TOWARDS A
WATERSHED CONFERENCE
1. The 53rd ANC National
Conference in 2012 will be required, like all national conferences,
to review
progress with regards to our strategic objectives, review our policies, assess
the state of
our organisation, and elect the national leadership. During its hundred-year
existence the
ANC has held fifty-two such national conferences. Each addressed the
above issues,
but a few among them stand out as watershed conferences – because of
the nature of
decisions taken, their signaling of major strategic and organisational shifts
and in the
process taking the struggle to higher levels. The founding conference of 1912,
the 1949
conference that adopted the Programme of Action, and the 1969 Morogoro
consultative
conference come to mind. What makes for a watershed conference is
usually
determined in hindsight, by future generations looking back at particular
events
and how they
impacted on subsequent developments in the country.
2. This discussion document will argue that we must aspire to
also make the 53rd National
Conference in
Mangaung a watershed conference for a number of reasons.
3. Firstly, it is a conference that takes place in the year of
the Centenary of the ANC. The
53rd Conference therefore needs to exemplify the
best of this 100-year legacy. We must
therefore not
only celebrate our history of struggle and the ebbs and flows of our
movement, but
pause and ponder the future of South Africa and the ANC over the next
100 years. We
must ask and answer the difficult
questions about the future of our
country.
4. The National Planning Commission in 2010 drew attention to
the fact that despite the
achievements
we made during our first 16 years of democracy, the persistence of
widespread
poverty and extreme inequality in a middle-income country poses a major
threat to
social cohesion and nation building. Its implicit conclusion was that a
businessas-
usual
approach will result in South Africa failing to meet a great many of its
objectives.
5. We have therefore undertaken as a country to adopt a National Development Plan (NDP)
for the next
20-30 years. The content of this plan,
how we build capacity to implement it
and whether
we can unite South Africans around its vision, will be the litmus test for
whether South
Africa succeeds or fails in overcoming the legacy of colonialism, apartheid
and
patriarchy and building a just and inclusive society. The discussions on all
policy
matters
before conference should therefore not only look at the next five years, but at
our programme
of action over the next three to five decades.
6. The world is still struggling through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression
of the 1930s,
in the context of important changes in the global balance of forces. It also
stands at a
critical moment in the struggle against environmental degradation. Such
landmark
moments in global history – as was the case, for example, with the collapse of
the Soviet
Union and the end of the Cold War at the end of the 1980s – present
humanity as
well as nations with great opportunities and grave threats. The ANC, as an
internationalist
movement, must engage with these global developments in our national
and regional
interests, and as part of the ongoing struggle for a better world for future
generations.
7. This paper therefore proposes that our vision for the next
few decades should be
informed by
an approach that suggests that having concluded our first transition with its
focus on
democratisation over the last eighteen years, we need a vision for a second
transition
that must focus on the social and economic transformation of South Africa
over the next
30 to 50 years.
8. The ANC’s 52nd National
Conference in Polokwane identified the organisational
renewal
of the ANC as critical to its continued
survival as a people’s movement and agent for
change. Since then, we have described the problems,
reflected on root causes and
pondered
solutions, including at an important forum such as the 2010 3rd National
General
Council (NGC). And yet, we have not succeeded in effectively dealing with
factionalism
and ill-discipline. Mangaung must be a turning point, because unless we halt
the decay, we
will soon reach a stage where it becomes irreversible.
9. We further propose that the 53rd
Conference must adopt a decade-long programme of
organisational
renewal (2012-2022) that consolidates and expands the character and
values of the
ANC as a revolutionary peoples’ movement, while building its capabilities
and its
capacity for innovation and renewal.
10. The structure of this discussion paper is aimed at helping
us to identify and debate the
key issues –
both theoretical and practical – that will help us to answer the difficult
questions about the future of our country and our
movement. We will follow the
following
outline:
• Part
A: Reflections on the last 18 years
• Part
B: Characterisation of the National Democratic Society
• Part
C: The balance of forces in 2012 and the motive forces
• Part D: The
global balance of forces
• Part E:
Thoughts on the content and form of the Second transition
• Part
F: The pillars of national democratic revolution in the current phase
11. The far-reaching implications of the above mean that we
have to apply our collective
wisdom with
rigour and robustness, but respectful of all views. There should be no holy
cows. At the
same time, in the time-tested approach of the movement, we must avoid
shortcuts to
the solution of complex social issues, while seeking to seize a decisive
moment.
12. The ANC and its Alliance partners must furthermore take
these discussions to the rest of
society, in
the process building the broadest possible consensus on our vision for the
next 50
years, on the developmental plan to achieve this vision and on the
contributions
of all South
Africans and sectors to its realisation. This should be the legacy of our
Mangaung
Conference, taking place in this Centenary year!
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