TWEET OF THE WEEK: ANC death and democracy

Welcome to Tweet of the Week. Every Friday I will use this column to hand out an award to one person who has tweeted something of significance. There are no strict rules, only that the tweet in question must offer an important insight, define a debate (notorious or otherwise) or mark an occasion.

This week the Tweet of the Week goes to @ANCLimpopo for:

"Furthermore the #PECLekgotla condemns the acts of violence that have recently flared up within branch meetings of the ANC #Seabi"

Profile: @ANCLimpopo is the official Twitter account of the ANC in Limpopo. It has about 7,300 followers.

Citation: Violence has become a fixed part of the ANC’s internal democratic processes. Post-Polokwane, the event which introduced a fundamental fracture into the party, the run-ups to both internal and external elections have been typically littered with bloody confrontations and mayhem.

By way of illustration, read this archive of fights, mostly at branch level, that defined the pre-2009 national and provincial election period (The ANC’s top 20 violent fights). That pattern has been replicated again and again. Indeed, not just replicated, but escalated. To the point where there is now a formal inquiry into political assassinations and the ANC.

For the ANC, death and democracy, or at least what passes for democracy in the party these days, go hand in hand. In its words it paints a façade of "careful deliberation" and of "discussion and debate" but often, as you move from the centre of the party to its periphery, brutal violence defines these meetings.

The way an organisation’s internal culture manifests is interesting to observe. At its heart, the impulses that underpin it — in the ANC’s case, distrust, conspiracy and division — are revealed more abstractly, in words and actions that allude to the problem. As one moves away from the beating heart, however, to the blood vessels at its extremities, those symptoms become far more pronounced as festering wounds on the surface.

At a national level we see the discord, a president with a thousand body guards, Parliament under military siege, the factional innuendo, the state’s apparatus turned in on itself but it is at branch level that the blood really flows.

ANC national spokesman Zizi Kodwa says "branches are the basic unit". He is right. They are in turn the best litmus test for the condition of the ANC, and, on closer inspection, they are sick indeed.

A new internal election is on its way, and it’s a big one: the election of a new ANC president. Already this year there are multiple instances of violence breaking out at branch meetings. Here are some of the more prominent examples:

• January 19: The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) in Limpopo claims its provincial secretary was held at gunpoint by security guards contracted to a local municipality and forced to sign off on a branch general meeting. The league claims it is the fifth such incident: "We learnt of the same hostile and paramilitary situation in wards 12, 24, 26 and 30 of Mogalakwena sub-region on Monday."

• January 23: Disgruntled ANC members of the Mokobe branch in Limpopo who support Cyril Ramaphosa staged a protest during a general branch meeting. The meeting turned violent when they clashed with supporters of Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

• February 13: Again in Limpopo, an ANC security guard allegedly fired warning shots into the air after an ANC MP and the municipal manager tried to take a list of members present to prevent a quorum being formed. They supported Cyril Ramaphosa, and allegedly feared they were outnumbered.

• February 14: The home of a Limpopo branch secretary was torched following the election of a regional leadership candidate. The election devolved into violence and a number of branch members were taken to hospital.

• February 15: A provincial lekgotla in Kimberly, Northern Cape, was brought to a halt when supporters clashed. Some people are reportedly injured and arrested. At the heart of the conflict was the leadership of Mcebisi Skwatsha, who was deployed to the province to help provide guidance.

It is worth keeping track of these types of incidents, because you can be sure there will be more to come.

The majority of them are from Limpopo, where the ANC is under more pressure than it would like. For all its success in the metros the DA has been unable to crack the code that binds the ANC’s rural constituency.

The EFF also has not been that successful, except in Limpopo (and possibly the North West), its most successful result and one of only a handful of provinces where it grew significantly from 2014.

The 16.94% or 213,640 votes it secured in 2016 represented a significant increase from two years earlier, when it secured 10.74% or 156,982 votes. You can be sure this has added to pressure the ANC feels. As 2019 comes into view, it will not just be internal pressures that are brought to bear on ANC politics but external ones, too.

But for the moment the problem remains an ANC issue. We saw, in the run-up to the 2016 local government elections just how destructive this kind of factionalism can be. Tshwane was brought to its knees. The election of the ANC top six is a more abstract affair so, when it comes to the crunch, every divided ANC branch across the country will become a mini-epicentre of sorts — a thousand little earthquakes going off one by one.

Given the state of the ANC’s decline and the depth and breadth of the hostility and animosity among the party’s rank and rifle, it is remarkable that all this bloodshed has bypassed the party’s bigger provincial and national congresses. . I say for the most part but the chaos that defined occasions like the ANCYL’s 2008 elective conference demonstrate that it can easy reach the party’s upper echelons when unconstrained (187 votes: How Julius Malema was elected).

But for all of this, and for all that is inevitably to come, the thing that strikes one most about the violence is how normal it all seems.

"Limpopo ANC branch secretary’s house torched", a headline says, but it is a small matchbox story, just by-the-by. It’s the same kind of story you read in community newspapers about a witch being burnt or a mob stoning someone to death.

There are two worlds in SA; there always has been — the urban world, strictly policed by traditional and social media, with Parliament at its centre, and the executive and legislature constituting its role players; and then there is the rural realm, with constituency politics at its core, councillors, members and supporters as protagonists, all observed by no more than the occasional local knock and drop, if that.

These two world have different rules, even if they are to be found in the same universe. And, despite everything you read, there is a strong case to be made that when it comes to the ANC it is the rural universe that is most important. Death and democracy, those two things exist side by side in the ANC. But it is death that really sets the tone. And it has found a safe place to express itself, far from the mainstream gaze.

You can be sure the next ten months will see it on full and glorious display.