Hartford: SA’s political crisis – The ANC faces a reckoning as populist offshoots split the nationalist legacy

After 30 years of democracy, South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) finds itself at a historic crossroads. The grand promises of the national democratic revolution have crumbled, exposing a nation burdened by the world's highest inequality and deep disillusionment. Meanwhile, the ANC's one-time proteges—the EFF and MK—have fractured off, wielding radical populism. The former liberation giant now faces an existential question: What does it truly stand for? As the ANC grapples with its own identity, its future hinges on whether it can evolve beyond past failures and escape the shadow of its chaotic offshoots..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..By Dirk Hartford.The total bankruptcy of the African nationalist political project of the ANC – the national democratic revolution, the two-stage revolution – is now on full display as never before, after 30 years of democracy, to the most unequal (genie coefficient), long-suffering society on the entire planet. .___STEADY_PAYWALL___.All the political posturing and personalities dominating the EFF/MK Progressive Caucus official opposition to Ramaphosa's ANC-led coalition government were once contained in the ANC itself..But now these misnamed "left" populist cats are mostly out of the ANC bag as it were, what.is left in the ANC itself? And what does the ANC actually stand for? That is the big question..And the answer, sadly, is that so far, not very much else..Gramsci's prophecy is apt. "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.".The antics going on in the Progressive Caucus will hopefully start to provide some much-needed relief to Ramaphosa's ANC as they start to internalise that it is actually much better to have MK/EFF outside the ANC tent pissing in than the other way around..Even if they've effectively lost 25% of the electorate to get to this insight. And even if they have to endure further breakaways and losses before they come to their senses and realise that a radical rupture in political thinking is needed to take SA forward now..Because the crisis the populists of the EFF and MK face is as serious – if not more serious than the ANC's – despite their impressive electoral support. They still have to get to power, for starters, and that begs a whole lot of questions like how. Like "What is to be done" in Lenin's famous words...Ramaphosa's ANC already has the power. It has to work out how to use it to really better the lives of the people. Finish and klaar. Every step it actually takes in that direction will disempower the EFF/MK more and more..Much has been made and will be made of Floyd Shivambu's crossing over to MK, but who cares? Why, really? Whatever the causes it is a clear sign that the blow MK delivered to the EFF in the elections was just the beginning..Read more: SA's GNU: A fragile stability facing economic challenges – Katzenellenbogen.Malema's EFF 10th anniversary celebrations last year will end up being his swan song. It wasn't a new chapter opening up for the EFF at its 11th birthday last month. It was the beginning of the end. Even if the "end" is a decade away..When Malema was expelled by Zuma, and Shivambu joined him eleven years ago to form the EFF, they effectively took the ANC Youth League down with them. The Youth League has never, and will never, recover from that..To Malema and Shivambu's credit, they did what many before them—Holomisa, Lekota, Shilowa, for example—were unable to do. They built a militant populist organisation of some substance with a real base amongst South Africa's youth..They led the "pay back the money" fight against Zuma. Now it's Zuma's payback time. Not only did his MK vanquish the EFF at the polls. Its now trying to vanquish the EFF itself, even as they both posture together as the official Progressive Caucus opposition..Just imagine the dynamics and tensions in a "caucus" of the Progressive Caucus today where all the "morbid symptoms" of the current crisis of African nationalism are swirling around..The schadenfreude in Ramaphosa's ANC must be great as its "official opposition" begins to cannibalise itself. Malema always says the ANC must be eaten—like an elephant—one bite at a time. Now, it's his turn to be eaten as well..The fear and loathing in these circles, and also in the ANC itself, is immense. Everywhere they look – they being MK, EFF and the ANC – there are "enemy agents" who are "infiltrating" them to "spy" on them..They are not talking about Helen Zille here. They are talking about "tried and tested" comrades who have spent decades in the liberation struggle and in power..The fact is that the ANC has been a "broad church" of the liberation movement for so long, containing within itself so many mutually exclusive political strands, that it doesn't really know what it stands for now..Perhaps its dismal performance in the election, and the success of MK, will finally sober it up and help it to find its own new and rejuvenated path separate to, and different from, its populist breakaways the EFF and MK..Read more: Cholera outbreak exposes South Africa's infrastructure crisis and political dysfunction.Many of its policies as a governing party, particularly its economic policies, are a product of the influence that the populists have had—and still have—within the ANC..It's time for Ramaphosa's ANC to develop its own new, innovative solutions to the crisis SA faces free of its populist baggage. To this end the GNU is a good start..For a guide for the ANC of what not be, lets start with the EFF..Don't be a top-down, supreme leader, commander in chief, dictatorial, basically fascist type organisation dominated by one person who talks left and acts right..Don't spend your entire time race-baiting and projecting all the ills of society on the "other" while you yourself unashamedly enjoy and indulge in all the trappings and benefits of the "other".Don't be corrupt and steal from the poor for your own personal benefit while pretending to fight the corruption of the oppressor or your old comrades.Don't turn issues like "take back the land" and "nationalise the reserve bank" into central pillars of your political programme today when the masses are struggling for jobs, houses and decent and free health and educational services..Don't turn your idealistic and noble pan-Africanist dream into a free pass for anyone in Africa to come to SA, no matter what the consequences..From MK, the ANC can learn not to allow itself to be turned into a family-dominated, tribal-led medieval traditionalist fiefdom dependent on the whims of another "supremer leader"..Don't be an opaque, untransparent, paranoid clique providing a safe haven for a coalition of the most corrupt, criminal and wounded cadres of the national democratic revolution..Don't be an organisation that thrives on chaos, that is driven by feelings of victimhood, revenge and retribution, and that is ever looking backwards for symbols to try and go forward..This is a kairos moment for Ramaphosa's ANC. Cross the populist's Rubicon and adapt – or die..Read also:.South Africa's GNU: Making the case for hope – Brian Levy🔒 SA in political limbo: Will ANC rivals agree to unity government?South Africa clings to Socialism as ANC falters: Ivo Vegter

Hartford: SA’s political crisis – The ANC faces a reckoning as populist offshoots split the nationalist legacy

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