Polokwane — Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who reports on the ANC conference principally for National Public Radio in the United States, continues her personal reflections on the process.
This Monday morning broke grey with a pouring rain that somehow made me think of two bits of folk wisdom that seem to capture this—the moment of decision for the ANC. In the US, the saying goes: "When it rains, it pours." Africans say: "Rain is a sign of good fortune."
Well, that about sums up where we are on day two of the ANC conference. At this point, we had expected to have nominees, and voting underway, for the top six positions in the party—including the divisive campaign for the presidency between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma.
But as I settled in for a long night in the somewhat sparse and distant-from-the-action press room, the few journalists hanging out as I was got the announcement that everything had been abruptly called off. This followed a day of high tension over many matters, not least the method of voting.
The factionalism the secretary general, Kgalema Motlanthe, decried in his organizational report reared its head early in the day as groups that appeared to be supporters of J Zed, including the ANC Youth League, objected to electronic counting of votes for fear of vote-rigging (which no doubt would have resonance in the US of A!)…
After much shouting from the hall of some 4,075 delegates aimed at a normally-unruffled-but-not-this-time (!) chairman of the party, Mosiuoa "Terror" Lekota, the Electoral Commission—a group consisting mostly of ANC elders—proposed a compromise that would include both manual and electronic voting: you put your X on the ballot paper and the machine scans it.
But at that late hour yesterday, we learned that a decision had been reached to do manual counting. Aaaarrrggghhh!
That means not only heightened tensions in the already fractured party, but an even later night tonight than we had anticipated as each delegate's vote will be counted by hand. Today, nominations and voting are scheduled but, at this point, anything could happen. The program appears to be in total disarray—but that's from the outside.
MEANWHILE, IT IS BECOMING clearer and clearer that indeed two ANCs are emerging.… Analysts on TV and pundits in the pouring rain are saying that this is all sign of a whole new set of challenges arising from the rapid growth of the party—from some 400,000 to 600,000 in just a few years (this out of a population of some 48 million).
Just as the group called "born frees"—those born after the 1994 victory over apartheid and the ushering in of a multiracial democracy have little allegiance to or even romanticism about the struggle years, the new group of ANC members is said to be "not part of the tradition of the ANC." Some have even gone so far as to say the current leadership of the Party is "out of touch" with its growing masses, witness, for example, delegates arriving in buses, driving past the "fancy" cars of the leaders parked inside.
BUT BACK TO THE MAIN STORY: Earlier, when registering in the airport hanger (yes, through my investigative journalism I can now reveal it was a hanger, but also that my original reporting of a smooth registration operation was overly optimistic—many delegates and others are still struggling to get registered, even some key to the well-being of people attending the conference)….
Anyway, back to the point: I was speaking informally with a former Robben Islander and long-time ANC member who told me essentially that in the history of the organization there had never been the kind of behavior he was witnessing in this current contest. (It was described by an Mbeki supporter this morning on TV as behavior "bordering on hooliganism…[part of a ] foreign culture.")
The ANC elder went as far back as the apartheid years, when the ANC was moving into a more challenging position against the regime, embarking on the 1952 Defiance Campaign, and the ANC's president, Dr J. S. Moroka, "deserted" a group who had been arrested in the protest. The ANC Youth League (that included Nelson Mandela) engineered his removal and he was replaced by the stalwart, historic hero and, later Nobel laureate, Chief Albert Luthuli. (Déjà vu all over again???)
This and other changes which some members opposed—like opening the party in later years to non-Africans, opposed by a certain "Gang of 8" based in London—were highly charged events, but according to my reliable source: "This didn't create problems. There was no crisis. Everything went smoothly. People accepted defeat. It has not ever happened on this [current] scale." (In the hanger, I was just chatting with this source, but I will find him and ask if I can later insert his name. For now, I can identify him as one who sits in a position of honor in the party.)
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So, that's all about rain pouring…As for the good fortune…stay tuned. For me, it would be getting in to the venue without being soaked. But enough about me…
ON A SAD NOTE, may I use this opportunity to say how deeply saddened I am to learn during this conference (via e-mail) of the death of St Claire Bourne. It leaves a lump in my throat and more than one tear in my eye, as I envision the broad smile on his face whenever we met and his ever-enthusiastic immediate launch into his latest project illuminating the African-American experience. He leaves a legacy for us, his generation, and for generations to come. May his dedication to telling the truth of the African-American experience be a model for any kind of truth-telling and serve as a beacon light on all our unchartered paths. He was truly in the mold of Sterling Johnson's "Strong Men."
