GARETH VAN ONSELEN: The ANC’s death by regression

The ANC of 2017 can be described as many things, but of them all, ultimately, the most accurate is sad. It's a mess of an institution.

Its members are largely complicit in some kind of idiocracy, as the party's collective IQ has been systematically lobotomised.

Its ideology and language are antiquated, a tortured and mangled rhetorical call to the socialist glory days of a distant land. Service delivery has come to a grinding halt as rust and decay cause the governmental cogs to screech and jar, and then collapse. Internally, it is some kind of echo chamber where self-interest and arrogance bounce endlessly around once-hallowed halls dedicated to nobler things; and it is all bound together, a disparate collection of warring factions, by fundamental denial.

It has slowed regressed to a child-like state.

The denial is the saddest part. As protesters marched last week, the ANC hauled out from the cupboard a group of political Antediluvians to "defend Luthuli House". They sang songs about Mandela and Tambo as if stuck in some kind of time warp.

A distinctly modern problem, a sovereign credit downgrade, was just too much for a party that now lives on little more than nostalgia. Luthuli House, once a metonym for power and moral authority, is these days just a warehouse for cheap plastic knockoffs, to be wound up and put outside to play their tired tune. Toy soldiers.

It is profoundly depressing, this idea that a call to the past can address the problems of today.

Like a terminal patient, hollowed out and gaunt from disease as death hovers, it looks to you and says, "I survived the war, you know?" And you smile and take their hand and nod reassuringly. Then you ask if their will is in order.

The league of morons Zuma has assembled at the apex of SA’s government spent most of the weekend dismissing the downgrade as inconsequential.

"Let the rand fall and rise and emerge with the masses," said Dudu Myeni. This kind of semi-literate gibberish is what passes as commentary these days. You could argue with it, if you wanted. But there is no point. You can’t teach nuclear physics in a kindergarten class, no matter how many pictures you use.

The ANC’s denial fuels resentment and anger, a natural response to obstinacy and conceit. But look below the surface and your rage will quickly turn more melancholic. You see, "the revolution" was never real. It was just a game. And yet these guys believe it is still on for young and old. The contemporary keepers of the ANC flame inherited more than ideas. But they have broken everything else. Now there is just the flame, a flickering portal to the past. How they worship its fading light. They think it burns blindingly bright. In truth, though, they are all just huddled in a dark corner, around a dying ember, chanting incantations. It is sad in a pathetic kind of way.

They have power though. That’s the thing. Lots of power. And in government they can wield their unique brand of stubborn incompetence to their heart’s desire; all endorsed by their benefactor, the ultimate man-child, who believes he is carrying out God’s will. What a time to be alive. The kids are in charge of the playground.

In government, the ANC can pour a seemingly endless amount of petrol on the flame. Radical economic transformation is the latest such accelerant. This way the revolution is always just around the next corner, and the next corner is always in the process of being built. The word radical is particularly ironic. Has the ANC ever done anything radical? It spins with all the velocity of a lead top in a pool of treacle. If it summoned all its collective will into one singular burst of energy, it might be on time for a press conference. Racial, like revolution, is just a word. Just an idea it clings to in order not to keep up appearances but merely to keep the faith.

You cannot have a conversation with the ANC because the truth no longer holds any value. You cannot even define it

Nkandla is sad, ultimately. A disgrace at R250m, but what did it buy? A second-rate pool and a bunch of rickety rondavels. This is corruption born of low expectations as much as low self-esteem. Not so much an iron throne as a wooden chair. Northern Cape premier Sylvia Lucas spent R53k on fast food. It’s just sad, I tell you. That this is what the revolution has produced. No doubt there are people out there, working on grander designs. Nuclear deals and the like. Didn’t we once misplace a bolt in a generator at a nuclear plant? Whatever those Machiavellian schemes, you can be sure in the final analysis the one thing they will not be is Machiavellian. The ANC can’t even do corruption properly, although it gets full marks for effort.

