Testing+old+modes+of+battle+in+the+ANC,+Steven+Friedman,+B+Day



=**Testing old modes of battle in the ANC**=

**Steven Friedman, Business Day, 31 October 2007**
A new type of criminal is abroad in the land. This one does not steal or kill. It openly supports a candidate for African National Congress (ANC) office.

After a recent ANC meeting, its national chairman, Mosiuoa Lekota, gave an interview in which he explained why he had denounced ANC Youth League members who wore “100% JZ” T-shirts in support of Jacob Zuma.

He first insisted that open campaigning was contrary to ANC tradition because it divided the movement. ANC members, he said, wore T-shirts supporting policies, not people. It chose its leaders by secret ballot precisely to avoid campaigning. Then he accused the youth leaguers of “tribalism”, despite the offending shirts containing no tribal message. He said they had once worn T-shirts with Zuma’s face and the slogan “100% Zulu boy”. When this open tribalism was criticised, they switched to a nontribal slogan. And so the nontribal slogan is tribalism by other means!

Finally, Lekota linked the Zuma shirts to crime. How did we know, he asked, that the shirts were not sponsored by criminals? His indignation rising, he then labelled wearing the T-shirts “a criminal act”, apparently because open campaigning divided the ANC and anyone who engaged in it must be a criminal.

It would be hard to find a clearer statement of the pressures against an open, competitive election for ANC president.

Lekota has smeared open campaigning for a candidate — not only by labelling it divisive, and by linking it to tribalism, but by literally criminalising it. Why a claim by the national chairman of the ANC that it is criminal for its members to campaign for a candidate has not prompted outrage is unclear. But the lack of reaction to his claim should not disguise its importance — he may have expressed himself in a more extreme way than others, but is reminding us of a deep-seated prejudice among current ANC leaders.

The view that open campaigning is dangerous has significant support in the ANC — as this commentator has pointed out before, it explains why even active candidates for ANC president have to pretend they are not campaigning.

DETERRING campaigning is a useful tool in the hands of power-holders: while wearing a shirt supporting a candidate trying to become president is meant to divide, wearing one emblazoned with the current president’s photo is said to unite because it expresses loyalty to the leadership.

It is also bad for the ANC’s health since it would be stronger if it allowed open electoral contest rather than suppressing difference. Both its alliance partners have far more competitive elections and this seems to have done them no harm. But it would be a mistake to dismiss this view as simply a cynical ploy: the leadership would not be able to use it if it did not strike a chord with many in the ANC.

And so, just as this column argued a couple of weeks back, that deference to leaders was being tested now, so too are attitudes to open elections. Tokyo Sexwale, and the T-shirt wearers, are insisting that internal democracy in the ANC demands that members be able to campaign for the presidency. The current leadership, led ironically by Lekota, who became ANC chairman only because a coalition that backed him insisted on an election, despite pressure from the establishment to avoid one, is eager to discourage open contest and to make the choice of ANC president as much a backroom affair as it can.

The outcome is important. If the attempt to demonise an open contest fails, and the ANC holds one that goes off without a major hitch, a vital precedent would be set — that leaders must win high office through open competition in the full view of the voting public, including the majority of ANC voters, who are not party to choosing its president because they don’t belong to the movement. If this becomes a habit, it will help ensure that, when the ANC one day faces a real challenge at the polls, the outcome will be a free and fair election, not an attempt to prevent one.

If an open election is avoided, we will not be moving backwards; we will be standing still, because current ways will have not yet been replaced by new ones. But the pressure will need to continue — because, whether it succeeds now or later, the battle for open ANC elections is key to democracy’s future.


 * Dr Friedman is a research associate at Idasa and visiting professor of politics at Rhodes University.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A601090**

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