Freedom fighters fighting against freedom

FOR HOW long will the decent democrats in the ANC tolerate the creeping totalitarianism and Zanufication of their party?

Will they stand up and be counted when the ANC discusses the proposed changes to the constitution at its policy conference in June?

I look at the faces of some of my old friends and stalwarts of the Struggle defending the indefensible and wonder whether I have completely misjudged them.

I understand how hard it is to leave “the liberation movement” if you have spent the biggest part of your life fighting the apartheid machine. I understand that if you were in political exile, in the UDF or in jail you could find it unthinkable to join, for instance, the DA.

I also understand the principle of the “work for change from within” argument. But if you look back at the ANC since 2007, the only real change in the ANC has been a slide into more authoritarianism, more abuse of power, more corruption, more wasting of public money, and more intolerance of dissent.

“Change from within” is clearly not working.

So why, if you’re a genuine, freedom-loving democrat with a strong commitment to human rights and non-racialism, would you stay in the ANC structures and thereby condone the creeping war on judicial independence, free speech, separation of party and state and the general undermining of our constitution?

Can the glue of history – and, in some cases, ethnicity – really be that strong? Or is it a fear of being kicked out of the inner circle, and so losing access to power and influence?

When I read the reports on the ANC’S draft policy document that talks about a “second transition” and envisages radical changes to the essence of our constitution, my mind entered the realm of conspiracy theory.

Could the campaign to undermine the separation of powers, the co-opting of the judiciary, the establishment of a statutory media tribunal, the Protection of State Information Bill, the proposal to scrap the independence of the Reserve Bank and elements (or all) of the property clause in the constitution be a preparation for the day when the ANC faces the possibility of getting less than 50 percent of the vote?

When one listens to the utterances of ANC leaders such as Jacob Zuma, Gwede Mantashe, Blade Nzimande, Lindiwe Sisulu, Jeff Radebe and Ngoako Ramatlhodi, it becomes clear that these are not the kind of people who would accept a defeat of “the liberation movement” at the ballot box.

These are the people waging a war on the Constitutional Court, whose job it is to block any unconstitutional move by the executive branch. These are the driving forces behind the “assessment” of the Concourt and the judiciary’s decisions and powers.

How many intelligent people believed Radebe when he told us last week that this had nothing to do with the separation of powers or the undermining of the judiciary? Well, even if you did believe him, now you know better: the draft policy document states that “there may well be elements of our constitution that require review”, and that includes “the relationship between and powers of the different spheres of government”. I will never believe a word Radebe says again.

The ANC cadres know – surely they must know? – that they won’t be able to change the constitution without a two-thirds majority in Parliament. So why go there? Perhaps they are preparing for their next election campaign. In 2014 they might want to go to the people and say the courts are counter-revolutionaries undermining the will of the majority. Give us a two-thirds majority and we’ll put them in their place – and then we’ll also scrap the property clause in the constitution and start distributing the land now occupied by the racist white settlers.

Or could it simply be that they want to put the judges of the Concourt under unbearable pressure in the hope that more decisions would go the way of government? Loading that court with executive-friendly judges might just take a bit too long.

To underscore the feeling that the ANC has gone completely off the rails is the quaint proposal in the draft documents that children should be recruited by the ANC at birth.

If any of the ANC’S new, radical ideas had any chance of making SA a freer, more equitable and prosperous place, I would accept it, even substantial changes to our constitution.

But what we have in front of us now has “failed state” and “dictatorship” written all over it.