The subject matter reminds us all of the amounts of work that we still need to do reclaim the hegemony of the Congress Movement – to reassert the Mass Democratic Movement as the only vehicle that can usher South Africa into a developmental state, and into a national democratic society.
The former great leader of Burkina Faso, a Marxist intellectual, Thomas Sankara, once argued that a soldier without any political or ideological training is a potential criminal. This profound argument by Sankara lays the foundation for our discussion today. We must necessarily reflect on the importance of political education during the renewal because this will be the difference between a movement that will live and one that will die.
The ANC is the oldest national liberation movement on the African continent and one of the oldest in the world. Over the last 108 years, the organisation has evolved from a resistance and liberation movement into a political party that governs one of the most stable countries on the continent. It has been an occupation of scholars and researchers to make sense of why the ANC has continued to enjoy such great support while other former national liberation movements have all but collapsed or continued to stay in power through the use of violence as a means of cementing legitimacy.
The answer to this question is not as linear as many would want to present it. It is in fact layered and nuanced, but we can assert with confidence that one of the salient features of the ANC has been its ability to analyse prevailing material conditions correctly and to respond appropriately. The ANC has always demonstrated great wisdom in its employ of strategies and tactics that advance the people’s cause. But the question linked to this is, why? Why is the ANC able to make correct analysis at all material times, and therefore to respond appropriately?
The answer to this question lies precisely in the very DNA of the organisation: its commitment to intellectual and political work. When the ANC was established in 1912, the importance of political education during the renewal of our Congress Movement by Ekurhuleni ANC Chairperson, Cde Mzwandile Masina. It was in response to the formation of the union two years prior, and the legislative changes that this brought to the country, which would culminate in foundational colonial laws such as the 1913 Native Land Act. But the ANC of 1912 and many decades after that, was not the same ANC we see today.
At the time, the ANC was a pressure group comprised of middle- class men appealing to the ruling class for its own material interests. These men, most of them from various royal families and chieftaincies, sought to argue for the protection of the franchise of a particular class of Black people. It is a criticism often levelled at the ANC that it was formed by a petit bourgeoisie, and it is a valid criticism. But it is critical that must not be made without the appreciation of the politics of space and time – and of how the organisation would gradually evolve into the fighting force that it became.
Despite their orientation, or perhaps because of it, leaders of the ANC were greatly changed by the huge upsurges of the struggle of the working masses against the ruling class which took place between the 1920s and 1940s.
The intellectual aptitude of these leaders made them recognize the reality that there would be no meaningful resolution to colonialism without a significant re-orientation of the organization’s posture and orientation.
It was then, during and after the Second World War that a new generation of young Black intellectuals sought to orient the ANC towards mobilising mass action. They were inspired by the power of the wartime mass working-class movement, which had been greatly pronounced in the 1942 Witwatersrand strike wave. The Communist Party played a huge role in this strike and in many during the preceding decades.
And although there were many conflicts in the ANC and Party’s relationship due to different working methods and ideas, with the ANC even rejecting Communism in 1930, it was a lasting relationship that would give birth to the Congress Movement as we know it. But it was a relationship that inspired a radicalism that had not existed before in the ANC – a radicalism that would be defined by the emerging crop of young Black intellectuals who, in 1944, would form the ANC Youth League.
To strengthen its fight for liberation, the Youth League developed a Programme of Action which involved different methods like boycotts, strikes and other defiance tactics. In 1949, the ANC adopted this programme, which represented a radical departure from the ineffective strategies of the past, and a transformation of the organisation into a revolutionary mass movement. In the next decade, this change of policy would lead to the Defiance Campaign and the Congress of the People.
The militancy of the ANC Youth League, like that of the Communist Party and its Youth League, was not misdirected. It was, in fact, grounded in political and ideological depth. A perusal of the contents of the 1949 Programme of Action document demonstrates the thoroughness with which the Youth League analysed the contradictions of our country and the correctness with which it framed a response to them. These were soldiers, but they were soldiers with the political and ideological training that Thomas Sankara spoke of.
I am highlighting these points and this brief history to draw two important assessments. The first is that the ANC, the ANCYL and the Party have always been invested in intellectual work. Though the ANC Youth League was different from the ANC in many respects, chief of which was the militancy of its leadership and broader membership, which included such great leaders as A.P Mda, Anton Lembede, Ida Mtwana, Walter Sisulu, Mxolisi Majombozi, Lillian Ngoyi and Oliver Tambo, there was one thing common among both organisations: they were steered by persons with intellectual acumen – people who were deeply invested in political and intellectual work.
