Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Note
- FIRST KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Fragmentation and Cohesion in the ANC: The First 70 Years
- SECOND KEYNOTE ADDRESS: A Continuing Search for Identity: Carrying the Burden of History
- Chapter One One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Struggle History After Apartheid
- Chapter Two Religion And Resistance In Natal, 1900–1910
- Chapter Three Christianity and African Nationalism in South Africa in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
- Chapter Four Charlotte Maxeke: A Celebrated and Neglected Figure in History
- Chapter Five Imagining the Patriotic Worker: The Idea of ‘Decent Work’ in the ANC's Political Discourse
- Chapter Six Popular Movements, Contentious Spaces and the ANC, 1943–1956
- Chapter Seven Unravelling the 1947 ‘Doctors’ Pact’: Race, Metonymy and the Evasions of Nationalist History
- Chapter Eight The Politics of Language and Chief Albert Luthuli's funeral, 30 July 1967
- Chapter Nine Robben Island University Revisited
- Chapter Ten Shishita: A Crisis in the ANC in Exile in Zambia, 1980–811
- Chapter Eleven Comrade Mzwai
- Chapter Twelve Revisiting Sekhukhuneland: Trajectories of Former UDF Activists in Post-Apartheid South Africa
- Chapter Thirteen Regeneration of ANC Political Power, from the 1994 Electoral Victory to the 2012 Centenary
- Chapter Fourteen The ANC: Party Vanguard of the Black Middle Class?
- Chapter Fifteen Globalisation, Recolonisation and the Paradox of Liberation in Southern Africa
- Contributors
- Index
Chapter Thirteen - Regeneration of ANC Political Power, from the 1994 Electoral Victory to the 2012 Centenary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Editorial Note
- FIRST KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Fragmentation and Cohesion in the ANC: The First 70 Years
- SECOND KEYNOTE ADDRESS: A Continuing Search for Identity: Carrying the Burden of History
- Chapter One One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Struggle History After Apartheid
- Chapter Two Religion And Resistance In Natal, 1900–1910
- Chapter Three Christianity and African Nationalism in South Africa in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
- Chapter Four Charlotte Maxeke: A Celebrated and Neglected Figure in History
- Chapter Five Imagining the Patriotic Worker: The Idea of ‘Decent Work’ in the ANC's Political Discourse
- Chapter Six Popular Movements, Contentious Spaces and the ANC, 1943–1956
- Chapter Seven Unravelling the 1947 ‘Doctors’ Pact’: Race, Metonymy and the Evasions of Nationalist History
- Chapter Eight The Politics of Language and Chief Albert Luthuli's funeral, 30 July 1967
- Chapter Nine Robben Island University Revisited
- Chapter Ten Shishita: A Crisis in the ANC in Exile in Zambia, 1980–811
- Chapter Eleven Comrade Mzwai
- Chapter Twelve Revisiting Sekhukhuneland: Trajectories of Former UDF Activists in Post-Apartheid South Africa
- Chapter Thirteen Regeneration of ANC Political Power, from the 1994 Electoral Victory to the 2012 Centenary
- Chapter Fourteen The ANC: Party Vanguard of the Black Middle Class?
- Chapter Fifteen Globalisation, Recolonisation and the Paradox of Liberation in Southern Africa
- Contributors
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
In the process of bringing remarkable change to South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) has, itself, become a remarkably changed organisation. The power it wielded over the country was persistent and strong, yet simultaneously post-peak and declining across the ‘four faces of power’ – the ANC in state and government; the ANC electorally, in competition with other political parties; the ANC in relation to the people; and the ANC organisationally. Its ‘continuous struggle for liberation’ was, by 2012, especially social and economic, yet also political in its interrogation of the 1994 constitutional values. Its struggle had, after more than 18 years in power, in many respects become a struggle to retain its power, while recognising that its liberation project was phased and incomplete. Even while the project was incomplete, processes set in that detracted from and undermined the power the ANC had gained. The odds were that the liberation it had wrought was probably never going to be complete.
In many respects the ANC's decades-long challenge to apartheid power and its own ascent to dominance are well recorded. Yet the details of its contemporary position and the change in its political power between 1994 and 2012 are only occasionally explored in an integrated and systematic manner. In the years after 1994, the ANC worked to build, extend and consolidate its base. The ‘four faces of ANC power’ offer an inclusive analytical framework for tracking its consolidation of power and its ability continuously to reinvent itself and retain that power. This framework gives an all-around perspective of its political operations since 1994.
This chapter uses the four faces of power to deconstruct the ANC's continuous reinvention since it took over the running of the state. These years have been both kind and cruel and the burdens and seductions of being in power changed it. By 2012, it had become an amalgam of contradictions, with all four faces displaying blends of continuous strengths (no new strengths) and accumulating weaknesses. Still, new visions, new plans and turnaround strategies were recorded, albeit with moderated expectations for realisation. This chapter presents an interpretative synthesis of arguments and research data to arrive at an appraisal of the state of ANC power circa 2012.
- Type
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- Information
- One Hundred Years of the ANCDebating Liberation Histories Today, pp. 301 - 324Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2012