We lived in the good faith that the ANC’s processes would deliver a better South Africa. However, the third year of Jacob Zuma’s command of the state left South Africans reeling, trying to disentangle the blurred lines between what is good for the country and what was primarily intended to maintain the president and his associates in power.
It became a year when debate was suffocated and critical assessment of the layers of leadership was relegated to backrooms of “plotters”. Incumbents had to be adored and policy platitudes endorsed.
In a country where so much of national politics is ANC politics, SA suffered the ANC’s indulgences.
The party shrugged off concerns by saying “policy was determined in Polokwane”. There was nostalgia for the wild days of the pre-Polokwane critiques.
Some members of the national executive do demonstrate great initiatives.
Some are truly committed and determined to making SA a better place for all in reality, rather than simply offering placebo solutions.
These dreamed, strategised and implemented initiatives are sorely needed across government.
South Africans deserve as much.
They should not have to wonder when leaders of the mother body, or its various factions, will break from their feast to deliver water to the people.
We should hold high standards when we appraise the level of SA’s government.
Our expectations are unaffected by compromised benchmarks elsewhere on the continent, or the rest of the world, or our apartheid past.
We note that too many leaders are arrogant in, and with, power.
We need more than dipstick actions and hollow calls to root out corruption, We need firm action, broadly applied.
The various pilot projects the ANC presents as evidence of its progress in policy implementation are often, ironically, confirmation that the bigger project is not falling into place.
South Africans are tired of hearing that the government “is working on the strategy”. Such reassurances only confirm that there is a long road to realisation on the ground.
The innovation (of sorts) of “the second transition” and the ANC centenary’s periodisation of the struggle illustrate the point.
The transition to full democracy is under way, South Africans are assured – “Be patient, trust us, we are now working on your economic liberation.”
The ANC that remains installed in government has become an ANC predisposed to cadre deployment and political chess. All the Machiavellian motives foreshadowing Mangaung have neutralised action to resuscitate the seemingly antiquated principle of Batho Pele.
Given these vulnerabilities and the moderated abilities to confound them, the last two years have seen the government showing increased sensitivity to criticism. On the ANC front, organisational “discipline” was the protective barrier.
In government, Zuma’s third year was the time to ensure that the government’s downscaled gains would be optimally projected.
The ANC stopped short of explicitly ruling in the judiciary, but politically “appropriate” appointments were implemented.
Where it could not make similar appointments in the media, it decided to dangle the sword of Damocles over those who might reveal too much about government “business”.
When the judiciary ruled against the government, the ANC reacted with ire, and there are great rumblings of what is happening within the intelligence community.
The government under Zuma is in turmoil. The question is whether the commander, his lieutenants and the warring factions are ready to serve the national interest, or their own.
Perhaps they will reconsider their actions and the criticisms made against them in this column when they run out of spoils to fight about.
l Booysen is professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and author of The ANC and the Regeneration of Political Power.