the state, mass based organisations are redundant.
Restoring the values and ethics of the revolution requires honesty, humility, a program of action and unity around these values and the program. That program must include real radical transformation of the economy and the state, not radical transformation of a few individuals, but collective radical economic transformation.
It requires accepting that we must defend everybody’s right to demonstrate and march, even when we don't agree with them. We are the architects of this democracy and this constitution. We cannot opportunistically abandon it when it no longer suits our purpose, especially the narrow, individual purposes of a few. This means we must allow open and critical debate in the movement.
Factionalism where individuals are targeted and purged must come to an end. We must stop labelling people as enemy agents and allowing fake intelligence reports to end the careers of good comrades. Equally important is that a superficial unity to oust Jacob Zuma will be little different to the unity that existed between those who ousted Thabo Mbeki.
It will soon disintegrate. We need to agree on what is required to change in our policies and practices to transform our country for the better. There is no doubt that this involves ensuring that the Guptas are stopped, but to reduce the battle orders of the day to that alone would be as sacrilegious as anything we have seen so far.
It would not be what Mandela, Kathrada, Alexander, Slovo, Sisulu and others would have done in response. This program needs to result in a thorough review of our organisational practice, our policies and even our constitution.
To do less would be to repeat the same mistake, which means we would be making a choice. We cannot continue to experience a life lived through the looking glass. Unlike Alice, for us, there is no way back if we do.
Dr. Phillip Dexter is a member of the ANC.
