Politics can basically be defined as the contestation for power by either organized or unorganized factions, individuals, communities, institutions and formations etc with or without a common goal. This power, clearly defined and guided, is then used to alter the material conditions in favour of those wielding it and their constituency.
By way of illustration, one of the immediate strategic goals of the national democratic revolution was/is the attainment of political power with a view of using it to bailout black people in general, with a specific focus on the Africans, from the yoke of socio-economic bondage as a result of "colonialism of a special type".
However history is replete with instances of political parties/movements, people or communities, usually the minority, who have abused political power after achieving thereby trampling on other's rights. The oppression of the majority of the blacks in general and Africans in particular by the white minority is a classic example of this historical fact.
Another example is the tendency to silence others, particularly those who seem not to support a dominant faction, through subjecting them to unjustifiable disciplinary processes. Gramsci would have coined as counter-hegemony trying to assert its recently attained hegemony (or the struggle between the new and old as dialectics would say).
Flowing from the above background it could, at least in our own view, be convincingly contended that political parties, unions, national movements etc, such as the glorious African National Congress, are ‘advanced' or organized factions with either an imagined or real common agenda.
In one of his fantastic polemics entitled "Of Cats, Factions and a Revolution", Joel Netshitenzhe made the same point that the ANC is an organized faction who's clearly defined guidelines and a revolutionary record differentiates it from disorganized factions.
He then poses some critical questions, which obviously cannot be answered in this two page pamphlet give time and space limitations (however it suffices merely mention them for readers further engagement), such as: "what then is unique in the current environment that makes the challenges we face so novel for the ANC? What is the common factor running like a thread through the problems we currently face? The one generic factor in the environment is access to government office or political incumbency."
To further the argument the ANC has a unique, unlike disorganized factions, has a unique character, clearly defined principles and norms [which have become its culture] that regulate the manner in which power must be contested [see Umrabulo 11, Through the eye of the needle]. This uniqueness has assisted the ANC to rise to the occasion despite internal and external threats or weaknesses such as Polokwane-2007 JZ trials and recent drama by the former YL Limpopo chairperson and crew.
Moreover, the ANC principles and culture amongst other things sanctions individual to lobby for their ideal form [leadership] and contend [programs] before elective-constitutional platforms. For example, to openly caucus, lobby or discuss the weaknesses and strengths of individual comrades is allowed. However the character of comrades being discussed must not be assassinated and that such discussions must cease to exist once the new leadership has been installed or confirmed.
Avoiding to assassinate the character of other comrades in the process of discussing form (leadership) and content (program) or lobbying appears easier said than done particularly if we are agree that what is personal can be political vice versa. For instance, to say a leader must, inter alia, be down to earth and never to assume that he/she is a source of all wisdom and be above reproach refers to personal characteristics that prospective leaders must possess even it's a political argument.
To argue that a certain potential leader does not possess any of these characteristics could amount to lobbying being personal. These are some of the contradictions or dilemmas which must be looked at as well since this article does not have answers to them.
Notwithstanding what Umrabulo 11 says in terms of guidelines, norms and cultures but in the recent years the broader mass democratic movement and the ANC in particular has witnessed tendencies that seek to suggest that it has elements of an unorganized faction. These tendencies are not necessarily foreign in the history of the ANC but what is worrying is that failure to address them might result in them being discouraged in public while privately being practiced and perpetuated by the rank and file.
These tendencies include: the use of political office for personal gain, buying and recruitment of membership only for the purposes of elective conferences, members of other members, winner-takes all as a result of block voting, use of deployment to government and strategic structures as a lobbying tool and deliberate failure to accept and work with new the leadership once elected instead doing everything to frustrate it (see ANC 2010 NGC document on organizational renewal and leadership perspective).
In our own view, these tendencies are not peculiar to the mass democratic movement but appear to be confronting all national movements, political parties and/or organized factions contending with the 21st century neo-liberal politics or context. For instance, ZanuPF and its baby Movement Democratic Change factions and IFP are experiencing more or the less the same organizational and political challenges.
In fact this challenges as a result of factions dates back to the early 1920s wherein squabbles existing within the Russian Bolsheviks and Mensheviks up to Trotsky and Stalin ‘battles' (nicely depicted in the George Orwell's Animal Farm).
