The African National Congress of South Africa, the oldest and longest surviving liberation movement on the continent, will celebrate its 100th Anniversary on the 8th January 2012.
The celebrations started early. A series of commemorative gold medallions, some with the image of the current ANC and country’s President Jacob Zuma, appeared on South Africa’s online marketplace bidorbuy.co.za as early as October 2011, according to the site’s press release.
The main bash is planed for 6 to 8 January in Bloemfontein (Mangaung), which was the founding place of the ANC one hundred years ago. On the 8th January, the ANC President Jacob Zuma is expected to deliver the centennial address to about 120,000 people, including many international guests.
The celebrations will continue throughout 2012 and close on 8 January 2013. Every month will be dedicated to former ANC presidents. As part of the programme, the ANC is gathering archives and information about its history from around the world, to be housed in one place.
The analysts and the general public are less likely to dwell on the history, and more prone to focus on the record of the ANC as the ruling party. As is to be expected, the record is mixed.
In spite of the long list of shortcomings that range from mismanagement to outright fraud on all levels of governance, from municipal up, the fact remains that South Africa is a reasonably well-organised country that has been coping with the present international economic downturn with more success than many older democracies.
Seventeen years is too short a time to correct the enormous inequalities inherited from the past. The government can – and justifiably so – cite a long list of accomplishments in electrifying, housing, education fields. Still, the figures show that today 25% of working-age population is unemployed; more than 1.2 million households live in informal settlements; 27% of South Africans are functionally illiterate and 40% are functionally innumerate; and that life expectancy is 54 years for men and 55 years for women, having declined in comparison with the beginning of the 21st century.
While the well-to-do are now not exclusively white, many of the blacks are as poor as they used to be. The poor blacks, mostly unemployed and with low education level, are the ANC’s primary constituency.
Unsurprisingly, the ANC and the government (after seventeen years in power, it becomes difficult to distinguish the two) are in search of a new development path. Also unsurprisingly, populism and radicalism are the order of the day, with nationalisation and expropriations being mentioned more and more often.
However, it seems that the ideological differences are only partially or, more accurately, only superficially the cause of the in-fighting that has characterised the life of the ANC for several years now. When yesterday’s staunch allies become bitter enemies overnight, the principal bone of contention is usually bare struggle for power, with (presumably) pecuniary rewards for the winners. As for ideology – it is used as needed, to provide a thin veneer of rationalisation.
Another glaring characteristic of the ANC in the wake of its 100th birthday is the marked change in the culture of the discourse inside the party. Many date the change to 2007, when the then President of ANC and the state Thabo Mbeki was overturned. Since then, the analysts have noticed a decline in party discipline, democratic ethos, as well as basic civility. Intolerance, verbal insults, and chaos have become a permanent feature of the ANC conferences. That is the atmosphere expected to reign on the forthcoming ANC elective conference, to be held in 2012, when the current President of the ANC and the state Jacob Zuma is likely to face a challenge for the top position.
Thus the ANC enters the second century of its existence with the record that includes the glorious liberation struggle against apartheid, the commendable steering of the transition to democracy, the reasonably good (if not impeccable) 17-year ruling record, and with the burden of current problems and dilemmas. It will be closely (and anxiously) watched by the whole population. For, if one thing is clear, it is that this party is poised to remain at the helm of the country - perhaps not quite until “the second coming of Jesus” (as one of the ANC officials put it), but almost certainly for the foreseeable future.
