Al-Qalam 
Can the ANC avoid the Indian Congress path to defeat?
By Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool
After the 2021 Local Government elections in which the African National Congress (ANC) essentially lost much of its urban base, I addressed a Khayelitsha Cadres Forum to answer the essential question: Is the ANC in an existential crisis? Is the decline permanent and terminal? Can it be turned around?
I thought it may be useful to share a summary of my input then, given the ANC’s further erosion to 40% of the vote, forced into a Government of National Unity with unlikely partners, and now needing to make sense of those same questions, albeit 3 to 7 years too late.
In sharing this, I believe it can infuse our ongoing discourse on Strategy and Statecraft. The ANC confronts a series of crises, potentially amounting to an existential crisis that threatens its very relevance and even existence. It may be stuck in its own bubble at the expense of the strategic responsibility to understand the verdict of the electorate so as to arrest its downward trajectory and plan strategically for recovery.
History presents a liberation movement comparable to the ANC in history and trajectory, older than the ANC that inspired us with leaders and strategies but suffered death by suicide.
The Indian National Congress (INC), founded in 1885, was the first modern, anti-colonial, nationalist movement to unite Indians across class (caste), religion and geography to confront the British Empire.
Its relationship with South Africa is legendary, and despite critical differences with the ANC, tracing the shifts in the INC trajectory over 140 years may hold important lessons for the ANC in SA. I have identified five phases over this time and highlighted them so that ANC cadres themselves can learn lessons from the INC.
Like the ANC’s history, The Anti-Colonial Phase 1 (1885 – 1947) is characterised by an imaginative and heroic struggle for independence, with unity across historical fault lines, and held together by the Indian Congress as the ‘Party of Consensus (like the ANC’s ‘Broad Church’). While having ups and downs, it ultimately prevailed and gained independence in 1947, with the difficult birth pangs of colonial scorched earth and subsequent partitions.
Despite the scorched earth it inherited, Phase 2 (1947 -1984) was one of post-independence Congress Dominance characterised by its electoral victories and, as a “Network of Factions”, the Indian Congress was able to prevail at National and Regional levels, with the period 1950 – 1967 described as one of ‘dominance, co-existing with competition, without a trace of alternation’. ‘Alternation’ could easily be substituted with ‘Alternative’, since there was no alternative, even if governance was inefficient, poverty and hunger were persistent, and services unequal. This may be akin to the ANC’s initial period of dominance.
Phase 3 (1977 – 1980) is seen as An Interruption with a Warning out of the severe socio-economic challenges becoming political-security ones. An unresponsive and tone-deaf INC had Indira Ghandi institute a State of Emergency in 1975, that enraged the populace and energised organised India into a unified coalition to save democracy.
This Coalition, in 1977, defeated the INC in an election and replaced it as government, until the Coalition collapsed under its own weakness. Congress’ response to this electoral warning of 1977 was to undertake to fight corruption, improve governance, heal the party, and return to the original values of Congress.
On this basis, Congress was given a second chance in 1980, seemingly chastened by the 1977 message from voters. The ANC could well reflect whether the warnings of the 2015 corruption exposés, the 2016 loss of crucial metros, the decline in the 2019 general election, or the insurrection in July 2021 have been met with the same squandering of a second chance despite its platitudes.
Phase 4 is The Decade of Decline (1984 – 1996) because the electoral trajectory showed a consistent decline in popular support for Congress: 1984 – 49% / 1989 – 40% / 1991 – 36% / 1996 – 29%. While it remained the leader in government, it did so within a majority of minorities as the biggest minority. Its decline coincided with the rise of regional ‘strongmen’ and interests who increasingly dictated terms and undermined core values.
The INC benefitted from the absence of a credible, strong alternative to challenge it, and therefore, its voters increasingly went into transition: it stayed away from voting, waiting either for the moral–political revival of Congress or for a credible alternative – whichever would come first.
Since 1996 the Final Phase saw The Rise of the Rest and the Eclipse of Congress, as the opposition to Congress increasingly cohered, starting at regional level, and then mounting a serious national challenge.
Increasingly, the BJP (now led by Modi) became increasingly dominant, with an election and political formula based on populism, identity politics, and a rightward shift punctuated by conflicts. Again, the ANC can reflect on whether its alternatives remain incoherent, how our politics is not immune to corruption (RET inside and MKP outside the ANC), the allure of populism (the EFF) and identity politics (the PA and xenophobia), and whether a rightward shift (to the DA) will gain the plaudits for economic recovery.
These phases in the trajectory of the Indian Congress can have crucial lessons for the ANC, especially the reasons for Congress’ decline, as stated in surveys conducted in India:
‘Out of Step with New Age Politics of Performance’ – an over-reliance on loyalty of the base rather than performance for the base; ‘Preference of Seniority and Dynasty over Talent’ – the politics of names, generations and rewards for donations; ‘Arrogance Towards Allies and Party Workers’ – a utilitarian approach to civil and social partners; ‘Missing Connect with Youth’ – with a predominantly young electorate, there was an imbalance in the politics of representation of youth (Congress) and delivery for youth (Modi); and ‘Commissions Collected for Mega Contracts’ – a long name for State Capture and Corruption.
The uncanny resemblance to the ANC certainly points to an existential crisis. The ANC has, through its history, faced many single crises, but not 5 mutually reinforcing crises that threaten the relevance and existence of the ANC, if not arrested. The current ELECTORAL crisis could reduce the ANC to a rural party. The ANC’s ORGANIZATIONAL crisis sees it riddled with factional interests and gatekeepers skilled in membership manipulation. The ANC has a POLITICAL crisis and no longer is the master of strategy and tactics, and the debate is about right and wrong, not right and left. The ANC has an IDEOLOGICAL crisis, no longer about socialism and the mixed economy, because those debates have been instrumentalised for populist and corrupt agendas; and now the ANC is in a MORAL crisis because it is seen as harbouring the corrupt, the captured, the greedy, the unscrupulous.
These crises are aggregating into an existential one because the ANC cannot win with coalitions what is lost on the ground, in the hearts of people, and in the trust of the nation. Coalitions merely but necessarily provide sufficient traction from which to claw back to rectitude if the ANC can embrace PRINCIPLED – STRATEGIC leadership in a time of crisis.
The overarching question is how to think and act out of the crises and prevent the existential crisis where the objectives must be to purify the ANC of greed and excessive ambition; to renew the organisation through a purifying combination of “re-peopling” membership and leadership (redeem the redeemable, remove the incorrigible, and reinforce the ethical people) and re-orienting away from the politics of u-Mona (jealousy, rivalry, envy).
Otherwise, it will walk the suicidal path of the INC in India, oblivious to the warnings, squandering second chances, prioritising party unity over national well-being, tone deaf and unresponsive, trapped in its own WhatsApp group.
