The ANC has to choose between President Jacob Zuma or the party and the nation at large, writes Elvis Masoga.
ANC stalwart and intellectual Dr Mathole Motshekga is an exceptional personality and a diligent ideologue. The Sunday Independent last week carried a groundbreaking front page story headlined “ Mathole (Motshekga) breaks ranks”.
Motshekga’s discussion document presents the clearest picture of the moral, ethical and political decay of the ANC.
The party can be likened to a terminally ill patient whose condition is worsened by the wrong diagnosis and treatment.
The National Executive Commit-tee does not comprehend the gravity and magnitude of the malaise afflicting the party. They incorrectly think the organisational problems besieging the movement were precipitated through “collective responsibility”.
That has severely compromised the party’s attempts at introspection and self-correction. The NEC has contributed to the current state of organisational paralysis in the party. Its leaders have promoted and defended the (wrongful) supremacy of collective responsibility over individual responsibility.
In any moment of greatness or adversity, the primacy of individual responsibility can not be overemphasised and since 2010, the ANC has been hard at work defending the litany of scandals and blunders caused by one man - JG Zuma.
The shocking decline in electoral support for the party in the 2016 municipal elections is a strong indicator of its loss of revolutionary zeal and morality. Millions of citizens are losing faith in the ability of the ANC NEC to steer the country. So, shamefully, the NEC has hidden Zuma’s battery of failures under collective responsibility.
Why should millions of ANC members, supporters and leaders shoulder the blame for Zuma’s serial transgressions? He was acting outside the prescripts of his deployment as president and committed all his presidential blunders while in pursuit of personal glory, self-gratification and self-preservation. The ANC is confronted with an extremely challenging political conundrum and its top leader and supreme bearer of organisational direction, Jacob Zuma, has become the very embodiment of it.
Since its inception in 1912, it has always been the chief task of the ANC president to advance and safeguard the organisational resilience, institutional culture and traditions of the party. All erstwhile ANC presidents have demonstrated a sharp mastery of the strategic expectations that apply to “organisational leadership” and “cadre responsibility”.
President Jacob Zuma is totally clueless about what is expected of him as president, leader, cadre and revolutionary. His litany of leadership deficiencies are caused by his deformed revolutionary consciousness.
This means he can’t fathom the extent of the damage he has inflicted on the ANC and the nation.
Collective responsibility exclusively applies to a political situation whereby a member/cadre has acted wrongly or rightly within the broader mainstream of organisational obligations and strategic expectations. In that regard the organisation shall, in the spirit of comradeship and revolutionary solidarity, assume collective responsibility.
The once-mighty ANC is presently facing an unprecedented presidential crisis and organisational disintegration. Central to it is Zuma.
Motshekga offers a highly insightful prognosis in that extremely scathing and forthright document: “The State of Capture Report has created a moral and political dilemma for the ANC leadership. Members of the ANC join the organisation as individuals, not as groups. Each individual is admitted to membership on the grounds that he/she accepts the principles of the ANC. In my view the principle of personal responsibility is built into the constitution of the ANC.”
Motshekga adds: “This means, therefore, that in the present circumstances the ANC cannot and should not accept collective responsibility for the actions of the president and all those implicated by the State of Capture Report.”
Mathole’s description of the distinction between personal and collective responsibility is impressive. When joining the ANC, any aspirant member declares that: “I shall always respect and abide by the principles, policies and constitution of the ANC.” Therefore, any member who acts outside of those constitutional principles should not enjoy the protection of collective responsibility.
Most directly, this foretelling injunction applies to the litany of transgressions perpetuated by Zuma since 2010. The Nkandla upgrade was intended to exclusively benefit Zuma and his family, not the ANC. The president’s relationship with the Guptas was exclusively tailored to benefit himself, his family and close parasitic cronies.
Zuma is primitively strangling the ANC and shovelling it into an early political grave. He is the first ANC president to have endangered the organisational existence and survival of the party. And he has reached the point of no return - he has nothing to lose - and can wreak more havoc with impunity.
I sincerely appeal to ANC leaders, veterans and members to heed Motshekga’s foremost observation: “However, the situation is so serious that the ANC leadership must choose between the president on the one hand, and the ANC and the people of South Africa on the other hand.”
The ANC, in particular, and the nation at large need to be saved from the clutches of President Zuma. The ANC has arrived at a precarious and deadly crossroad. Only time will tell!
* Masoga is a political analyst.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent