State not a party political organ

The ANC has acknowledged that it should not manage the state as a party political instrument.

This is contained in the party's draft strategy and tactics document that has been forwarded to branches for discussion ahead of the party's national congress in December.

The ANC's cadre deployment policy has repeatedly come under fire from opposition parties with the ANC accused of abusing state resources for party political ends.

Moreover, internal party battles have also spilled over into the state, affecting the intelligence services, among others, particularly in the context of the succession battle.

The document notes that many leaders and cadres of the movement were in positions of massive influence in the executive, the legislatures and state institutions.

"Enticing opportunities" had been created for cadres in business and professions.

Even within the trade union movement, student, youth, women and other mass democratic organisations, "unprecedented opportunities for individual material gain" have opened up.

"All this creates a problem of 'social distance' between these cadres and ordinary members and supporters, the majority of whom are working class and poor," the document says.

Moreover, political incumbency also presented a myriad problems in the management of the ANC's organisational relations, the document says.

"Patronage, arrogance of power, bureaucratic indifference, corruption and other ills arise, undermining the core values of the organisation: to serve the people."

Significantly it notes that the ANC should give strategic leadership to those of its cadres in institutions of government.

In its conduct in relation to the state, "the ANC should manage the state as an organ of the people as a whole rather than a party political instrument", the document says.

The party's chief strategist Joel Netshitenzhe yesterday briefed the ANC's parliamentary lekgotla in Cape Town about the document, with MPs breaking into commissions to discuss the draft.

President Thabo Mbeki and his deputy Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, in her capacity as head of the ANC's political committee in parliament, will address MPs today. The lekgotla ends on Sunday.

The 16-page document will, once adopted at the end of the year, replace the 10-year-old strategy and tactics approved at the ANC's national conference in Mafikeng in 1997.

It takes into account global shifts that have taken place, changes in the country in the first 13 years of democracy and in the democratic movement itself.

The draft notes that the progress made since the attainment of democracy was such "that we are still some way from the ideal of national democracy".

"The ownership and control of wealth and income, the poverty trap and access to opportunity are still in the main defined, as under apartheid, on the basis of race and gender."

It says that the achievement of democracy had seen the dramatic, if still exceedingly limited, emergency of the black capital group, which was largely a product of democratic change.

"However, because their rise is dependent in part on co-operation with elements of established white capital, they are susceptible to co-option into serving its narrow interests …

"Because their advance is dependent on a variety of interventions, and on opportunities provided by the state, they are tempted to use corrupt means to advance their personal interests."
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