The ANC has various intractable problems: among them, a now well-established culture of corruption, destructive policy and internal division. On each of these three fronts, the crisis appears insurmountable.
But there is a fourth apocalyptic horseman, generally given less attention: incompetence. There is an argument to be made that it is just as well set, as part of the party’s organisational culture, and the most profoundly dangerous, for it underpins the other three.
An army of amateurs and anarchists
The ANC is now manned primarily by fools, the product of a decade-long demagogic drive to eradicate merit from its ranks. That, and an open hostility towards rationality, evidence and best practice. As a result, it has no hinterland of organisational experience or wisdom from which it can draw and no young and upcoming talent on whose shoulders its future rests.
An army of amateurs and anarchists control vast power at local, provincial and national level, and they could no more implement reform, were real reform ever to actually manifest, than comprehend it.
The ANC is an empty shell of an organisation, yet even the shell itself is cracked and broken.
There is much evidence in support of this. At a macro-level, the auditor-general’s reports document an annual litany of maladministration and institutional decay, all laid out in fine detail over a great period of time. On a micro-level, there are individuals in charge of the state who defy belief in terms of their dire skill set, warped understanding and myopic worldview.
In between is a chain of command so disconnected no more than two or three links hold together at any one time. The party is a giant broken telephone and, whatever instruction is spoken into the receiver, comes out the other end as gobbledygook, if at all.
The ANC could decide something as simple as that everyone in the party is to have a single serviette. The order would be misconstrued, half the serviettes would be stolen, the alliance would sabotage the design, what was left would be partially lost, and when some small contingent did eventually arrive on the ground, the crates would be opened and there would be egg-beaters inside, and no-one really would know what to do with them, or the difference.
But, of course, there are far more serious deliverables than serviettes at play. Electricity, water, social grants, infrastructure, much else besides. It matters not. It’s always egg-beaters that arrive on the ground.
A merry-go-round of ineptitude
As accompaniment is an obvious dearth of expertise. The ANC’s pool of potential, in the form of its national caucus, is threadbare. Something Cyril Ramaphosa quickly discovered. Thus, the executive is constantly shuffled but never improved.
It would be an interesting exercise to map how many portfolios key members of the executive have held in their time at the top. It is a merry-go-round of ineptitude.
Fikile Mbalula is a good case study. He was the minister of sport, and left a trail of destruction. He was then minister of police, nothing improved. Now he is the minister of transport, and transport remains a mess.
Two things are instructive on this front. First, Mbalula’s own performance, which is always dire. Second his lack of expertise. Are we to believe Mbalula is an expert in sport, safety and security, and transport? There are people who dedicate their lives to these areas and are still capable of learning. It matters not. Tomorrow, Mbalula could be minister of science and technology. Mbalula is an archetype for this kind of thing, and there are many many Mbalulas out there. It is Mbalulas all the way down to local level.
The ANC’s organisational culture, with the exception of one or two portfolios — such as finance, where a global rather than domestic environment demands at least the pretence of authority and knowledge — negates expertise. (And even in finance, Ramaphosa had to beg Tito Mboweni to come out of retirement.) Ministers are typically drones, there to implement ideas they don’t conceive or, often, understand. It does not matter who is in charge as long as they are loyal.
And besides, beggars cannot be choosers. Anyone can be a minister of anything, that is the rule. And it shows.
Denial and delusion
The ANC is a pre-modern and antiquated organisation. It’s ideological impulses are always outdated and its performance always catastrophic but, for all that, its self-image is one of competence, hope and moral certainty. Few combinations are more dangerous.
Thus, an inverse graph defines the ANC: the more it devolves into incompetence, the greater the complexity of its policy programme. The party of egg-beaters seeks now to implement a National Health Insurance scheme, for example. That is akin to a toddler trying to reprogramme a satellite, using a TV remote. And you will be lucky if the remote even has batteries.
Ramaphosa says, “We have put in place a comprehensive vaccination strategy to reach all parts of the country. This will be the largest and most complex logistical undertaking in our country’s history.”
We shall see. As ever there is no explanation as to how this will be done. The idea and the reality never meet. But it’s the idea most people use to gauge performance. Until the performance inevitably reveals the idea for what it was: a fantasy.
On one level, the ANC’s incompetence is funny. Some of the things party members say and believe can split your sides with laughter. On another level, people die. Marikana or Life Esidimeni, a failure to procure vaccines, or even the extent to which the ANC literally assassinates or attempts to assassinate its own members, are infected and open wounds that now mark the body politick. There is blood everywhere.
They all have rank incompetence, some blind ideological ignorance or a base and desperate impulse for power at their core. All of which, you feel, might be tempered were the party to actually care about excellence and its attendant values in any shape or form.
But it does not. It does not even know what excellence is. Or how to recognise it. Ramaphosa, a man who cannot deliver something as basic as electricity, whose party has never lost a national election and which party is currently the subject of a commission of inquiry into state capture, recently offered to provide America with his democratic insight. The king of egg-beaters speaks, behold the depth and breadth of his advice.
The ANC in Wonderland
At a national level there is a great debate afoot. Those blinkered by some romantic attachment to the idea of the ANC as redeemable, insist, with the right decisions and right people in charge, a reformation is possible. What they never address is how this stuttering, broken machine would ever deliver on such a organisational revolution, were it to actually come about.
They cannot because there is no-one. The ANC now only exists as an idea. There is no actual party. Just a handful of semi-competent people, just enough to maintain the illusion. And so, really, the great debate is just a game. You could give Ramaphosa total control tomorrow, he would struggle to deliver even a mouse.
But we do need something to keep us occupied, and the game of what is possible is fun and provocative, even if a nonsense. It helps the romantics sleep at night, too, dreaming of the change they so desire.
As for the ANC itself, it loses no sleep. Why would it? No ANC member will admit to being incompetent, just as no ANC member would admit to being corrupt. Even if the evidence is overwhelming, that is not the point. When you don’t like your reflection in the mirror, all mirrors must be destroyed. That has always been the ANC’s attitude. But they do, at least, have the romantics to describe everything through the looking glass for them.
Pain and perspective
The country’s attitude to the ANC and corruption is an interesting and hopeful one. There was an extended period of time when the link between crime and punishment was non-existent. And no-one demanded it. But, through much pain — and via Jacob Zuma — a lesson has been learnt: there must be consequences. That is now a national mantra, at least as far as corruption is concerned.
That is, perhaps, the one gift Zuma bestowed on the nation. However, the demand is still made of those in power, to a greater degree than of voters themselves. And when it comes to incompetence, the demand becomes a mere whimper. The cataclysmically poor level of service delivery is always over-indulged because the measure seems to be the ANC’s own promises. That gives them something to hold on to.
Were it ever to occur to the people that the promises themselves are the source of their despair and deprivation, things might be otherwise. Likewise, were the people ever to conclude that the standard of the average ANC public representative is unacceptable, meaningful change might be possible. But that, too, is a lesson you feel we need more pain to appreciate. Pain and greater expectations. And that is saying something, for our collective tolerance levels are truly remarkable.
It’s a case of the emperor having no clothes. As tired and cliched as that observation is, it is our defining circumstance. We are governed by incompetence to a degree that staggers. But the illusion holds. We see clothes where there are none, and when we are willing to admit even that, we simply imagine whatever clothes we desire our emperor to be wearing on any given day and with regard to any given issue; endlessly encouraged by the ANC itself, which feigns control, vision and foresight with the best of them.
But always its egg-beaters we find every morning on our door step.
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