O n 29 May 2006, one of our newspapers carried on its front page an article on the future of the ANC under the dramatic headline, 'Rudderless ANC at sea over next step on Zuma'.
In this article, the newspaper sought to speculate on the outcome of a regular meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC held on 26-28 May 2006. It decided that it was better not to wait for the ANC to inform the nation about the decisions taken by our NEC.
Informed by its political agenda, it decreed that, necessarily in its view, the most important issue that would have confronted the NEC would be the future of our Deputy President, Jacob Zuma. It was in this context that the newspaper made the determination that the ANC is "rudderless" and "at sea".
The article in question also said: "The (ANC) succession battle has also raised the question: can the party survive intact over the next 18 months to the conference in December next year when Mbeki's successor is due to be elected. The party needs to reassert its authority urgently to avoid being torn to shreds."
As confirmed by the 1 March 2006 local government elections, the ANC remains, by far, the most trusted political representative of the overwhelming majority of the people of South Africa. This means that, only three months ago, this majority reasserted its confidence that the ANC will continue to sustain and improve its capacity effectively to respond to the aspirations of the people, within the context of available resources.
These masses will therefore be deeply concerned to discover that so soon after they made their view very clear in free and fair democratic elections, and contrary to what they know, their trusted political representative, the ANC, is "rudderless", "at sea", may over the next 18 months not "survive intact", and may be "torn to shreds".
Logically, all this will confront these masses with the challenge to decide whether to continue to rely on their knowledge, experience and instincts about the state of health of the ANC, or believe the doomsday scenarios according to which their movement might be "torn to shreds".
I have no doubt whatsoever about what the masses of our people would and will decide in this regard. Even if they are not fully knowledgeable about our history of 94 years, during which, at various times, our successive opponents predicted that the ANC would be "torn to shreds", they would know, even instinctively, that such predictions about the ANC are nothing more than an expression of the desires of their authors.
They will know that the assertions made about the ANC being "rudderless" and "at sea", threatened with the possibility not to "survive intact", are nothing more than a manifestation of the phenomenon of wishes being father to the thought, signifying an intention to transform such wishes into reality!
As reflected in the newspaper article to which we have referred, there are some in our country who seem to have come to fundamentally wrong conclusions about what constitutes the most important challenges facing our movement.
These people have convinced themselves that these challenges centre on such issues as the political future of our Deputy President, Jacob Zuma, and the seemingly related matters of who, in future, will constitute the leadership of the ANC and the Government of the Republic.
Accordingly, these punters and speculators about the futures of particular political personalities in our movement, including the ANC President and Deputy President, seem to have concluded that their views, asserting the centrality of this matter, also constitute the principal preoccupations of our movement.
On the same day that the newspaper in question invented a "rudderless" ANC, our Secretary General, Kgalema Motlanthe, issued the Statement of the May ANC NEC meeting, about which this newspaper had decided to initiate a negative and pre-emptive speculative process.
This important ANC NEC Statement closes with the long-standing and supremely confident slogan of our movement - The ANC lives! The ANC leads!
By this means, our movement, which is more than 90 years old, affirms, without qualification, that it is not a paper tiger! It is not a colossus with feet of clay!
Within this context, the ANC NEC Statement makes the firm assertion that there is no danger that our movement is about to be "torn to shreds". It communicates the unequivocal message that our movement is neither "rudderless" nor "at sea" about anything of importance to the further advance of the national democratic revolution, and the achievement of the goal of a better life for all.
Correctly, the ANC NEC Statement says: "The challenges of the moment require unflinching commitment on the part of every member of the movement to building and strengthening the ANC as a people's movement at the forefront of the struggle for a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa.
"The challenges of the moment dare not distract us from our historic mission and responsibility to unite the people of South Africa in this struggle. (These) dare not distract us from implementing the mandate given to us in successive elections to build a better life for all."
The ANC NEC Statement also refers to the decisions taken at the November 2005 meeting of the ANC NEC. In part, these decisions were informed by a Joint Report presented to this NEC meeting by the President and Deputy President of the ANC, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma respectively.
In turn, these decisions built on conclusions arrived at during the September 2005 meeting of the ANC NEC. Again, I, as ANC President, and Deputy President Jacob Zuma, had presented a Joint Report to this meeting.
Among other things, our September 2005 Joint Statement as President and Deputy President of the ANC said:
"We do appreciate the genuine sense of solidarity among cadres within the movement with the Deputy President. However, we need to be vigilant against unhealthy forces (which) seek to attach themselves to this campaign. Some of these forces would be driven by opportunism, others by a counter-revolutionary agenda to weaken the ANC and undermine transformation, and yet others by attempts to hide behind the campaign to pursue illegal and corrupt activities.
