By Joseph Makanda
It is 2023 and we must live with the fact that some individuals suspected to be corrupt have been elected to the top 7 position of the national leadership of the ANC. Most of those who were elected to the top 7 will not agree to step aside if they are found wanting in compliance with the 2017 ANC’s step-aside resolution. It will also not be surprising if some members of the newly constituted ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) cry foul on the inconsistency of the application of the step-aside rule.
Methinks it may bring more disunity and more factional battles within the ANC. This won’t be good for South Africa’s largest liberation movement. In the just concluded ANC national conference, the party has decided to uphold the step-aside rule. This means party members who are facing criminal cases will have to relinquish their position until they are cleared by the criminal justice system. Methinks this may not suffice and will stall further the ANC’s economical and development blueprint. Hence, I think as we approach the 2024 national elections, probably the ANC need to embrace forgiveness and amnesty and maybe relax its step-aside rule.
For the sake of unity in the party, amnesty and forgiveness may be the best solution if the party is to focus on its service delivery mandate to the people of South Africa and allow institutions that are mandated to fight corruption do so. Having said that, I am not condoning the election of tainted leaders. Neither am I endorsing a corrupt leadership of the ANC.
However, I intend to argue that the ANC must abandon the revenge-seeking behaviours and seek genuine renewal of human relationships among its members, especially those in key leadership positions. For the sake of unity, the new leadership of the ANC must ask those members who feel that they are compromised to ask for forgiveness. It is then that the leadership can grant pardon to those who are facing corruption but promise to allow the criminal justice system to deal with them. What this means is that at the party level, the ANC can pardon its tainted members but not interfere with court cases and investigations facing those it has pardoned.
In doing so, the ANC will be learning from South Africa’s history. Historically, the most stunning reversal in the ANC’s liberation struggle was when Nelson Mandela agreed to grant amnesty to those who committed crimes in defence of apartheid. I can say that those who benefited from the apartheid regime were worried that a man who they had imprisoned for nearly 30 years was taking over as the leader of the new democratic Republic.
Given that the liberation struggle of the ANC was the reversion of South Africa’s governance, wealth and resources to the majority, the minority who benefited from proceeds of the apartheid rule were quite sure that Mandela would not forgive and would avenge by either imprisoning or ejecting them out of South Africa. To their surprise, Mandela shrewdly reassured them that he had forgiven them by saying that “men of peace must not think about retribution or recriminations and that courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace”. Why then shouldn’t the current leadership of the ANC emulate Mandela in dealing with its tainted members? I can convincingly say that it is forgiveness and amnesty that can foster unity among the ANC members.
Hence the current ANC leadership need to betray the cause of the 2017 ANC’s step-aside rule just the way Mandela betrayed the cause of the freedom struggle of many if not all the ANC’s activists, who had been tortured and maimed by the apartheid regime. Although I have heard murmurs in some quarters accusing Mandela of cosying up to the tyrannical minority, Mandela forced those who were tortured and had been viciously dispossessed to accept their perpetrators. It is surprising that even those who had acquired endless tracts of land and wealth benefited from Mandela’s acts of forgiveness and amnesty.
Fight against corruption does not begin with step-aside rule
Corruption in South Africa has continued unabated before and even after 1994. With regards to fighting corruption, Mandela declared that corruption “would cease to be a way of life in South Africa in April 1994”. However, it was surprising that some of Mandela’s old friends were distressed by his readiness to welcome almost anyone, including businessmen who connived with apartheid. As a result, titans of apartheid sleaze quickly installed their deadly acolytes in the corridors of power and gleefully fuelled acrimony within the ANC.
When Thabo Mbeki took over the presidency, corruption compromised his government. Mbeki made efforts but he was defeated to fight the dragon. Similarly, the regime of Jacob Zuma was defeated to fight the vice. Currently, it is unlikely that Cyril Ramaphosa will succeed where his predecessors failed. This is because in South Africa, the biggest donors to campaigns of both government and opposition parties are often beneficiaries of apartheid or chieftains of graft. As such, the question of fighting corruption by the ANC since 1994 has been stood over generally as the government focuses on survival and in ensuring that “neither the ANC’s foes nor loving friends hurt those who are in power”. Hence, I am convinced that it is difficult for the ANC to use the step-aside rule to fight corruption.
