When We Lose Our Soul, We Lose Everything

The price of political freedom

Nelson Mandela’s words should be understood not merely as a reflection on the past, but as a warning about the future. When he said that many people had paid the price before him and that many would pay the price after him, he understood that freedom does not belong to one generation. We inherit it from those who came before us, and we have an obligation to protect it for those who will come after us.

The ANC occupies a special place in this history. It was not born from a desire for political office. It was born from resistance. Its members endured imprisonment, exile, banning, persecution and death because they believed that political power must ultimately belong to the people. The movement’s greatest inheritance is therefore not simply its electoral history. It is the political and moral tradition that gave that history meaning.

That is precisely why we must be honest about what is happening to our politics.

When politics becomes a matter of life and death

Political killings are not simply another form of crime. They are an assault on the democratic idea itself. Politics is supposed to be a contest of ideas, programmes and visions. We organise, persuade, argue, contest, win and lose. Then we organise again. That is the dignity of political struggle.

But when a political opponent becomes a target for elimination, something fundamental has been destroyed. The message is no longer that we must convince the people; it becomes that we must remove the person. That is not politics. It is political terror.

A young activist should be able to challenge a powerful political figure without wondering whether doing so could put their life at risk. A councillor should be able to expose corruption without wondering whether doing so will make their family unsafe. A branch member should be able to contest a position without first asking who controls the resources, who controls the networks and who might retaliate if they lose.

If that freedom disappears, then the ballot may remain, conferences may continue and branches may still meet, but the substance of democracy has already begun to disappear.

This is why political killings must never be treated as isolated tragedies. Every killing should force us to examine the political environment surrounding it. Who benefits from fear? Who benefits when people stop asking questions? Who benefits when activists withdraw from political participation because they are afraid? And what happens to democracy when the safest political strategy is simply to keep quiet?

These are difficult questions, but they are questions that have to be asked.

Silence is not unity

There is a tendency in political organisations to confuse unity with silence. This is one of the great mistakes we must confront. Unity does not mean that everyone agrees, nor does it mean that difficult questions should not be asked. It certainly cannot mean that wrongdoing must be protected because exposing it might embarrass the organisation.

There is nothing revolutionary about protecting wrongdoing. There is nothing comradely about allowing a member to be threatened because they challenged corruption. There is nothing democratic about allowing fear to determine who participates in political life.

We need to recover the confidence to disagree with one another politically without destroying one another personally. That is what a political movement is supposed to do.

When politics becomes an economic opportunity

We also need to be honest about the relationship between politics and money. As political office has increasingly become associated with RFQs, tenders, contracts and access to economic opportunity, the meaning of political participation has changed. Campaigns require money. Money creates influence. Influence creates access. Access creates patronage. Patronage creates dependency.

It is not difficult to see how this can corrupt an organisation. People who may have little interest in the historical mission of the ANC can become interested in its structures because they understand what political access can provide. That is how capture begins: not always through a grand plan, but sometimes through a favour, a contribution, a contract, a relationship or an introduction.

One person becomes dependent on another. Another becomes indebted to someone else. Before long, political decisions are no longer made entirely on the basis of what is right for the organisation or the community. They become influenced by who owes whom.

Once politics becomes a competition for access to resources, the stakes become much higher. Political opponents are no longer simply people with different ideas. They can become obstacles to contracts, appointments, influence and money. That is when political competition can become dangerous.

When money no longer needs politics

There is another development that should concern us. Those who once needed political leaders to advance their interests may eventually conclude that they do not need political leaders at all. If you can finance political influence, why remain outside the political structure? If you can influence decisions from the outside, why not occupy the space yourself? If political structures can be captured through money and patronage, why merely influence politics when you can control it?

This is not only an ANC problem. It is a democratic problem. But the ANC has a particular responsibility because of the historical position it occupies in South African politics.

We cannot allow the movement to become a vehicle for interests that have nothing to do with the reasons it was built. The danger is not only that corrupt individuals enter the organisation. The greater danger is that the organisation itself becomes accustomed to corruption. Once that happens, corruption stops looking like a crisis and starts looking like politics.

That is an incredibly dangerous place for a movement to find itself.

What happens to the ordinary member?

Perhaps the most important question is not about the powerful. It is about the ordinary member: the person who attends the branch meeting after work, the activist who goes door-to-door during elections, the veteran who still believes that the ANC represents something larger than individual politicians, and the young person who joins because they genuinely want to change their community.

Where do these people fit?

Can they still rise through commitment? Can they still speak honestly? Can they challenge leadership without fear? Can they still believe that political education, discipline and service matter? Or must they first find a patron?

These are uncomfortable questions, but they are precisely the questions we should be asking. Organisations do not belong only to their leaders. They belong to their members. When ordinary members begin believing that integrity is a disadvantage, that political connections matter more than political substance, and that speaking honestly is dangerous, the organisation begins to hollow out from within.

Renewal has to mean something

We have spoken about renewal for years. But renewal cannot simply mean replacing one group of leaders with another. It cannot mean changing faces while preserving the same political culture.

Renewal must mean something deeper. It must mean that loyalty to the ANC never requires loyalty to wrongdoing. It must mean that no comrade is beyond accountability. It must mean that political differences are settled through political argument. It must mean that political killings are treated as an attack on democracy itself. It must mean that money cannot purchase political legitimacy and that ordinary members can once again believe that integrity and service have a place in political leadership.

If the culture remains broken, new leaders will eventually reproduce the same failures.

We have to draw the line

There must be a point at which we say enough. Enough of political killings, intimidation and the use of organisational structures to settle personal battles. Enough of turning public resources into political currency. Enough of treating tenders as rewards for political loyalty. Enough of defending wrongdoing because the person involved is “our comrade”. And enough of pretending that silence is unity.

There is nothing revolutionary about protecting corruption. There is nothing comradely about remaining silent when another comrade is threatened. There is nothing democratic about allowing fear to determine who participates in political life.

You can defeat my argument. You can defeat me at a conference. You can defeat me in an election. You can organise better than me. You can persuade members that my ideas are wrong. But political disagreement must never become a death sentence.

That must be the line.

What will we leave behind?

One day, this generation will become history. Our conferences will be archived, our speeches will be forgotten, and the positions we fought over will belong to someone else. The offices we occupied will be occupied by people who have never met us. What will remain is a much simpler question: what did we do with the freedom that was handed to us?

Did we protect it? Did we strengthen it? Did we make politics safer for those who came after us? Did we leave behind a movement that was more principled than the one we inherited? Or did we consume the inheritance by turning political freedom into political patronage, allowing fear to replace debate and money to replace ideas?

Mandela’s words should haunt us, not merely as a historical quotation, but as a challenge to our generation: many people paid the price before us, and many will pay the price after us. We are merely custodians of what they fought to create. That should make us angry. It should make us uncomfortable. Most importantly, it should make us act.

The ANC does not need members who will defend everything it does. It needs members who love it enough to tell it the truth. It needs activists who understand that loyalty to a movement is not the same thing as loyalty to an individual. It needs leaders who understand that political power without moral purpose is simply another form of power. And it needs a generation willing to say that political killings, corruption, intimidation and patronage cannot become the price of political participation.

We often speak about saving the ANC. Perhaps that is the wrong question. The real question is whether we can restore an ANC worthy of the sacrifices that made it possible.

An organisation can survive in name. It can win elections, hold conferences, occupy government buildings and retain its colours, symbols and history. But a movement can survive institutionally while dying politically and morally.

When a movement loses its soul, it may still possess everything that looks like power. But it has already lost everything that made that power worth having.

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