Busness Day. 24/1/08 — 01/26/2008
THE ANC AND THE IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY
Xolela Mangcu
Whether oligarchy or democracy will prevail in the ANC

I START my first column of the year with a wager. I suggest that you cut it out, file it away, and pull it out five years down the line. The wager is simple, the incoming crop of African National Congress (ANC) leaders are likely to behave in ways that are not radically different from their predecessors. While the reassertion of the political party is in some ways a good thing for democracy, one of the most enduring observations about political parties is the one articulated by Robert Michels in his study of German political parties almost 100 years ago. This is the idea that political parties tend towards the 'iron law of oligarchy'. They tend to be centralised, insular, defensive and intolerant, whoever the incumbents are. Sociologist Alvin Gouldner described this organisational condition as 'metaphysical pathos'. However, Gouldner was also quick to suggest that political agency within organisations can lead to their democratisation. This is what we saw with the rebellion against Thabo Mbeki. Other scholars have suggested that we need to look far beyond political parties for our democracies to survive. Whether oligarchy or democracy will prevail in the new ANC is anyone’s guess.
 
Zuma's aggressive stance against the media
My own sense is that there is no getting around the oligarchy. There can be no greater illustration of this than the ANC leadership’s most recent behaviour. Jacob Zuma’s depiction of the media as an enemy is unfortunate, counterproductive and ultimately futile. The ANC can set up a media tribunal if it likes, but it will soon find, like so many authoritarian governments have found out before, that you cannot control what people say or write without running into enforcement difficulties and without inviting international opprobrium. The challenge of leadership is not so much to set yourself up against the media as it is to leverage the media in all of its complexity to share your vision, solicit ideas, and generate public debates about public policy. Any leader worth his or her name will use the media to tap into the collective genius of a society.
 
Bullying and militarism against Deputy Chief Justice Moseneke
But then, political parties would rather create nonexistent enemies so they can keep themselves internally mobilised and their leaders internally buffeted. They should be warned that political power is not the same thing as social and cultural power. The new leaders in the ANC may have won the battle against their political rivals in the ANC but they will lose in the bigger war for social and cultural power in society if they behave like bullies. Mbeki tried his hand at bullying through intellectual pretence, and the present group is trying it through militarism. Take as yet another example the reaction to Dikgang Moseneke, a well-respected jurist. While the attack on Moseneke may have been a display of political brawn and militarism, it dissipates the ANC's social and cultural power. And if ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe is going to spend his precious time running around putting out fires started by his own comrades, then he is going to be burnt out before he realises it. And then the splits will happen. They will happen also for reasons that have to do with the operation of populist movements. As Ernesto Laclau argues in On Populist Reason, the different factions that provided the populist frontier begin to vie for their individual and factional interests. The trouble is that there are never enough positions and there is never enough patronage to go around. There is no reason why the populist coalition should not come under similar strains.
 
A lesson for the ANC in populist reason
By the way, there is an interesting entry on populism in Wikipedia. It should come in handy in discussions of populism as a political category and not a venting of prejudice against political opponents. Anyway, my point is it cannot be that the ANC's raison d'etre at this historical juncture is simply that of protecting one individual. After all, the ANC is voted into power by millions of people so it can implement its electoral promises. The individualisation of the movement around Zuma is likely to be no different from the individualisation of the party under Mbeki, with ghastly consequences for society as a whole. In my recently published book, To The Brink: The State of Democracy in South Africa, I argue that future generations will look back on the present crop of leaders as transitional. They performed an important role in getting rid of a would-be dictator but when their turn came they were found to be not any different. In short, tread carefully, comrades, and beware of the triumphalism that comes with newness.
 
[Dr Xolela Mangcu is executive chairman of the Platform for Public Deliberation and author of To the Brink: The State of Democracy in South Africa (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, January 2008).]