Government discipline has broken down
20 December 2022
The chaos and the disgraceful way President Ramaphosa’s opening speech was treated at the ANC conference at Nasrec on Friday showed exactly what has happened to the ANC.
Jacob Zuma, the discredited former President, facing serious criminal charges, brazenly walked in two minutes after Ramaphosa started speaking, causing a pre-planned sensation with his adoring fans singing, dancing, and welcoming him like a conquering hero. Ramaphosa had to wait while the lengthy hubbub subsided before being able to continue.
Zuma’s ghastly daughter, Duduzile, denied that the late entry was deliberate. “It was God’s plan,” she said, adding blasphemy to her already long list of transgressions.
Can you imagine former DA leader, Tony Leon, upstaging the current leader, John Steenhuisen in this way? All leaders, past and present, need healthy self-regard, but most, unlike Zuma, are sufficiently disciplined not to deliberately undermine their successors.
Ramaphosa is treated with contempt by many in his party. Cabinet ministers openly attack him in public, and he does nothing about it. A leader creating the impression that he is weak loses his authority. Competing factions start agitating for position and influence, forgetting their task of serving the public.
Nothing switches voters off more than a party consumed by internal squabbling, projecting that it does not much care about the voters. This explains the continuing slide in ANC support. Most by-elections reflect a downward trend that is gathering momentum, leading to predictions that the ANC will not score a majority in the 2024 elections.
The well-known number-cruncher, Dawie Scholtz, published the record of the ANC in last week’s Ditsobotla municipal elections, comparing them with elections since 2011: 2011:77%; 2014:69%; 2016: 62%; 2019:61%; 2021: 53%; 2022: 40%.
Serial offenders, Lindiwe Sisulu and Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, to name only two, when retired or sitting on opposition benches after 2024, may reflect on their key role in destroying the reputation of the ANC and its leader.
That indiscipline and contemptuous attitude towards Ramaphosa is by no means confined to these two ladies who have enjoyed the fruits of office for a generation (far too long for the health of a constitutional democracy). Just think of the shocking, defamatory attack on Eskom CEO De Ruyter by Minister Mantashe.
A member of Ramaphosa’s cabinet and the chairperson of the ANC, Mantashe accused De Ruyter of treason and of undermining South Africa. He forgot to mention that Ramaphosa appointed the Eskom CEO, while at the same time as good as saying that the president and the responsible minister, Pravin Gordhan, his cabinet colleague, failed to take action against treasonous behaviour that only he recognised. Ramaphosa said nothing.
This indiscipline and public warfare have had a major impact on public opinion, but even that is dwarfed by the obvious incompetence and inability of the whole range of ministers to run a modern democracy. Ministers fail repeatedly and nothing happens to them. The president is so scared of rocking the boat and creating even more enemies that he tolerates a mind-blowing level of non-performance from ministers, premiers, MECs, mayors, and councillors. It would be difficult to make up a list of ANC successes. Almost every department at every level is a mess.
Perhaps the president deserves the low opinion his party and its former supporters have of him. He will win at Nasrec (assumption at the time of writing), but again he is likely to be in office and not in power.
Douglas Gibson is a former opposition chief whip and a former ambassador to Thailand. His website is douglasgibsonsouthafrica.com
This article first appeared in The Star
