Johannesburg — IN 1997 the African National Congress (ANC) elected Thabo Mbeki as its president, and 10 years later, Jacob Zuma wrested the crown from Mbeki's head. In both cases, ANC conference delegates elected a polarising figure to head the party.

What is ironic about Mbeki is the fact that he was elected unopposed, which suggested the ruling party would cohere and unite around, or because of, his leadership.

Another irony, maybe a bitter one, is how the ANC Youth League was instrumental in both Mbeki's ascendance to power in 1997 and his fall from grace last year. The circle of irony ends with Zuma's presidency of the party after he had been axed by Mbeki as deputy head of state, and the youth league launching a vicious assault on the current deputy president of the ANC on the grounds that he is seeking to destroy Zuma's chances of becoming president of SA in 2009.

To understand the genesis of the current crisis in the ANC we have to go back to battles between provinces and ANC headquarters only a few months after the election of Mbeki. The meaning of tensions between the centre (represented largely by a centralising Mbeki) and ANC structures in provinces such as Free State, Mpumalanga and what then was Northern Province escaped Mbeki, who must have been out of touch with the sentiments of the rank and file even then.

When ANC branches in Gauteng defied the national leadership by electing Mathole Motshekga chairperson of that province instead of Amos Masondo, who had the support of senior leaders, the ANC should have known that a rebellion was afoot.

WHEN branches kicked out Mbeki's policy proposals at the party's national general council in June 2005, the ANC leadership should have known that the delegates were not rejecting the proposals per se, but rather their personification of a style of leadership that they found alienating.

There is a sense in which the problems in the ANC today must, therefore, be seen as part of a continuum of tensions and ironies which took root very soon after Mbeki became president of the ANC.

Lest we forget, there is very little evidence that Zuma was unhappy about the tendency to centralise power and marginalise certain opinions until he was directly affected by its pernicious effects. Out of this, two further ironies arise: first, the Zuma camp fell victim to a political monster of its own creation, since the ANC bestowed on Mbeki the power to centralise through resolutions passed at the Mafikeng conference in 1997. Second, the rebellion against Mbeki delivered the presidency of the party to Zuma but is now having the unintended consequence of an opportunistic, directionless and anarchic rebellion against the values and principles of the ANC of old.

In a way, this is hardly surprising because some of those who were in exile, underground or on Robben Island have since 1990 been using a language that is not only alien but is also alienating to those who joined the party after its unbanning. The sometimes self-serving and selective invocation of ANC history and stalwarts such as Albert Luthuli and Moses Kotane has not only reinforced these feelings of alienation but betrays also an inability to think beyond certain experiences and perceptions of the liberation struggle. This narrow invocation of ANC history has become part of a logic of exclusion which led to Mbeki's undoing and whose whirlwind Zuma has inherited.

It is partly for this reason that firebrands in the youth and students' movements, and some adult firebrands who should know better, have become revolutionaries after the peace has been won. They want to relive a period some of them were not part of, or because of age, could never have become part of. This they are doing by lashing out at Mbeki, our democratic institutions and the ANC. This is the ANC Zuma has inherited.

Matshiqi is a senior associate political analyst at the Centre for Policy Studies.