Letter: Sleepwalking to oblivion - Business Day

The ANC’s annual January 8 statement carried a strong resonance of PW Botha’s admonition in the late 1970s: that the National Party — and white South Africans in general — had to “adapt or die”. Botha acknowledged that SA’s governance arrangements were increasingly untenable and that something had to give.

This year the ANC celebrated its 113th anniversary shortly after having failed to secure an electoral majority, a turn of events that abruptly changed the face of SA politics.

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“The extent and depth of the electoral loss,” it opined, “points to an organisation that has lost significant support and public confidence. This may be a painful reality for us to accept, but our healing lies in accepting the depth of dysfunction in our structures and among our members and leadership.”

However, the shift in electoral fortunes is merely a symptom of a long-standing underlying malaise. It comes on the back of the party presiding over an anaemic economy, a crippled, often dysfunctional state, and a chronically insecure and frustrated population. There is nothing new about that.

Nor was there much in the statement to suggest the party intends to alter anything substantive. It pledges to push forward with its “National Democratic Revolution” and makes no concessions on its policy agenda. There is nothing even to suggest a rethink on the politicisation of the state via cadre deployment.

PW Botha had a limited reformist repertoire that failed to satisfy domestic demands or mollify global critics. He simply could not make the adaptations that were needed, and as a result throughout the 1980s the country’s crisis only deepened.

Similarly, the ANC has only acknowledged that circumstances have changed, not that it has any need to. Rather, it seems determined to double down on precisely the political and policy impulses that have brought the country to the present impasse.

The hard reality is that unless SA can get investment and growth moving — which requires thorough policy and governance reform — the country’s prospects will become ever dimmer. For the ANC that will mean following the National Party into oblivion.

Terence Corrigan
Institute of Race Relations

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/letters/2025-01-16-letter-sleepwalking-to-oblivion/