Africa-Press – South-Africa. For Van Heerden to invoke the Stalinist purges and the Chinese cultural revolution betrays not only a historical ignorance of the effects of these on the revolutionary parties themselves but also the devastation wreaked on the countries they led, writes ANC member David Africa.
Following the 55th National Conference of the African National Congress and the re-election of president Ramaphosa, some of his more fanatical supporters are calling for purges, reshuffles and the ‘final defeat’ of the so-called RET brigade. By RET, they seem to mean any and all ANC members who exercised their democratic right under the ANC constitution to stand as, or vote for, a candidate other than the incumbent president. It seems that, in the eyes of these fanatics, the position of ANC president has been converted into some form of the Bonapartist supreme leader, an idea at least as ridiculous as it is dangerous.
In an article titled “Amasela must go: The Great ANC purge awaits” News24 columnist Dr Oscar van Heerden calls for the president to launch a great cleansing purge of his detractors, demanding that those who dare challenge his Bonaparte, President Ramaphosa, should resign and find themselves a new home. This, apparently, is all that is needed to refresh or Renew as it has come to be known as the ANC. Apparently, the spoils of this Great Purge will be victory in the 2024 election and an ANC that lives for another 110 years.
If the esteemed Dr. wasn’t a Cambridge-educated scholar of International Relations, he could be forgiven a youthful fit of euphoria after a night of two celebrating a victory in a presidential contest that turned out to be much more of a nail biter than Van Heerden and others imagined it would be. Instead, we must assess the Dr’s views as that of a mature scholar and an experienced member of the ANC, who has also written a book on the organisation upon which he now calls to launch a Great Purge similar to the Stalinist purge of 1937-38 and the Maoist Cultural Revolution that engulfed China from 1966 to 1976.
Devastation wreaked
For Van Heerden to invoke the Stalinist purges and the Chinese cultural revolution betrays not only a historical ignorance of the effects of these on the revolutionary parties themselves but also the devastation wreaked on the countries they led. In the case of the Stalinist purge, the decimation of the entire Red Army leadership left the USSR naked and defenceless at a point where Nazi Germany’s designs on “the Bolshevik threat” were apparent to all but Stalin. The near defeat of the Red Army in 1941-42 was largely due to the murder of the entire military command under the leadership of the capable Marshall Tukhachevsky. Similarly, the Cultural Revolution resulted in the murder of at least several hundred thousand Chinese citizens.
How a seasoned member of the ANC can demand of us to emulate such a murderous, and in fact, reactionary project, in a country that is already unstable with a highly flammable political situation is astonishing in its recklessness.
To members of the ANC such as Van Heerden and myself, the unity of the ANC is meant to be sacrosanct, not just because of internal self-interest but also because of the devastating effect its disintegration will have on the country. The large number of analysts who are frustrated by the president’s persistence on maintaining the unity of the ANC are either politically opportunistic or lack the insight to appreciate the dangers a broken ANC poses to the country. If Van Heerden thinks the expulsion of some (read many) members and leaders of the party will leave anything but a rump ANC, he suffers from a great deal of delusion.
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Some of the critical questions we need to ask before we commence this Great Purge that will live long and gloriously in the annals of ANC history are, inter alia;
– What are the criteria by which we purge? Opposing the president in an election, singing Wenzeni uZuma, voting for a candidate other than one anointed by the president? What next? Making jokes of the president? Like during the Apartheid days when it was illegal to ridicule the president. Would Van Heerden’s rules for purging have exposed someone like Zapiro to expulsion if he was a member of the ANC?
– How does the ANC win an election in 2024 while busy consuming itself in the cleaning fires of the Great Purge? I suppose those unfortunate enough to be purged would continue to campaign for the ANC, possibly as an act of contrition or salvation in the eyes of Bonaparte? This is as ridiculous as the great Bolshevik theoretician Bukharin, in his 1937 show trial, begging Stalin to be deployed as a train conductor in order to correct his obvious but entirely unwitting counter-revolutionary behaviour.
– Who does the purging? Good luck to Van Heerden and his fellow purgeristas in finding the squeaky-clean inquisitors who will execute this task. Maybe the president, himself still not out of the woods regarding Phala Phala, should head the inquisition? How about our newly elected National Chair, a beneficiary of Bosasa’s largesse? Or perhaps the SG and 1st deputy SG, themselves subjects of investigations that might require purging? Or do we have a circular firing squad where we all purge each other? It seems the most logical and fair way of implementing the Great Purge.
