Stay on the ground: Meandering thoughts

I was in East London last week and one of the joys of being in East London is that I we get the Daily Dispatch (a local paper) every day. So I've been following the Lekota Party Split news through the Daily Dispatch, rather than my usual iol.co.za and mg.co.za.

So the local Easten Cape (EC) news is all about the EC role in the split. E Cape role in ANC split tells us that is was in a secret meeting in East London that Lekota was tasked to make his divorce announcement. And there are apparently other EC leaders backing the split: “There are going to be a number of announcements. This thing has been thoroughly planned. We have taken this thing very seriously,” said Mululeki George. And he advises "Stay on the ground, you will hear for yourself.”

It seems to me that is the only way to really figure out what is going on - keeping our ears to the ground. Because for all of the M&G columns and Times articles, the real issue is not so much what academics are predicting or what Julius Malema has to say about all of this. The issue is what people are thinking, what people are saying, and what people are going to do. Not the important people, the ones with titles or in high level committees. Just people. ANC members, ANC voters. Potential new-ANC-party voters. Because it is these just-people people that would make up the "groundswell" of support that a party split would need.

But back to the Eastern Cape. The next thing we hear from the ever proud Daily Dispatch is ANC revolt starts with EC walk-out. Here we read that 18 of the 20 ANC branches in the Amahlathi ANC sub-region walked out of their regional ANC meeting, supposedly in support of the split. The possible numbers of defecting branches from the Amathole region around East London are shown in the map above.

Which all sounds quite serious. And quite chaotic too. Although it really is difficult to tell what this means quite yet. Are these levels of dissent seen in other areas of South Africa too? Will these walk outs actually result in whole branches moving over to a proposed new party? Or will the ANC manage to round up the flock? The EC ANC provincial chairperson Stone Sizani has offered an amnesty to dissidents, if they come back to the party in the next week. Let your grievances be dealt with within the party, he says.

Well, if so many people are seriously considering walking out of the ANC, I can only assume that the "deal with your grievences in the party" route has already been tried and failed. ANC members are a remarkably loyal bunch, so it seems to me that the decision to leave the ANC would not be taken lightly. “Maybe [a new party] can do better than the ANC because it has failed,” said Smuts Ngonyama's niece here. Are lots of people saying this sort of thing? In which case, the threat to the ANC doesn't come so much from Lekota or George as much as the citizens of South Africa, their voters. In fact it looks like in George's home town they are pretty disappointed with him anyway.

But a large scale movement like this needs to be organised. Dissatisfied people can be dissatisfied forever without actually changing anything - what is needed is for someone to stand up and say "alright, enough is enough, we are taking action." And I suppose that that is what Lekota and his people have done. And if they have read the situation right, they could catch this wave of people's anger and dissaffection and turn it into something.

Which is a powerful position to be in. For good or for bad. My hope and prayer is that this national convention Lekota is calling for will produce some really good leadership, solid people and some clear purposes for this new party. So they won't be simply a bunch of people united by the fact that they all have issues with the ANC. But rather that they share some common ideals and a common vision. And perhaps if they can pull it off well - oh and wouldn't this be lovely - they could come out of it on reasonable terms with the ANC.

On the other hand, perhaps the ANC leadership will sit down, soberly asess the situation, and decide to take some strong reconcilliatory steps towards addressing it. That would be a great outcome too, I think. If one or two of your members are vocally disagreeing with you and threatening to leave, perhaps they could be traitors, or bitter for personal reasons, or have ulterior motives. When great chunks of your organisation start leaving, isn't it time to consider that the problem might be with your organisation, and not with the dissidents?

In the mean time we hear news of Lekota and his people holding meetings to garner support in the Western Cape, in the Eastern Cape. And Matashe holding meetings to encourage people not to leave the ANC.

Well, interesting times. We will see what happens.

Personally I think that the one enormous good that has come out of this is that it has really got people talking. Old people, young people, across the racial and political spectrum. Over dinners and on street corners, on blogs and forums. Thats fantastic. I saw a girl today wearing a T-shirt saying "I am democracy." What a great T-shirt. We are democracy.