The game of thrones Zuma plays in the royal court defies all logic. He has cut off more political heads than Henry VIII killed wives. Every day he falls in and out of love with a new acolyte, and every new acolyte takes the bar down a notch lower. After a while the only people willing to embrace your friendship are those with nothing to lose. They will endure an axe over their head because it means they have to be anointed first. And that’s a price only a fool is willing to pay.

And who defends the king? Back in the good old days there was Essop Pahad, the enforcer. Today, we have the yapping of the ANC Youth League, the ANC kindergarten toddler division. And of course Zuma’s loyalists, but really they are about as forceful as a summer breeze.

The ANC once produced documents like the Freedom Charter. Today, it is known for garbled intelligence reports. The last one, that played no small part in the minister of finance’s demise, was described as something "that could have been written by a child" by Julius Malema. Say what you want about the EFF, it looks to future. Ironic, that the enfant terrible is the one to have matured far more than his parents.

The party is petulant. Spoilt. It’s had too much power for too long. To see the kind of damage omnipotence does one need only try to take it away. The Tshwane city council is an ugly playpen. The ANC is in opposition. It is a universe the party cannot begin to comprehend, governed by a set of rules it has never read. So it stamps its foot and throws tantrums, and sings struggle songs; always, the singing of struggle songs. They are the tune to which it sulks. The last vestige of unity amid a seething mass of disorder and disagreement. The safety blanket on to which the party clings.

Under pressure on every front, there is a whole range of new democratic behaviours the ANC has been forced to learn: the apology, the explanation, the policy about-turn, the resignation, the power of the individual. How they stick in the revolutionary throat. And so they are all hidden in plain sight, couched in meaningless generalisation. All its failures are concealed in this manner. It’s embarrassing.

Francis Bacon wrote, "But if a man cannot obtain to that judgment, then it is left to him generally to be close, and a dissembler. For where a man cannot choose, or vary in particulars, there it is good to take the safest, and wariest way, in general; like the going softly, by one that cannot well see."

Like a blind man feeling his way in the dark, says Bacon, is the man who cannot distinguish those moments which necessitate the facts be laid out to bear, from those which require they be held close, unarticulated, even unidentified. For if one lacks the skill to distinguish between those two moments, one’s language too is inevitably indistinguishable, vague and general; because purpose relies on particulars just as intent relies on action, without them, each is reduced merely to rhetoric, nothing more than the tentative outstretched hand of a man who cannot see one step in front of him.

And so the ANC fumbles along, grasping in the dark, along the wariest way. You cannot have a conversation with the ANC because the truth no longer holds any value. You cannot even define it. There is only the flame, and those tired, worn-out metaphors and euphemisms to which it alludes. "We have a good story to tell," says the ANC. Only it’s not a story, it’s a fantasy, passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation. Until it has arrived, today, into the hands of a liberation movement that thinks democracy is the enemy and freedom is some kind of oppression.

The parting words of the last of the old guard, as they move from this world to the next, are almost always imbued with shame and regret. Oliver Tambo and Mandela did not see the worst of it all. They were the lucky ones.

And the wounded pride; how tedious it all is. The endless personal affronts at the suggestion the ANC is out of all control, or, at the very least, out of its depth. How very dare you? We are gods, don’t you know? Have you not read the ancient texts? The tales they tell of bravery and sacrifice. Only we have read them — they are the frame of reference for the questions we ask today. You see, that’s the thing about history, as time passes you are slowly but steadily forced to relinquish ownership of it. When enough has passed, it will no longer belong to you at all. The ANC of today is holding on by the fingertips.

What a thing the ANC has devolved into. What a sad mess. It has regressed from an adult into a child, the Benjamin Button of political parties, and the only thing it has retained are the songs of its ancestors. As its world crumbles around it you can hear it singing; the name of Oliver Tambo drifts across the air. What a theme song. That one should play opera while trying to operate a wrecking ball.