Factions display many facets
IT’S TIME for a new public narrative on factions from political parties that encourages an institutional critique; an innovative response to internal strife; and debunks the dominant idea that factions are about the presence of aliens, foreign tendencies or simply muckrakers.
The usual classifiers of factions are stale and out of mode with constitutional governance. We need a more differentiated and nuanced understanding of the multiplicity of factions concerned with different issues as sites of Struggle.
Given that polarity can’t be solved and that it must be managed, key debates of factions and factionalism, irrespective of the political party, ought to be reflective of the societal context.
South Africa is in a new era of leadership battles in the cycle of political parties, which is less about ideological differences in the classical factional sense, but more about personalities and the material and political interests they represent.
To date, most established political parties in post-apartheid South Africa have experienced a rising tide of factions.
This rapid growth is evidence of fractures and a push for leadership control. In most parties, factional battles are also focused on influencing party candidature for the upcoming municipal elections and solidifying their political party posture elections for 2019. So, factions are about the present and future in a political party. It signals the pace for changes in leaders and system of leadership.
Multiple factions or cliques consist of a wide range of members united in their desire to take over control and to anoint a leader and a certain type of leadership.
These cliques are social formations, albeit without the public approval of the leadership collective or its members. Every political party has opposing factions that divide the party with the intent to destroy opposing groups and to advance, solidify and jealously protect their own rugged interests, including the champions.
Factions are, therefore, not alien or foreign in practice and theory. The hallmarks of factionalism are mixed: approximate open competition of ideas; contests of leadership; personal rivalries; struggle over strategies and policy direction and utility of available and new resources.
ANC President Jacob Zuma and his deputy at their party’s Women’s and Youth League elective conferences give a pictographic explanation that comprises “gatekeeping, bulk-buying of membership, intimidation, careerism, patronage, political enslavement of new members, crass materialism and the use of money to secure votes.”
Factionalism shifts the relationship between the different groupings within a party.
Any faction, whether supporting a united or divided incumbent leadership or those wanting to take control, use surveillance, processes of influence and a variety of resources, thereby manipulating conditions and rules for engagement within formal structures.
The process of reproduction of factions continues unabated almost immediately after the main faction takes control. What we see is that factions are institutionalised through both formal and informal networks, and those not part of a faction find themselves in partial isolation.
The classifier of factionalism is its disgust for ideological and administrative discipline enforced by incumbents within leadership positions – the ones to dispose of. Conversely, for incumbents, it is about controlling the levers of power and disposing of those consider disloyal or high risk.
Either way, it’s about launching a comprehensive challenge that attacks the cognitive structure of leadership and its programme, including engagement of mem- bers. On both accounts, persuasive to brutal engagements consider the interests of the party with them being the benefactors over a short to medium period. The party is only important insofar as it guarantees the egoistic and rugged interests of the faction, its principals and gatekeepers and gatewatchers.
When in power, a faction has less regard for representing broader interests, and continues to reproduce and expand its interests and power base, while purporting to represent broader interests in its quest for power. Immediately, postelections, the winning gatekeepers and their coalition often announce the need for unity. This comes with the same passion and scorn as to when the winning faction fought with merciless severity with other factions.
This is a façade of cavalier indifference to the destructive factional dependence path of winning leaders elected in the first place. The pronounced unity going forward will not happen, given that it is a hollow public statement without setting the conditions and determinants by the leadership for unity. In fact, pre-elections, conditions are solidified for continued destruction of opposing groups and off-ramping incumbents.
Gatekeepers control access and influence to the new sites of power and authority. Insignificant coalitions and fragile alliance partners might receive once-off rewards with no guarantees of any benefits after a defined period. The gatekeeper as the public face of a faction is the leader and distributor of patronage supported by a benefactor-insurer. Gatekeepers produce processes of accumulation, differentiation and domination within parties.
Benefactor-insurers such as Geordin Hill-Lewis for DA leader Mmusi Maimane, are part of the factional leadership, and serve as resource mobilisers and providers of barefoot campaigners. Gate watchers are driven by personal ambition focused on a higher price and are interested to see who enters, and numbers of a faction and how it affects the balance of forces.
Gatewatchers have no loyalty and have a penchant for positions with immediate public rewards. While the benefactor-insurers and the gatekeeper have a mutual enhancing relationship. When this goes sour, integrity and trust become dispensable commodities.
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Within the ANC, a number of gatekeepers have become gatewatchers such as Smuts Ngonyama, and others have moved from being gatewatchers to become gatekeepers, notably the newly elected Women’s and Youth Leagues chairperson Bathabile Dlamini and president Collen Maine, respectively.
Factions create opportunities for change within the broader system of leadership, whether partial or full, or with the political required competencies. Factions shape parties as social movements, and similarly, the internal institutional configuration of parties shape factions.
Yet, factional influence over the parties is from a prism of power viewed only in their ability to shape short-term outcomes and leadership prospects. Parties’ statements must be nuanced, given significant approaches to the courts based on constitutional law, with the ability of factions to influence long-term sustainability of a party and the constraints and opportunities in leadership shifts and governance.
Cogent leadership, governance and management suggest new spaces must be created for party dialogue on open competition of ideas; rules for identification, behaviour and party protection of gatekeepers; rules for the benefactor-insurers within a context of the ethos of a party; review with intent of the mechanisms of suspensions and expulsions; centralised model for management or elections of leaders and leadership within parties that validates candidature from regional to national levels, especially for those contesting public positions at all levels of government; and differentiated roles of members and associates, especially in relation to the composition of voters.
All leaders across the political divide are delivered through a dominant faction or a strong coalition of cliques having requisite numbers of members. While it provides a desired outcome, it is an illusion of democracy. So, instead of ostracising factions, new ways must be explored to keep the political and strategic capacity of parties in place viewed from the lens of factions.
An adaptation and paraphrase of George Orwell suggests “those who abjure factions only do so because of the factionalism committed by others on their behalf ”.
Daniel Plaatjies (PhD) is a political economist and Visiting Professor at University of the Free State