In its latest policy document on legislature and governance, the ANC admits rival factions fuel violent protests and assassinations at a municipal level. It further accepts that the calibre of the party’s elected officials is costing it at the polls.
The party, however, has shown little sign it will act on these points.
The findings appear in one of several chapters in a special edition of the party’s quarterly publication Umrabulo, which contains the ANC’s latest policy documents. They note that where the ANC’s representatives are rewarded for loyalty “despite incompetence and disruptive competence” factional interests have overtaken the needs of the community.
The documents were released on Friday by ANC head of policy and minister in the presidency Jeff Radebe.
Commentary on legislature and governance lists eroding support for the ANC and a decline in public confidence among the threats facing the party. “The ANC lacks political maturity and visionary leadership that unites the elected collective and mobilises all forces to ensure effective service delivery,” it reads.
The party has recognised that infighting makes its councils and administrations dysfunctional, and even leads to violence and murder. Some ANC ward committees are weak, ineffective, inaccessible to the public and evade accountability.
Four years ago the Moerane commission released its report on political killings, finding that politicians recruited criminal elements “to achieve political ends”. Critics slated the inquiry for failing to recommend individuals for prosecution. A more recent report from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) recorded that 404 of the 1,822 assassinations in SA between 2000 and 2020 were political killings.
The global monitoring body recorded a spike in “the targeted killing of ward councillors or candidates for councillors” in SA ahead of local government elections as candidates eliminated their competition. GI-TOC suggests the deadly trend may be driven by the status and financial benefit of being a ward councillor.
In the five years between 2015 and 2020 more than half of such killings it recorded occurred in KwaZulu-Natal, peaking in 2016 and 2019 when municipal and national elections were held respectively, the GI-TOC wrote in Daily Maverick.
The ANC evidently knows the cost of factionalism and its poor performance. It comes as little surprise to the party itself that it is losing support “across all spheres of government” due to financial mismanagement, poor service delivery and rising inequality, unemployment and poverty.
Alarmingly, as the text notes, the ANC does not have proper monitoring and does not assess its implementation of policy resolutions, including on legislature and governance. By its own count over 15 years it has made at least 144 resolutions on those topics, mostly tackling local government problems.
But even the 144 resolutions have problems: only 18 concern service delivery while a mere seven relate to finance. “There is a need for a review and thorough examination of what informed the percentage distribution and priorities,” the legislature and governance chapter says.
Remedies listed in the chapter include bettering “the quality, integrity, and sustainability of the selection and election of public representatives” and improving service delivery to win voters’ support.
The policy document insists that the ANC must invoke its step aside rule “to restore discipline in the municipal caucus” and oust “defiant councillors” in local government. The rule stipulates that a leader indicted to appear in court on any charge may be suspended.
The step aside rule was agreed upon five years ago at the ANC elective conference in 2017. A revised version of the rule prohibits those who have been criminally charged from running for positions.
According to its own analysis the party must act decisively on corruption, ill-discipline and misconduct to regain support. Failing to implement the step aside rule threatens the party’s legitimacy and increases the trust deficit emerging particularly in the metros, it continues.
It insists “there is a need to move beyond just the step aside requirements in addressing corrupt activities and to urgently put preventive processes in place to stop corrupt processes from happening. The ANC needs to implement powers of recall given its pre-elections pledges.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.