Discord As The Anc Hovers In Power

It was no longer the near-mythological liberation party, nor had its days in government bestowed unadulterated glory. Yet, the African National Congress (ANC) remained in power, and generally politically dominant. Its electoral supremacy was dented yet ongoing, evident in the way ANC politics were often substituted for national politics. Its discourses and ideas frequently set the parameters of national debate. The culture and practice of post-liberation struggle party politics, seasoned by 25 years and more in government in South Africa, had bequeathed a lingering form of political dominance to the ANC. No opposition party was in place or rising to challenge it for power.

The times of the coronavirus exposed deep layers of ANC weaknesses and failures, state ruptures and opposition party inability to capitalise on them. The ANC had control of the instruments of state power, yet was unstable and depended on a delicate balance of forces and agencies that operated challenges and protests, and offered support and endorsement in return. The ANC’s historical legitimacy, and its continued assurances that it was organisationally united and had firm intentions to improve policy and governance, had helped citizens to continue suspending their disbelief in the ANC as a viable political force and to continue granting sequential second chances.

The ANC’s slippages in power showed on various fronts. The organisation was riven and at the mercy of shifting balances of factions. As deeper and cross-cutting crises like Covid-19 descended on the ANC, prior organisational battles persisted and shaped the base on which new politics took root and grew. Its command of the state was uncertain, and its electoral support, while not in inexorable decline, was volatile. Its dominance did not extend into the media, economy, civil society, intellectual and policy debates. The Covid-19 times brought reprieves, resets and enclaves of amnesia to prior ANC let-downs. The ANC won some accolades but those did not rebuild former exaltation. As Covid-19 sapped already sparse public resources, the ANC’s state power declined – and yet there was a clamour of contests to own it. Its power was refracted and dispersed among old and new factions, grassroots and state institutions of various ANC-based assemblages. There were few certainties amid many questions as to the exact locus of power.