When a senior ANC voice dismisses critics as people “farting in the wind”, the metaphor invites a more honest response. No, Mr Ravin Singh — the fart is not in the wind. It is inside the ANC tent. And pretending otherwise will not clear the air.
Singh’s attempt in the latest ANC Today edition to dismiss the term “ANC businessman” as fiction is not merely a semantic debate. It is an exercise in denial disguised as organisational defence. It relies on sophistry, proceduralism and selective reasoning to mask a political economy that has become visible to millions of South Africans over three decades of governance.
Example of rhetorical misdirection
The denial is not accidental. It is strategic.
To insist that there is no such thing as an “ANC businessman” because the organisation has no formal structure bearing that title is a textbook example of rhetorical misdirection. It confuses formal constitutional architecture with lived political reality. It suggests that because something is not written in conference resolutions or organisational statutes, it cannot exist in practice.
South Africans do not use the term “ANC businessman” because they believe there is a branch, league or committee formally dedicated to businesspeople within the movement. They use it because they have observed, repeatedly and across provinces, the emergence of a class of politically connected entrepreneurs. The ones whose commercial fortunes are intimately tied to their proximity to ANC power structures.
The term is descriptive. It is sociological. It reflects function, not formal designation.
To claim otherwise is to engage in semantic evasion.
The defence that “we do not elect businesspeople” or “we do not discuss tenders at conferences” is similarly hollow. Nobody seriously alleges that tender allocations are debated on conference floors or voted on in plenary sessions. The real issue lies in the informal networks that operate parallel to formal structures: the patronage webs, the access brokers, and the politically connected intermediaries who translate party proximity into economic opportunity.
No formal recognition required as proof
These networks do not require formal recognition to exist. Their influence often depends precisely on their informality.
By focusing narrowly on official processes, the denialist argument attempts to shift attention away from the political economy that has developed around state power. It asks the public to believe that because the ANC constitution does not mandate patronage, patronage cannot be structurally linked to the organisation. This is akin to arguing that corruption cannot exist within government because it is not codified in legislation.
It is a legalistic shield against political accountability.
The reality is that over three decades of governance, a distinct ecosystem has emerged in which political affiliation, factional alignment, and access to decision-makers have become valuable economic assets. Contracts, licenses, regulatory approvals and strategic partnerships often flow through channels shaped by political relationships. This does not require a formal resolution. It requires proximity, networks and the implicit understanding of how power operates.
That ecosystem has produced a recognisable figure. The politically connected entrepreneur whose business trajectory rises and falls with factional fortunes within the governing party. In public discourse, that figure has come to be known as the “ANC businessman”.
The term persists because the pattern persists.
Feature of the political landscape
To respond by saying that individuals who abuse their positions are merely acting outside organisational processes misses the point. Of course they are acting outside formal processes. Patronage rarely advertises itself through official channels. But when such behaviour is systemic, recurrent and often politically protected, it ceases to be an aberration and becomes a feature of the political landscape.
By framing the issue as one of a few errant individuals whose misconduct should not be imputed to the organisation, the argument attempts to preserve institutional innocence while acknowledging individual wrongdoing. It is a familiar manoeuvre: isolate the symptom, defend the system.
The claim that commentary linking patronage networks and criminal behaviour to the organisation itself is “lazy” or “dishonest” is therefore misplaced. On the contrary, it is the refusal to interrogate the systemic relationship between political power and economic opportunity that constitutes intellectual laziness. It is easier to dismiss a label than to confront the structural dynamics that gave rise to it.
Denying the term will not dissolve the reality it seeks to name.
Gatekeeping tendencies
More troubling is the attempt to delegitimise critics by suggesting that those who are not “in the thick of the work” have no standing to comment. This is a classic gatekeeping tactic: only insiders may speak; outsiders must remain silent.
Yet democratic accountability depends precisely on the ability of citizens, journalists, analysts and civil society to scrutinise the relationship between political power and economic interests.
One does not need to be embedded within party structures to observe patterns of influence and accumulation. Distance often clarifies what proximity obscures.
The irritation with sustained scrutiny is understandable. The term “ANC businessman” has become politically uncomfortable because it captures a truth that formal language seeks to soften. That access to political power has, over time, translated into access to economic opportunity for a connected few.
But language evolves from experience, not from official approval.
If the term has gained traction, it is because it resonates with public perception. One that was shaped by years of headlines, commissions of inquiry, whistle-blower testimonies and lived encounters with patronage politics. To declare it fictional is to ask the public to disregard their observations and accept a formally sanitised version of reality.
Denial won’t make it go away
That is not persuasion. It is denial.
If the governing party wishes to retire the term from public discourse, it will not do so through opinion pieces insisting on its nonexistence or by mocking critics. It will do so by decisively severing the link between political proximity and economic opportunity. By demonstrating through sustained action that access to power no longer translates into privileged access to resources.
Until then, the smell will linger.
And no amount of rhetorical ventilation will convince South Africans that the problem lies outside the tent.
