Woo, lots to write about here.
For starters, let me be clear: I understand the difficulties in delivering on the scale that the ANC has to. I am not understating the difficulty of the task, and I am not attempting to claim that I have brilliant policy alternatives that will fix everything.
However, before people seize on this with shouts of “A HA! Put up or shut up!”, let me point out that the ANC has consistently made serious mistakes and underperformed to a degree that is undeniable. I don't need to be capable of generating ideal or optimal policy to point that out.
However, it goes deeper than that. The key problem that I have with the ANC doesn't even lie in the specific, initial mistakes. I'm not terribly concerned with, say, the fact that the arms deal was corrupt, in and of itself. What I am concerned about is the fact that every time the ANC is criticised the standard operating procedure is to obfuscate, deny, argue and generally be as unreceptive as possible, regardless of the facts on the ground. The problems, naturally, metastasize and deepen, while the ANC argues about them.
The same applies to the personal qualities of the leaders that the ANC elects. This, in my opinion, is actually less important than the policies that the government follows. However, it's still important, so I briefly examine it at the end of this.
Now, this might sound like a bit of a harsh assessment, but I think it's fair. I will use two examples to point out how the ANC has been failing, beginning with HIV/Aids and moving on to the arms deal. At the end, I will briefly touch upon the way that the ANC tolerates leaders who make inexcusable mistakes.
Hadebe, you claim that the toxicity of nevirapine was a legitimate debate. This is entirely possible – I'm not experienced in clinical trials or methodologies, and I won't pretend to be. However, significantly, you concede that, at least during the early periods of Mbeki's term of office., denialism was an issue. Frankly, I think that denialism was a serious problem throughout Mbeki's term of office.
However, even if there was room for debate around, say, Nevirapine, or the specific role of nutrition in fighting HIV/Aids, the ANC grossly mishandled this debate.
Whether HIV causes Aids isn't Mbeki's field of expertise. Nevirapine's toxicity isn't Mbeki's field of expertise. Yet, he caused enormous confusion and made South Africa look ridiculous in the process by diving into a debate that he wasn't equipped or required to enter.
Pretty simply, suggesting that HIV might not cause Aids, or issuing statements that suggest some ambiguity on the issue was grossly irresponsible.
More importantly, after it was clear that his statements were damaging both the fight against HIV / Aids (by confusing people on the ground) and South Africa's international image, he refused to climb down, and the ANC tolerated this.
Immediately after this issue broke out, the Presidency should have issued a statement along these lines:
“It is unambiguously clear that HIV causes Aids. Our policies are based on the best scientific knowledge available, and that knowledge indicates HIV causes Aids.
With regards to Nevirapine and nutrition, a healthy scientific debate is encouraged. The government is committed to a broad and comprehensive fight against HIV/Aids, using all the tools at our disposal, based on the best and most up to date scientific knowledge.”
Instead, the government ummed and erred, sending out confused signals. Manto maintained her association with Rath, a charlatan and fraud when she should have been distancing herself and the Department of Health as rapidly as possible.
The moment it became clear that there was any confusion, the government's response should have been clear and unambiguous. Instead, the media chased Manto and Mbeki, looking for a clear response, and they got more equivocation, with Manto issuing increasingly bizarre and irrelevant comments (garlic and beetroot, anyone?). Naturally, the entire issue snowballed into a massive public relations nightmare, when it could have been cut off at the root with some prompt and decisive action.
Post-Polokwane, ANC stalwarts will be eager to push the blame for this sad saga onto Mbeki. The NEC should have kept Mbeki in line, and not allowed the entire episode to escalate to the level that it did. The ANC should have stood up to Mbeki and told him to climb down from his bizarre stance long before it became such a mess. Instead, they let him do incalculable damage while he attempted to pass off an ambiguous, confused mess as a so-called 'nuanced' stance. Government is not one man, and the failures surrounding HIV/Aids policy generation must be shouldered by the entire ANC.
Consider Noziswe Madlala-Routledge. Her firing was a joke. Allegedly, she was fired due to a failure to obtain permission to travel to a conference in Spain. Allegedly, because the presidency never gave a reason, arguing that it was his prerogative to remove ministers without giving a reason.
Excuse me? The president fires the Deputy Minister of the Health Department, a woman who's heading up the fight against the HIV/Aids pandemic and receiving widespread applause for doing a good job, and he refuses to explain himself to the nation?
Pfft. The President may not be legally obliged to give a reason, but he's damn well morally obliged to explain himself, particularly in a firing as controversial as Madlala-Routledge's.
Of course, people will attempt to handwave this onto the “Mbeki Regime”. Well, where the hell was the rest of the ANC at the time? Why didn't they back Madlala-Routledge up, or at least get an explanation out of Mbeki – an explanation that could be shared with the nation?
Moving from HIV to the arms deal fiasco. The initial expenditure was absurd. R50 billion worth of arms, when South Africa has a mass of priorities.
But, putting that aside for now, the corruption scandal that grew and metastasized was far worse than the misspending. Money is just that – money. R50 billion could have built plenty, but there's more money where that came from. Institutional integrity is a lot more intangible, and a lot harder to regain.
It began with Yengeni's 4x4, and it spiralled out of control. Every year the timeline grew longer and longer and more contorted. From BAE to Thyssen Krupp, it eventually resulted in the Mbeki administration falling – because it pursued the prosecution of Jacob Zuma.
If the ANC had been on its toes, this scandal should have been chopped off a long time ago. For starters, any arms deal should have been accompanied by unprecedented levels of scrutiny. There's a reason that arms deals have a slimy reputation – they involve lots of money, and plenty of opportunities for corruption. Even so, the entire deal should have been dismantled and examined very closely following Yengeni's conviction. But, at every stage where the ANC could have stepped up and demanded a massive, thorough forensic investigation, they were silent. And the entire mess grew and grew and grew, like a malignant cancer.
By the way, what happened to old Yengeni? Oh wait, he was elected to the NEC. A criminal, on the NEC.
The ANC tolerates far too many mistakes, and far too much corruption. People who screw up to the point that they get put in jail should be fired. Period. Criminals have no business in government. Regardless of whether we should forgive these kinds of mistakes in our day – to – day lives, there should be no way that high level officials should be allowed to do this kind of thing. Yet, the ANC appears to have incredibly low standards for selecting its leadership.
The same applies to Zuma. As soon as he admitted to A) having unprotected sex with an HIV+ woman and B) taking a shower afterwards, his political career should have been over. Never mind the arms deal. Never mind his leadership – no one is expendable, and everyone can be replaced. Someone who says something so outrageously stupid is in no position to be in power.
To date the ANC has displayed a consistent pattern that looks like this:
Make a mistake / run into trouble.
Ignore the problem until the criticism becomes too loud to ignore.
Obfuscate / argue / accuse the critics of ulterior motives
grudgingly do something about it, half heartedly, while claiming to have been right all along.
The ANC tolerates incredibly low standards of behaviour from its leadership. Making mistakes is inevitable, but the way in which they are dealt with is the true mark of a good organization. The ANC, sadly, seems more interested in arguing with its critics and justifying its actions than actually getting things right. And boy, do we have a lot of things to get right in our country.
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