With the clergy briefed, social media posts uploaded, residents of Colesberg may well be looking forward to partying up a storm come 7 February, courtesy of the ANC. This year, the 114 Provincial Anniversary Celebrations due to be held at the Toto Mayaba Stadium will see all manner of distinguished figures touching down in this sleepy Northern Cape town in commemoration of the party’s founding.
In the meantime, it’s Wednesday 28 January, about 10 days before the bash. Old Struggle songs pierce the balmy summer evenings. Bakkies, sardine-packed with regalia-clad faithful careen jubilantly and hooting loudly on the roads. Meetings pop up at ANC-run wards. Regional heads, all important-looking, saunter about as though reminding everybody what time it is.
Unemployeds shuffle eagerly about doing their best to get noticed. They foresee a massive demand for marshalls and piecemeal hands so there’s no shortage of ready volunteers willing to do the necessary bidding. After all, nobody wants to be left out in the cold especially not in Januworry.
By Thursday the buzz is ratched up a few notches. Around the popular hangouts, boots on the ground are spreading the gospel of ‘come one, come all.’ Their variant of mending the nets plays itself out in the door to door campaigns throughout the town as well as in neighbouring places like Noupoort and Norvalspont. At the Toto Mayaba Stadium, the place is packed to the rafters as volunteers receive instruction from local and regional heads. By Friday the megaphones summon the ANC Youth League to the community hall. Big ANC pre-local government election posters suddenly line the streets and clearly, as these things tend to be, this is billed to be yet another big one.
As far as political party shindigs go, the ANC has garnered an undisputed reputation for throwing the most extravagant, controversial and downright confounding. History records these as orgies of meals in Styrofoam containers for the hoi polloi, rivers of whisky and hippie-like copulation that conjours up the phrase ‘what happens in Vegas’ for those who’ve established a name in leadership ranks.
Go anywhere where these are held and admire the excess, show of force, and the sprightly women lathered in make-up trying to grab the attention of this or that cadre. Sex, drugs and amapiano – Khongolose style. Believe me, in my misspent youth, I deliriously watched snippets of the grandeur unfold before my astonished wonderment.
On that occasion, restaurants where I worked registered record daily turnover. Waitresses, especially those of a certain sex were cashing in mind-blowing tips. Exclusive fashion items were being snatched off of the racks at boutiques like socks at a thrift store. Leather manbags flying off the shelves and even the sex workers of a particularly seedy street seemed to be making enough to take an early night off. (I know because I lived in that Gomorrah of debauchery and on that night, unusually, you could hardly spot a single one by midnight.)
Anyway … the birthday ceremonial cake-cutting is a front page staple and with it – in the op-eds section – the punditry are scratching their heads as to how a party that sometimes pays its staffers on the 41st of the month and is notoriously marred by scandals of staggering graft, is able to foot the bill for such audacious displays of extravagance.
In its heyday such probes were so ineffectual as to go unanswered or simply gratified with a smug response. So mighty was that African National Congress that it didn’t owe anybody any remorse or accountability – not journalists, not its own workers or alliance partners (mostly because the latter had long been co-opted into the Glenfidich cabal), and certainly not the constituency. Those were the infant Rainbow Nation days, then came Mbeki’s flourishing black middle class infatuation, followed by the impunity of State Capture boondoggle, now even in Ramaphosa’s supposed Damascus reset, the partying has never really been tampered down.
To an extent, it’s all pretty understandable. The ANC’s bottomless avarice has served nothing but to paint them into a situation from which there is no redemption. The inherent culture of overnight celebrations of easy but essentially empty victories creates the impression that the party is indeed slogging for the people of SA. But in practical terms the truth is far more disappointing: instead of celebrating legacy accomplishments, let’s say the unveiling of a major textile factory on January 8, the cadres – grown men and women – stand huddling around to press their hands on a knife that cuts the celebratory cake.
The cameras go, the people cheer, and tomorrow the cleaners come in and there’s nothing left but garbage and muck in place of the pomp and pageantry. Not a new building, not a public service point, not even a tap. Instead those who were lulled by the spectacle will be left wondering what it is that was actually being celebrated to begin with. Nowadays, things have deteriorated to such agonising levels that sometimes the mere dispensing of food parcels is turned into some grand achievement with leaders and beneficiaries posing for pictures to acknowledge the party’s caring efforts.
These were some of the perceptions that inspired much of the commentary that dogged the ANC’s national January 8 stint. Choosing to stage the festivities in the North West, a province facing deep socio-economic and governance issues, the event was framed as a matter of the chickens coming home to roost. The party had supposedly come face to face with its own incapacity. The horrendous turnout not only brought this into sharp focus but would’ve also suggested that the party’s days might very well be numbered.
Of course in the Northern Cape, just as in the North West and elsewhere, it does not help the cadres to suddenly tone down on the flamboyance. They need to save face, to keep the idea of an infallible, well-resources ANC alive in the minds of communities. They cannot appear wounded or headed towards the exit in light of the latest general election results. It must be business as usual: motorcades, large crowds, big meals, fancy cars, whatever it takes to keep the spirit of Khongolese alive and burning. The mbokodos or Women’s League, Youth League and the masses singing and exulting the party’s praises are all crucial optics in this political theatre. In North West, the buy-in may have been disheartening but if the run-up is anything to go by, the Northern Cape might still believe in it all.
Featured image: Volunteers and ANC members being given instructions in the lead-up to the NC’s 114 Provincial Anniversary Celebrations. Source: Northern Cape ANC Facebook page.