"I’m telling you that thing upstairs isn’t my daughter. Now I want you to tell me that you know for a fact that there’s nothing wrong with my daughter except her mind." (Chris MacNeil, The Exorcist, 1973)
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma should win the December ANC elective conference because she best embodies the contemporary spirit of the party.
Whether or not she is the best candidate for South Africa is an entirely irrelevant discussion, simply because that has never been the ANC’s concern.
The ANC, as it exists today, is an organisation dead to the people. It is a monument to self-interest, racial nationalism and antiquated economics and, on that front, Dlamini-Zuma is the perfect leader.
That might sound flippant but on closer inspection it is a more profound observation.
Organisations, as they exist on paper (and what is on paper so far as the ANC is concerned is hardly encouraging) are in truth held hostage, first and foremost, to the prevalent internal culture and ethos.
The spirit that animates the ANC today is a demagogic one. It materialised some time ago but has slowly grown stronger over time, carefully nurtured and fed by Jacob Zuma, to the extent that it now has full possession of the party’s soul.
As a result it is populism, not rationality, that determines the ANC’s agenda: ostensibly it follows some vague commitment towards ideals such as poverty alleviation and equality but, in practice, it delivers destitution and division. And it does this because its spirit is in control, not its mind. It lost that a long time ago.
What the ANC’s dark heart wants now is patronage and power. And its appetite is insatiable.
It does not want a clean slate, the eradication of the thousands of informal networks that hold it together, nor a new attitude which has the people at its core. Certainly, it does not want economic growth, for that would demand excellence in turn, and state institutions are now safe havens for the weak, incompetent, compromised and mediocre.
Cyril Ramaphosa said this weekend: "We will wash and clean the ANC, and it will be the ANC you know."
But the ANC needs an exorcism, not a baptism. And no possessed soul has ever embraced an exorcism. Watch any horror movie and you will know, you have to strap the tortured victim to a bed and burn the evil out of them. Incantations alone never work.
The malevolent demon that has the ANC under its influence is not going to quietly depart this world. Even if it was, Ramaphosa, for one, is not going to be able easily to pin it down. These things are not tangible but ethereal. They occupy the space between words, not words themselves.
What is this 'ANC you will know' Ramaphosa speaks of? Can anyone even remember? Did it even actually exist?
For all his prayer and meditation, Ramaphosa doesn’t quite seem to get this. He seems to believe the angry spirit should be tamed, not vanquished. Understood, not obliterated. In this way it has him, too. He pleads for a reformation but essentially, he preaches from the same Bible as Zuma, at least on all the biggest issues.
He definitely talks with the same vagueness and generality. Specificity is how you kill the demon. But it is also how you anger it. Ramaphosa says just enough to pretend he is in the exorcism business. Just enough not to offend. He is in all likelihood signing a deal with the Devil, the implications of which he does not fully comprehend.
That said, while Ramaphosa might feign to carry a crucifix, Dlamini-Zuma made her peace with purgatory a long time ago. She worships before the alter every day. Hers is a far happier, contented spiritual union.
She avoids interviews and explanation, abuses state responses, endorses the demagogic consensus, indulges racial division, surrounds herself with the morally compromised, feeds off informal power and exudes the kind of self-righteous arrogance that would have it she is inherently entitled to the presidency.
However vague his protestations, Ramaphosa at least gives the impression he is in a fight. That the crown must be earned. Everything about Dlamini-Zuma suggests she is merely waiting to be anointed. Perhaps she is.
But that she is at one with the ANC Zeitgeist is almost indisputable.
What is this "ANC you will know" Ramaphosa speaks of? Can anyone even remember? Did it even actually exist? Whatever your answer, it hasn’t been seen in decades. It was wholly purged from the system. Occasionally it returns from the beyond to haunt the dreams of veterans and stalwarts.
No, Dlamini-Zuma is the ANC of today. The natural heir. She should be given the reins.
It never ends well for the possessed in movies. Eventually they end up dead, just like everyone else. With her in charge, you can be pretty sure that’s what will happen to the ANC.
Is that a bad thing? Perhaps. SA will suffer the consequences, but then SA chose the ANC with 62% in 2014, knowing full well the sort of dark magic it was dabbling in. Just like on the silver screen, the best lessons are learnt through trial and error. It’s only in the sequel that the protagonists exercise a bit more discretion.
In the classic horror tale, The Exorcist, Father Damien Karras says, "The Catholic Church insists on proof that the devil is really in a person. Then that’s all the more reason to forget about exorcism.… To begin with, it could make things worse. Secondly, the church before it approves an exorcism conducts an investigation to see if it’s warranted. That takes time.… I need church approval and that’s rarely given. I will see her as a psychiatrist."
That’s the truth about Cyril Ramaphosa right there. For all his talk, ultimately, he is analysing the ANC as a psychiatrist. Conducting his investigation. Waiting for approval. Looking for an abnormality in the frontal lobe. If he does ever get the permission he is after, he is going to find he needs a lot more than Freud to deal with the problem.
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