SUCH is the fear and loathing consuming the African National Congress at present that rival factions in the party often sound more like raucous gangs of football supporters hurling ritual insults at each other. Last week, it got worse with the leaders of these opposing sects, including current and ex-Cabinet ministers, exchanging crude abuse.
Indeed, there seems to be a ritualistic element to the fury between supporters of Thabo Mbeki, the ignominiously ousted South African President, and the followers of Jacob Zuma, pretender to his throne. As in many such fratricidal splits, the ferocity comes from an almost religious conviction that one’s former brothers-in-arms are apostates – and that your own side are the only real believers, brave keepers of the true faith.
There is much speculation about a breakaway group of those who support the deposed Mbeki forming a new party. However, to have any success at all, they will have to lay convincing claim to that mantle as loyal defenders of the liberation flame.
Liberation movements all over the world have eventually imploded after taking power, those in Africa usually after about 40 years. The ANC, after only 14 years, is currently unravelling before our eyes.
The enemy is no longer the white beneficiaries of apartheid: all venom is reserved for former “comrades”, many of whom are loosely smeared as “counter-revolutionary”.
Recent ANC elections in the Western Cape are typical of what’s going on at local level all over the country: allegations of intimidation, vote-rigging, outbreaks of violence. There were even two simultaneous, competing ANC conferences.
At the official venue, the newly elected ANC Western Cape chairman Mcebisi Skwatsha even claimed that the “gravest challenge” to the ruling party was now from “counter-revolutionary comrades”.
In the township that I can see out of my window, across this Cape valley, the local ANC and South African Communist Party leaders (one and the same) have an almost gangster-like grip on power. They control access to the meagre patronage available in the township and use it either to give themselves jobs and perks or to consolidate their own authority.
When I challenged one of their colleagues, who suddenly changed tack in a committee at the behest of a local ANC bigwig, thus destroying an initiative to benefit township children, she pleaded: “You don’t understand. If you cross him, he’d kill you.”
At the time, I took that metaphorically. Now I’m not so sure.
The rhetoric is increasingly aggressive among some of the most established ANC leaders, while from younger, more careerist arrivistes, their opportunistic populism is often even violent. This is not the best the ANC can be and this is certainly not the party’s finest hour.
The ANC is a pushmi-pullyu: the woolly creature in Dr Dolittle, with a head at each end, both pulling in different directions. The capitalists wish to turn right, while an ill-matching assortment, ranging from social democrats to trade unions and the South African Communist Party, dream of marching triumphantly in the opposite direction.
The afterglow of the liberation legend thus remains the prize for both factions to contest as rightful heirs. Attending a township ANC rally can still be very much like an evangelical revivalist meeting. Passionate singing and cries of “Viva ANC” – uttered with religious fervour like “Halleluiah” – resonate as if that will be the righteous trumpet blast to destroy the walls of Jericho or the entrenched citadels of apartheid-inherited inequality.
There’s an air of unreality about much of this. Arguments for or against Mbeki or Zuma can frequently be more about image than substance or policy.
For many whites, Mbeki presented a reassuring figure with his pipe and Shakespeare quotations, despite his sometimes palpable prickliness concerning whites.
On the other hand, Zuma, who does not appear to have similar racial hang-ups, unsettles many whites with his lack of formal education and frequent presence at traditional ceremonies dressed in leopard skins.
Listening to Mbeki-Zuma debates reminds me of similar spats years ago over Prince Charles and Lady Diana, even among normally sensible republicans. Suddenly left-wingers, who would not normally deign to stoop to gossip about the Windsors, were ardently pro one or anti the other.
This had little relation to reality, of course, and more to do with Jungian archetypes. People projected their own experiences, expectations or hopes onto either Charles or Diana. Something similar seems to be happening here.
There is little discussion of policy and a great deal about personality. Tit-for-tat, each side is accusing the other of a slavish “follow-my-leader” cult. Yet the irony is that both Mbeki and Zuma have laid claim to the centre ground, a “responsible” fiscal policy and, almost surreally, both are former members of the Communist Party politburo.
Will this ungainly pushmi-pullyu now finally heave apart? With the gathering momentum and fury, it is possible that this might happen at any minute. Or it could still, painfully, take several years. Meanwhile, as both heads yank in opposing directions, the rest of us – but mostly the poor black majority – will probably get an almighty headache.
