The ANC has always styled itself as a leader of society, a lofty statement laden with many wishes and suppositions. Its known difficulties in managing its employee affairs now place it in an uncomfortable position where it must belatedly learn what many companies and non-governmental organisations learnt years ago — how to be normal.
As it learns the basics of employment relations, it is firmly ensconced in its corner as a follower, rather than leader, of society. The lack of speed in its mutation has fuelled confusion about whether it simply does not care about its employees or if it is failing to learn what it has, as a ruling party, been forcing other firms and NGOs to do — comply with the country’s employment laws and regulations.
Personally, I am uncertain which is worse.
It is hard to imagine the ANC, this great organisation that, along with the Steve Biko-inspired Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) and the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), brought the National Party’s apartheid machinery to its knees, as one that now no longer cares about its employees.
Throughout the struggle, the ANC and others have always decried the moral bankruptcy of the Nats, and correctly espoused a need to engender a culture of human rights and democratic values that found expression in our much-beloved constitution.
In other words, the ANC has always been a champion of the poor and infirm — a liberator of the underdogs in society. And so, it must still care. If not for the rest of us, at least for those who work for it. No? Could it be that it cares but it is just at sea about what to do to give meaning to the rights of its employees?
Either way, it’s a sorry state of affairs. How does the party tell captains of industry to respect the basic conditions of employment act, the minimum wages act or the labour relations act when it evidently does not?
Not too long ago, ANC leaders were saying to the SABC board that it should not retrench workers, creating an impression it cared. Yet, back at Luthuli House it did not even pay the South African Revenue Services mandatory employment tax.
But what has happened to this organisation that previously could move mountains to help the poor, its own, its employees — the very people who make the ANC what it is? Today, those who should take pride in working for Africa’s oldest liberation movement intermittently take to the streets to express their disquiet about how the party mistreats them. They are disgruntled because the salaries are often late — if going for months without a salary could be considered late. Today, when the ANC decides to pay employees’ salaries, it becomes news. “ANC commits to paying its staff salaries” — Power 98.7; “ANC to leave no office untouched as staff cuts loom to lower party wage bill” — TimesLIVE.
It’s a terrible indictment on such a glorious a movement that bequeathed us freedom. Nelson Mandela’s party. That some leaders, including national chairperson Gwede Mantashe and national treasurer Paul Mashatile, have responded with a crass lack of sensitivity is public knowledge. It is an indictment that doesn’t help us understand the challenges better. That there was once the oddity that is Jacob Zuma at the helm doesn’t also fully explain the mess the party is in.
Once, this leader of society was so considered because of how it embedded its operations in grass root communities. It not only identified, or even conceptualised, societal challenges specific to localities but also at a national and global level. The ANC led. And yes, that is decidedly written in the past tense.
Today, the ANC needs basic lessons in running an NGO! Today the ANC is so dysfunctional it can’t even submit the names of its own candidates to the Independent Electoral Commission for all the municipalities it wishes to manage. There is a book by Peter Drucker on self-management — Managing Oneself — that someone must read to the comrades at their next national executive committee. “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old,” writes Drucker. If the ANC wants to turn a page, it must learn new, values-based ways of fundraising and taking care of those who make it a winning party.
Yet if the problems unravelling in the ANC are because President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law the Political Party Funding Act that forces all parties to disclose donations above R100,000 and restrict any donations from government departments, entities and from foreign nationals or governments, then we must be worried.
We must be because it means that all along the ANC put up a veneer of a well-oiled machinery, a leader of society when, in fact, its sources of funding were dubious. And now it’s struggling because it is not used to operating (raising funds) in a normal way.
Or perhaps the issues are a little more complex — it may be struggling because it doesn’t know how to structure itself (organisational design) such that it manages costs while getting the most out of each employee.
Put differently, there might be a case for cognitive dissonance because the ANC must discard familial arrangements in its employ and use cut-throat management practices perfected by capitalists — and the idea paralyses its many Karl Marx-inspired, Friedrich Engels-quoting leftists into inaction. What once was a leader of society has now, sadly, become a confused follower, a shadow of its former self.