The African National Congress prides itself as one of the best consultative democracy heritage sites in the world. As an organisation it has mastered how to bring together its members around a program of policy discourse and development with a view to influence and lead society. It is a heritage site, at least in theory and somewhat in practice, of how an organised section of society can agree on arrangements on how to govern each other towards the attainment of set objectives. It has perfected the rituals of ensuring the broadest participation of its members in the architecture of organisational decision and policy making.  

The systems it has set up to process member and civil society as well as the contribution of political allies to its policies have not only become elaborate but are a defining feature of the institution of leadership the ANC has matured to being over its lifetime. The sheer ability to have its policies occupying political discussion center stage from amongst its rank and file, as well as society, makes it, in theory, and whenever this is still practiced, a nexus of democratic living in South Africa. The diversity of condition and opinion that comes with the joys of being a member of an organisation is assured in the ANC. 


As one of Africa’s largest concentrations of a multitude of interests, the ANC has become the embodiment of the active diversities in our political system, and if you like constitutional democracy. The power that the content of the ANC’s policy discussion documents embodies, makes it the foremost significant site whereat and/or upon which conflicts of interests are registered, resolved, altered, and by consensus or otherwise, maintained. The sanctification of the power that the ANC could wield once it has won the ultimate prize of politics, government, by the country’s constitution, makes its policy pronouncements the core substrate of what would constitute the durability of government. Notwithstanding

Discussion documents of political parties are in their nature creatures of the dominant cognitive elites from within those organisations. In respect of the ANC, in theory, and in practice within those branches that are better organised to facilitate robust engagement with the substance of what these documents deal with, members of the ANC have the opportunity to directly influence its policies. In one policy document discussion, a member of the ANC accounts that his contribution which included a punctuation mark, found its way into the final policy document. It is thus important for South Africans, in their organised formations, including outside the orbit of membership to the ANC, to claim their membership to a society its policies will impact upon and literally influence its destiny, by creating platforms to engage these documents and submit contributions to input co-ordination centres provided in the documents. 

At its inception as an organisation, that grew into a liberation movement, the ANC institutionalised itself as the Parliament of the people. It occupied a space for those the establishment ‘othered’ in respect of the political, economic, and political economy destiny of the geographical space called South Africa. Through resilience and morally legitimate strife and struggle, the ANC earned its position to being the leader of society in a country that had ‘citizen representation’ in the highest echelons of political, economic, and political economy destiny determination being based on a racial criteria whose core elements were ultimately declared a crime against humanity. It was in the main the discrimination and/or segregation character of society based on race and creed that liquidated the moral claim of the establishment that theirs was a democracy meeting all other criteria afforded to democracy. 

Post 1994, the culmination of human triumph against exclusion from determining one’s own destiny, a convergence of the opposition establishment and the traditional establishment got chronicled into the 1996 Constitution, which remains the foremost legal promise of the idea of liberation for all South Africans. Like any society, a convergence of establishments creates new class or otherwise consensuses, if not regulated through continuous demands by society to still be a dominant feature of policy ideation and making, might result in establishment-centric policies whose impact might not only yield an oligarchy but create a benevolent dictatorship. This is where the importance of theANC’s policy conference and processes leading up to it are critical for society to take advantage of. The mega-democratic character social media practically gives to anyone access to delegates to these conferencing spaces of the ANC, allows society opportunities to represent itself in ANC conferences by sharing its views in a manner that no borders created by any establishment can limit. 

It is this facility that the country’s constitution, ANC itself, the social media context, and generally the cardinal freedoms of press, association, assembly, and (text-based as well as human) speech our democratic order created that our human solidarity platform and think tanks should utilise to augment the progressively declining in substance member-centric ideation spaces within the ANC. Whilst it can be successfully argued that it is non of non-ANC-members business to get involved in the business of the ANC, it is unfortunately the business that the ANC is involved with that impacts on our ability as a society to have a better life, and for that, the ANCs policy space is the business of society until its governing party status changes, in which case whomever ascends becomes the new business of society. On the strength of the above this rendition posits the question,

WHAT SHOULD ANC DISCUSSION DOCUMENTS ADDRESS OR ALSO DEAL WITH?


This question is premised on the institution of leadership character that the ANC over the years built itself into, and yet in a worrying decline. There is therefore sufficient pressure that as an institution should, as it lives its tradition, find greater will to generate and legitimise its policy intents therein. There are growing ‘institutional voids’ in the ideation spaces the ANC once occupied. The unfortunate decline or regress of many a baselines these documents are reasoned from makes the once respectable in-ANC ideation process woefully compromised. 


In generic terms, ANC documents should be addressing themselves to these firmamental aspects of our expectations.

  1. They should excite society 
  2. They should be engaged as documents for a political discussion
  3. They should not be discussed as a feedback process of the failures or successes of the State, but be forward looking, including ideating for implementation by political coalitions that excludes the ANC
  4. They should reflect what structural shifts the ANC is proposing for South Africa first
  5. They should be an expression of what institution type is the ANC, is it one of leaders, of leadership, and/or of strong ideological contestations 
  6. They should display a commitment to stop postponing or delaying the promises of freedom the constitution has delivered to South Africans
  7. They should define a clear vision and pathways to get there for South Africa with clear and measurable targets
  8. They should be about the ‘structural transformation of society’ and not ‘a structural reform pacifying pathway’
  9. They should address how factor endowments of the country could be recalibrated towards growth of whence they originate
  10. They should allocate responsibilities to social partners in respect of investment in growth igniting activities, social cohesion narratives in the cultural space,  and patriotism building spending through CSI budgets 
  11. They should address how state-led infrastructure investment and state owned entities will derisk the economic landscape
  12. They should address themselves to de-risking energy security, data security and access, water security, in-bound and out-bound logistics security, skills supply side security, social security, health security, food sovereignty, food security, and nutrition security for all
  13. They should address themselves to the national security risks emanating from immigration management and control, border control and management, national interest definition, strong national security management institutions, and youth conscription to national interests defence.
  14. They should address themselves of what constitutes ‘capital investment’ to get better returns on public sector investment by the state.
  15. They should decisively address themselves to the structural templates of dominance embedded in the Financial Services Sector, Land Ownership Patterns, and Access to the Adjudicative Power of the State. 

In more specific terms and directly related to the various documents in the public domain, these documents must answer various questions society is asking. They must be unambiguous is dealing with policy gaps