The second point that I am highlighting is that the ANC and the Party, as well as our alliance partners, later on, cemented their credibility by engaging in meaningful political work. It was this that would ultimately transform the Congress Movement into what we correctly define as a Mass Democratic Movement – a movement that is grounded in the aspirations and the efforts of the working-class mass of our people, and of the different persons in society who too, regardless of their class position, would gear their efforts towards a developmental agenda of our country and the continent as a whole.
This brings us to the crux of the subject: the importance of political education in the renewal of our movement. The reality of the situation, and it is a reality that we must be honest about, is that while the Congress Movement continues to enjoy great support from our people, we have been bleeding profusely. We are beginning to see a situation where the movement is not only evolving into something strange but where our people are beginning to punish us for it.
The previous national elections demonstrated the extent to which we are losing public support, as did the municipal elections before that, which saw us lose control of various metros and municipalities. Today, we govern through coalitions – something which was at some point unimaginable. And if we cannot arrest the emerging foreign tendencies that have found expression in the movement, which include such things as National Executive Committee members deliberately going against resolutions of the conference, we run the risk of suffering the same fate as many other former national liberation movements which are today sitting in opposition benches or rendered completely irrelevant.
How we reclaim our movement is going to be layered, but political education will be at the heart of it because it is only when we have a leadership and membership that understands the vision of the ANC and appreciates its traditions that we can have an ANC that inspires the confidence of our people. I mention our traditions because political education is not only important at an intellectual level, it is also important at a moral and ethical level.
Understanding the traditions of the ANC, which is an aspect of political education, would resolve the crisis of immorality and unethical conduct that we see in our movement today. Crass materialism, which erodes public trust in the movement, is the product of little political education. A cadre of the ANC and the Congress Movement would not be someone who leads an ostentatious life. It would not be someone who, when the masses shout that they are hungry, responds: “Let them eat cake!” This is because a person schooled in the traditions of the ANC knows that humility is the backbone of leadership.
A cadre of the ANC and the Congress Movement is selfless. I, earlier, reflected on leaders such as Oliver Tambo and Ida Mntwana. These are men and women who gave up their entire lives for the movement and for the people of South Africa. Oliver Tambo led the ANC during the most difficult time in our struggle history – a time when South Africa was a danger zone in which thousands of our people were killed or maimed by an evil and violent regime.
Oliver Tambo, like many others who have led our movement, the likes of Moses Kotane, Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Joe Slovo, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mofutsanyane, Mama Sophie de Bruyn et al, could have chosen alternative lives. They could have opted to not participate in the liberation struggle. But they chose to because the cause of freedom was far more important than their personal aspirations, and they were prepared to subordinate themselves to its demands. This was not only the result of their personal convictions but of the political education, they received in the organisation, which made of the true revolutionaries.
Political education, therefore, is not only about developing comrades to become intellectuals. It is also about developing them to become moral leaders who are selfless and who would never dishonour the cause of freedom. Political education is also about developing leaders who understand that leading the Congress Movement demands an appreciation of democracy and respect of collective wisdom.
A leader with political education does not stand before the world and undermine resolutions of conferences of the ANC because a leader with political education understands that branches are the basic unit of the organisation – the nucleus that sustains its life. When branches speak, it is with wisdom and with the aim of sustaining the life of the organisation. For this reason, a leader with political education has immense appreciation and respect for branches and for resolutions that they take at conference.
Political education is also aimed at protecting traditions of the ANC because these are the sails that keep the boat afloat. It is UN ANC to subject leaders to persecution without any basis to do so. The ANC and the Congress Movement have always been able to close ranks to elements that have sought to divide and undermine leaders. The Morogoro Conference was a demonstration of this fact.
When some sought to have Chris Hani and other comrades permanently expelled for their scathing critique of the leadership, as contained in the Hani Memorandum, it was Oliver Tambo who rejected this proposal, arguing that the ANC must at all times be open to criticism and should not employ tactics of expulsions and suspensions to settle political differences. Tambo was a man who was schooled in ANC traditions – a man with sound ideological and political clarity.
We see, today, an ANC where we throw our leaders to the wolves on the basis of suspicions that are yet to be tested and confirmed, and in the process has set bad precedence where ANC leaders get subjected to trials by opinion. We leave ANC leaders who have committed their lives to our organisation out to dry to settle political differences and have normalised a culture of triumphalism where the victors in ANC conferences crack the whip on those with whom they differed going towards the conference, despite our assertions that we must emerge from conferences united.
Ekurhuleni ANC Chairperson, Cde Mzwandile Masina