Big man
Van Heerden’s argument perfectly combines an in-built factionalism with a slavish addiction to the idea of a Great Leader. The former assumes a purity on one side and an existentially-threatening disposition on the other, a contradiction that can only be resolved by the death of one of these factions. The latter is premised on the infallibility of the Great Leader and the concentration of all wisdom and revolutionary ethics within his (it is always a man) person. This mentality of the big man has been a defining and devastating feature of the post-colony, something to which the ANC has historically been alert and which its leaders over many decades have actively worked to counter.
Van Heerden speaks as if the government of the day is a US presidential type, where President Ramaphosa was elected by the citizenry at large, instead of the first amongst equals on an ANC electoral slate. In such a case, there would be some logic to the veneration of the president as standing outside of, and above the party. But this is simply not the case in South Africa.
Van Heerden must’ve been terrified when as a teenager during the 1980s he read the African Communist or Sechaba, journals of the SACP and ANC respectively, only to find comrades and leaders of the ANC vigorously disagreeing and attacking each other’s positions, with no deference to a great leader. That is, in fact, one of the elements of ANC praxis that allowed the organisation to build resilience, unity of purpose and a critical eye on both the organisation and fellow leaders.
As a matter of fact, the ANC is a much more complex organism, where ideological and strategic difference, contrasting leadership styles, personal ambition and self-enrichment all interact in dynamic ways to create not two simple factions but a plethora of interests, positions and dynamics. Sometimes these dynamics are expressed in organisational (caucus, faction) form, while at other times, they are merely provisional and temporary alignments of individuals around specific issues. This dynamic has been with the ANC since its formation, and its greatest leaders stand out for their ability to utilise these contrarian interests and views to the benefit of the organisation. Van Heerden’s simplistic binary reflects an ANC that exists only in the mind of factionalists on the many sides of the ANC’s factional divides.
‘Treasonous behaviour’
Fortunately, one assumes, Van Heerden’s Great Purge will, like new legislation, not have a retroactive effect! Otherwise, one would be saddled with the awkward issue of cabinet ministers who remained in post as Zuma was engaged in his own great act of revolutionary leadership and ethics between 2009 and 2018? Why did Ramaphosa stay in the ANC and cabinet, ditto Gordhan and others? In 1969 Chris Hani publicly expressed a total lack of confidence in the leadership of the ANC, some of whom wanted to execute Hani and others for their ‘treasonous behaviour’. Fortunately, the ANC President at the time, Oliver Tambo, listened to the concerns of Hani and others and created an opportunity for such issues to be ventilated and dealt with. This opportunity, the ANC’s 1969 Morogoro Conference constitutes potentially the most important ANC conference in the history of the organisation. Such is the nature and purpose of ANC conferences. Unlike North Korea or American party conventions, ANC conferences are forums for robust engagement and contestation, and not coronations or opportunities to prostrate in front of the Great Leader.
Might it be that News24’s columnist mistakes the superficial and more obvious phenomena of disloyalty and factionalism as the key factors holding back the ANC while there are more deep-seated and fundamental factors driving the slow disintegration of the movement?
The failure of ANC leaders since at least 2007 to build and maintain the unity of the organisation coincides with an initial strategic drift in both our domestic and international affairs, with the organisation unmoored from its history of anti-imperialism abroad and the building of a progressive, transformative project at home. This drift has now escalated into a wholesale disconnect from developing strategy and building strategic capabilities towards building a progressive developmental state. The comments of former president Mbeki on the lack of such a strategy is a prescient warning that we ignore at our peril. In the absence of strategy, the ANC is now driven by self-interested enrichment, the bureaucratisation of both the party and the state it leads, and the replacement of substance with pomp and ceremony. Uncritical loyalty and the cult of the personality is part of this substitute for strategy.
Outlandish thesis
Dr. Van Heerden’s expertise would serve his organisation much better were he to deploy it to contribute to real ways of rebuilding the ANC. The absence of strategy is reflected in the poverty of the quality of ANC members. The construction of a coherent and vigorous programme to develop the organisation’s cadres will go some way in addressing the real issues confronting the ANC. If Van Heerden wants to have an ANC of FEWER, they might as well be BETTER.
In assessing Van Heerden’s motives for pushing his outlandish thesis one could consider either the aforementioned euphoria following NASREC, a gross misreading of the sensitivity-balanced correlation of forces within the ANC, or an unwitting death wish for his beloved ANC. None of these makes any sense, and all of them carry the risk of taking both the ANC and the country down a path of self-immolation that will make the July 2021 violence look like a Sunday school picnic. For this alone, Van Heerden’s recklessness should be condemned for the folly it is.
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