"We wish to assert that there is one ANC, and therefore reject the notion that individuals should be required to choose sides, on the basis of the absolutely false assertion that we lead two contending factions within the movement...We therefore urge, in the strongest terms possible, that no one should use the name of the President or the Deputy President to mobilise for or against either, and for or against any other leader of the movement."
In the Joint Statement of the ANC President and Deputy President tabled at the November 2005 meeting of the ANC NEC, we said:
"Fundamentally false assertions have repeatedly been made that the Deputy President is engaged in a campaign to mobilise support to enable him to be elected President of the ANC in 2007 and President of the Republic in 2009. The Deputy President has never campaigned for these or any other positions.
"Throughout the decades he has been engaged in struggle as a cadre of our movement, he has proceeded from the position that he would loyally serve our movement, our revolution and people in any sector and position decided by the movement. We take this opportunity to reaffirm this principled position and practice, which must continue to inform the outlook of all genuine members of our movement."
As we have seen in the recent past, despite our voluntary, explicit, unequivocal and published observations, as contained in our Joint Statements to the ANC NEC, there are some in our country who find it in their fundamental interest to propagate the false message that the current, and very strange, public controversy that relates to our movement centres on a supposed life and death conflict between the President and the Deputy President of the ANC!
These go on to claim that this is the single most important and decisive issue that will determine the medium-term future both of the ANC and democratic South Africa. In this regard, the newspaper to which we have referred goes so far as to claim that, during the next 18 months, the ANC may not "survive intact", and may be "torn to shreds", because of 'the Zuma affair'.
In this context, among other things, the May 2006 ANC NEC meeting also said, "The NEC once again rejects as without foundation perceived notions of a division among the senior leaders of the organisation."
Without doubt, actual reality over the next 18 months, rather than the wishes of some forces in our country and elsewhere in the world, will prove that the speculative prediction that the ANC may not "survive intact", is nothing more than an expression of the vain wishes of its inventors.
Principled and decisive action by members of the ANC, the broad democratic movement and the masses of our people will, once again, confirm the determination of our people to defend the integrity and unity of their historic movement, the ANC, confident that it remains the true repository and defender of their interests.
Above, I have cited joint comments that I, as President of the ANC, made with our Deputy President, Jacob Zuma, towards the end of 2005. We made these statements together, fully conscious of our shared commitment to respect and sustain the noble traditions that have characterised the ANC for more than nine decades.
Together with our Deputy President, Jacob Zuma, I take advantage of this Letter to reaffirm that:
The 29 May 2006 ANC NEC Statement also said:
"The NEC is guided by the need to maintain the unity and cohesion of the African National Congress and its leadership collectives. This matter is of paramount importance, as it lies at the heart of the ANC's ability to provide leadership to the process of fundamental social transformation.
"The NEC is guided also by its understanding of the role and responsibilities of leadership within the ANC and the broader democratic movement. This includes its responsibility to provide direction on the critical political issues of the moment, to be exemplary in its conduct and statements, to observe and uphold the organisational discipline of the ANC, and to safeguard the values and principles of the liberation movement.
"In exercising this leadership, the NEC agrees on the need to clarify and reiterate key policy positions of the ANC on some of the matters that have arisen in the public arena as a consequence of the coverage of the (rape) trial (of the ANC Deputy President). The NEC further agrees on the need for the ANC to intensify its efforts to build a new nation founded on democratic principles and progressive values."
These decisions of the ANC NEC mean that all members of our movement, regardless of rank and position, have an obligation to:
All the foregoing constitutes the Order of the Day for all genuine members of the ANC, the Progressive Alliance, and the rest of the democratic movement. We must and will mobilise the masses of our people, black and white, and all social strata, to convince them to affirm, in action, that they uphold the vision of our continuing democratic revolution, which the ANC has outlined through its constitutional structures.
At the same time, we reaffirm our commitment vigorously to promote the right of the masses of our people to determine their destiny, by further entrenching the practice of participatory democracy, as regulated by the outstanding progressive national constitutional and statutory framework that democratic South Africa has put in place.
The people themselves must, and will, make the loud and clear statement that what will decide the question whether anyone in our movement, government and society is a genuine actor for progressive change or not, is whether, in their national, provincial or localised actions, their deeds honestly convey the message, that rather than personal or partisan interests - they truly serve the people of South Africa and Africa!