I am also cognisant that since the ascent to democracy, the corrupt in South Africa have looted trillions of rand and possess the capability to not only resist anti-corruption enforcement, but also capture state institutions, which are funded by these very looters at the best of times. I have also seen many suspected looters toasting expensive champagne to celebrate their triumph over court cases as most South Africans die of destitution instigated by their felonious avarice. This is perfectly repugnant. Yet, how can the ANC win this asymmetrical contest against a behemoth whose pocket change easily captures or surpasses the total budgetary allocations of agencies meant to fight the vice? Methinks, not through the step-aside rule.
Forgiveness and amnesty within the ANC: Historical lesson
One key lesson to learn from South Africa’s history is that through the act of forgiving and amnesty, Mandela forced those who were tortured and had been viciously dispossessed to accept their perpetrators. This was a hard pill to swallow in the early 1990s. It still is difficult to really comprehend it in 2023. However, because Mandela forgave and pardoned, it was and still is much harder for others to call for vengeance. Almost three decades later, South Africa is pushing along the forgiveness agenda that Mandela left us with. The minority who benefited during apartheid and still chose to remain in democratic South Africa are doing so comfortably, keeping the 72% of the country’s land and wealth they amassed. In fact, it is hard to tell which portion of their heritage explains their immense privilege: race, wealth, or both. There are still some ruthless minority businessmen/women who made fortunes out of apartheid who now present themselves as friends of the ANC. Not forgetting the minority who exploited the oppressed to build private empires who now see Mandela as their lifelong hero.
But just like Mandela’s abrupt concession to the enemy, the persistence of an invisible colour bar owing to differential access to South Africa’s resources is a matter whose political litigation is always intensely ambivalent. However, with regards to forgiveness, methinks this was and is still Mandela’s greatest contribution to post-apartheid South Africa that the new leadership of the ANC can take a leaf from.
Another lesson is that forgiveness and amnesty are not unique in the world. Like other colonised states, despite self-righteous declarations and glorious self-advertisement, South Africa has a founding shame, “the apartheid sin”. Except for very few cases where fuller justice has been attained, democratic South Africa oscillates between denial and reluctance, to meagre past atonement. However, poverty and unemployment lead to the majority of South Africans in the cities, townships and rural areas living with suppressed anger. I am afraid that this anger could easily be whipped up into violent bloodshed any time soon if the focus of the ANC is on its factional wars that are being bred by the step-aside rule. Some members of the ANC who feel aggravated are inciting the masses of South Africa, saying that the party has lost its economic emancipation battle. As such, the anger of the poor and unemployed South Africans’ situation needs to be the urgent focus of the ruling party. This requires the ANC to wage an effective affirmative action programme and radical economic transformation and abandon its focus on its internal factional battles that are being exacerbated by the step-aside rule.
No party in South Africa is a party of angels
To this end, amnesty for past corruption is the best alternative that may free the ANC’s energies from the obsession with a losing war. Although amnesty to past chieftains of graft may be an outrageous idea, it is a debate worth having within the ANC and South Africa. In the end, history has shown us that it will not be the first time that South Africa has forgiven the unforgivable. To borrow one of Jomo Kenyatta’s quotes, “There is no society of angels, black, brown or white … We are human beings, and we are bound to make mistakes. If I have done a mistake to you, it is for you to forgive me. If you have done a mistake to me, it is for me to forgive you.”
It is for those who are facing corruption charges within the ANC to ask for forgiveness. Then, the ANC leadership need to pardon them. Whether South Africans forgive them or not, the onus is on the criminal justice system to deal with their cases. However, the country needs to address poverty, unemployment and the current Eskom woes so that it can move forward. In Hegel’s words, the step-aside rule as extolled by the 2017 ANC national conference can be equated to the thesis, and forgiveness is the antithesis. The job of ANC leadership is the synthesis, meaning they must select the best approaches to pardon its corrupt members so that they can glue their party into something that can work.
* Makanda is a senior researcher at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (Jias) at the University of Johannesburg.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Media or IOL.