Chikane warns ANC

STHEMBISO SITHOLE
@SITHOLEEXPRESS   

As the ANC marks its 100th anniversary as a political organisation this year, questions are being asked about what has helped it survive for this long, with some suggestion that it might not survive the next 100 years.

The prophetic words of Rev.Frank Chikane who spoke as part of Think! Fest (and The National Arts Festival) at Rhodes University on Monday 2 July.



Rev.Frank Chikane addressing
at Rhodes University-
pic-by Tony Manyangadze



According to Chikane, who was director-general in the office of the president during the Thabo Mbeki presidency, one of the reasons for the ANC’s success was its fight for the struggle. Chikane shared his experience within the ANC as secretary of the cabinet and holding other high positions within government during the period of different presidents.

“We must congratulate the ANC for being around for a long time,” he said, “It is not easy for a party to survive for this period.”  However, the former ANC insider criticised the current administration for being full of factionalism and Intensified divisions.

”If you put a list of factionalism you institutionalise it. The elected group became a faction rather than leaders of the organisation.”

Chikane also blamed graft and misuse of public funds for many of the things that are going wrong in the ANC, lamenting that, “once you get compromised you can be used for corruption. Compromising the leadership and thereby opening of opportunities for syndicators and criminal gagsters to operate.”

The focus has shifted “to pursue of self-interest,” he said, yet the DNA of the ANC was to work and die for the party.

“When there is a tender it is no more outsiders and the ANC but it is against the ANC and ANC,” he said.

According to Chikane corruption also goes as far as electing a branch leader. “We buy our way through, we buy the system. It is corrupting politics.”

He argued the ANC to come together in serving people. He said if the party miss serving them it will lose its supporters. “The only way in which the ANC can survive is to actually make sure that the DNA which is about serving people becomes a defining factor.”

“The policy conference tells you a story,” Chikane said of last week’s ANC’s National Policy Conference in Midrand. “This is a critical moment in the life of the ANC 2012, a year of radical change to turnaround.

He added that the conference gives hope and that by the time the ANC reach Mangaung they must correct the direction the movement is going.  “If we go beyond to Mangaung factionalised, we will continue exercising power in the interest individual’s faction rather than the interest of the people.” Chikane said.