Much as unpacking this is beyond the scope of this paper but the point we are trying to make is that factions appear to have always been there and that, just like the theory of dialectics says, they change with time and space. However the so-called triumph of the free market economics have made matters worse by instilling notions that everyone must maximize profit in order to be taken seriously and material possess is the main reason for human existence.
These notions exist in side by side with the widening socio-economic inequalities. As a result most, if not all, people, unlike during the struggle against apartheid wherein it was a selfless and dangerous act to join political organizations, view politics as an easiest step to accumulating wealth thus living a life that is defined by the 21st society.
The 2010 ANC draft Mid Term Review captures the above well when it correctly contends that: "the influence of money in our processes is having the biggest potential to change the character of the movement from being people-centered and people-driven...to one where power is wielded by a narrow circle of those who own and/or control resources. This is at the centre of the re-emergence of factions in the movement where contestation is not ideological but driven by narrow interests".
It is particularly for this and other reasons (not mentioned because of space) that factions or lobby groups continue to exist even beyond elective conferences and congresses simply because some are worried that they will lose the wealth or status accumulated because of being aligned to hegemonic faction at a given point. Comrade David Masondo would correctly refer to this type of comrades as political accumulator.
What's to be done?
Moving forward we are of the thinking that ANC members in general and new ones in particular must be vigorously inducted so that they internalize the declaration captured in the membership forms. This will ensure that they live with this philosophy of selflessly laying their skills and services at a disposal of the movement without expecting personal or material gain.
However it should be stressed that individuals could have their interests declared provided that they are dialectically aligned to those of the collective or the motive forces/agents for change. Moreover individual members themselves must take an initiative to educate themselves so that they are not manipulated by those who came before them in the organization thus avoiding joining other members than the organization (member of other members phenomenon).
For instance, what we have witnessed throughout our period in this and other tertiary institutions is that new students are vulnerable to becoming members of other members and being used to fight political scores which normally are about an individual's or faction's small or empty egos instead of consolidating the gains while quickening the pace to advance the access (facilitating student intake) and success (ensuring that the environment to study is conducive so that those who have accessed higher education actually graduate or are successful) struggle.
Most of this new-students cum-campus activist's end up, despite their initial revolutionary zeal ( blind as it was/is), being destroyed to a point that some do not even finish their terms whether in university structures of student governance or clubs or societies within the university.
Moreover we need to go back to the basics so that we do not, as the late Peoples President of China Tsetung once said, "...let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship (or because one wants SRC or otherwise deployment) when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms...The result is that both the organization and the individual suffer".
This could require us to just adopt thus adhere to proposals as captured in the 2010 ANC NGC document on leadership renewal, discipline and organizational culture. Some of these proposals are: "disqualification as a candidate or delegate; expulsion, from the meeting, of a conference or delegate or observer or guest and naming and shaming of candidates or members or their ANC/non-ANC supporters".
Finally we are of the view that the struggle against tendencies that could destroy the ANC and broader movement must be parallel to a struggle against neoliberal philosophies of "survival of the fittest"; "excessive love for material possession", and seeing "profit making as means and ends of live" etc otherwise all other attempts will fall short since these challenges are structural hence require a holistic approach.
Lets us conclude by saying that the current generation must never allow a situation where in we will continue to be witnesses of the unfortunate occurrence of a stern and revolutionary warning by Oliver Tambo (at a closing conference address) that the ANC's biggest enemies are within it and that these enemies wear the same revolutionary t-shirts as us, sing the same songs (and sometimes sing better and louder than us) and speak the same revolutionary theory (and sometimes knows it better than us).
This is what distinguishes genuine revolutionaries (who continue to participate in the movement despite having been marginalized and ridiculed simply because they fearlessly follow Mao's caution without fear of not being promoting) from those who think they are more revolutionary than others whereas they deeds lives much to be desired.
Thembinkosis Zondi is Kz 221 ward 3 African National Congress Branch Secretary, Youth League Branch Secretary and Chairperson of Siyazenzela Youth Club writing in his own personal capacity.
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