Johannesburg – Parties in the mold of the ANC adopted the principle of party discipline when they were still fighting for power.
At the time discipline was needed for revolutionary activities and the party’s decisions bound only its members.
Even after gaining power, some unity in action is necessary for producing drastic social change.
But for a party that has a near monopoly on power, absolute ideological discipline may be dangerous.
ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte wore the party’s monolithic unity hat with pride this week in defence of the ANC’s flawed democratic centralism custom.
She gave a glimpse into the paralysis that has weakened the ANC and allowed corruption to flourish within its ranks: think first of your stomach and leave principles at the door of opportunism.
The ANC has for years identified corruption as a cancer within its ranks and in society.
However, party discipline imperatives have stymied the government to deal decisively with the scourge.
Parliament has thus become a microcosm of the ANC’s paralysis and corrupt ways.
When Luthuli House says “ignore corruption”, its platoon of backbenchers and senior MPs duly fall in line.
What Duarte and her ilk fail to appreciate is that the ANC is no longer an underground party.
It is a governing party and the decisions its leaders fail to take have real consequences for South Africans.
The ANC is using democratic centralism to hide its cowardice.
Her attack on the Zondo Commission for daring to question the failure of MPs to do their oversight and combat corruption does not come as a surprise. Democratic centralism in her party entails strict party discipline, which means parliament cannot fully exercise its role in holding the executive accountable as envisaged in the constitution.
The country’s electoral laws have also allowed the concentration of power in the top hierarchy of the dominant political party, thus ensuring that political leaders have all the might to ensure that self-preservation is the order of the day.
If the ANC is to maintain its façade as a leader of society, then it has to put the aspirations of the people before belly politics. It will serve Duarte well to take heed of Leon Trotsky’s words:
“We must not forget that even if we are centralists, we are democratic centralists who employ centralism only for the revolutionary cause and not in the name of the ‘prestige’ of the officials …most important, the central committee possessed extraordinary theoretical and political authority, gained gradually in the course of years, not by commands, not by beating down, but by correct leadership, proved by deeds in great events and struggles.”
Click here to sign up to receive your Matric 2020 results.
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here.
Sunday World
