At first glance, the unseemly public spats and bloodletting between various formations of the ANC alliance may be disconcerting and disheartening.
Arguably, the spats are a manifestation of a seeming collapse of unity of purpose and an indication that the centre is under stress or does not hold.
Society has witnessed the trading of insults as comrades find it difficult to pick up a phone and share perspectives with their fellow revolutionaries.
The ANCYL has been publicly rebuked by some leaders of the ANC, Cosatu and the SACP. The Youth League and its leader Julius Malema stand accused variously of corruption and factionalism led by a dangerous right-wing demagogy.
Branding the league a threat to democracy, SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande was scathing: “This demagogy constitutes the greatest threat, not just to our electoral performance, but also to our hard-won democratic achievements.
“We are dealing with an anti-worker, anti-left, pseudo-militant demagogy that betrays all of our long-held ANC-alliance traditions of internal organisational democracy, mutual respect for comrades, non-racialism and service to our people.”
Not to be outdone, the league through its leader accused his comrades of having betrayed the working class.
“We represent the petrol attendants, we represent the waiters and waitresses and we represent the masses. We do this because those who are supposed to be the vanguard of the working class have turned themselves into a lobby group. The only time they open their mouths is when they say so-and-so must be a mayor, so-and-so must be what-what. The working class is leaderless”.
The league went further to suggest that neither Cosatu nor the SACP had been able to advance any solutions to the country’s problems. In a sense there is a sharing of blame for the condition in which the alliance finds itself.
It has been a case of trading insults, of partners sitting uncomfortably with each other and those living in glass houses throwing stones. Evidently attempts to discourage members from publicly criticising and embarrassing each other have not borne fruit.
Since some of the mud seems to stick on all sides, the delineation of the good, the bad and the ugly is difficult.
The picture is somehow messy.
We are irresistibly programmed to seek easy answers to complex social problems. We eschew complexity. Grey areas confuse us.
We are drawn to a world where things are black and white and where heroes and villains are clearly delineated.
The positive side of this development is that alliance members are now able to expose some of the corrupting tendencies that increasingly erode the rich legacy associated with the best of the liberation movement. It is no longer a matter of criticism coming from the outside.
This makes it difficult to dismissively sweep it under the carpet.
Aside from crowding out external criticism, the seemingly internecine excoriation has the advantage of frustrating the usual defensive posture the alliance often assumes. Interestingly, in this unfolding tragi-comedy, the media assumes the role of an ally as each component competes for attention and media space.
Properly managed, these public spats can be cathartic and empowering – cathartic in the sense that they afford members an opportunity to acknowledge aspects that are undeniably true. The alliance members can use this opportunity to address unresolved tensions.
Indeed, the tensions may be an indication that the logic that held the alliance together is tenuous.
The public spats could be viewed as alliance partners holding mirrors to each other, and exposing worrying tendencies.
The holding of a mirror becomes empowering if the unresolved tensions are acknowledged and addressed.
Thus instead of bemoaning this development, the ANC alliance leadership could use them and embark on a project aimed at reclaiming the best that each grouping once represented.
In embarking on the task of self-criticism and introspection, the ANC should derive comfort and courage from the fact that it still remains politically dominant. Indeed, with a more than 60 percent share of the electoral vote, its dominance of the political landscape is beyond question.
However, if one considers the unrelenting intensity and frequency of criticism that the ANC, in and outside the government, has been subjected to, one could be forgiven for thinking that the organisation has finally succumbed to the battle of ideas.
The party has yet to translate this political dominance into a form of ideological hegemony. Indeed every Tom, Dick and Harry keen on throwing pot-shots at the ANC can be guaranteed public approbation.
There was a time when the ANC would haul out the big guns – the likes of Pallo Jordan, Kader Asmal, Joel Netshitenzhe, Trevor Manuel, Mathew Phosa, Kgalema Motlanthe to mount a spirited defence of the organisation.
Then the ANC was on the ascendancy and its leaders seemed to follow Gramsci’s observation: “One of the most important characteristics of any group that is developing towards dominance is its struggle to assimilate and conquer ideologically traditional intellectuals, but this assimilation and conquest is made quicker and more efficacious the more the group in question succeeds in simultaneously elaborating its own organic intellectuals” (Gramsci, Prison Notebooks).
Not any more. It would seem that a combination of political dominance and state power has introduced a form of arrogance that could be its undoing.
Former President Thabo Mbeki’s observation in 1998, though aimed at silencing critical voices, was prophetic and certainly apposite for ANC aligned thinkers.
Mbeki observed: “Of necessity, we must also raise the question of the startling and terrible relative absence of the black intelligentsia from the public discussion going on in our country about its transformation. There seems to be a paralysis of thought or a withdrawal from an open engagement of the burning issues of the day among this important section of our population, which is difficult to explain. And yet it was natural to expect that these, who are the most educationally empowered among us, would be in the forefront of the struggle to set a national agenda focused on the genuine emancipation of the millions of black people from whom they originate and of whom they are part.”
If anything some of its leaders have joined and mobilised public flagellation of own party. There is nothing wrong with that. Any party worth its salt should be able to withstand self-criticism.
One becomes less enthused however on closer observation that some of these leaders were known for their deafening silence when the lives of unborn babies were being sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.
At the time, only Cosatu, civil society represented by organisations like the Treatment Action Campaign and the media assumed the moral high ground.
Complicating the matter is the fact that some of these are rejects that were defeated in Polokwane.
However, instead of bemoaning this development, the alliance partners should use this space to critically examine and engage the criticism levelled at each other.
Valid criticisms should lead to changed organisational behaviour among its members.
The alliance partners must also learn to provide compelling counter-arguments rather than resorting to labelling their critics. The unseemly public spats present an opportunity for renewal. The question that needs to be asked is: what happened to the rational centre of the ANC?
n Professor Seepe is a political analyst