Африка. История и историки

Two other key issues of ongoing debate concerning the exile period must be mentioned: the efectiveness of the armed struggle and the extent to which the ANC was able to control events in South Africa itself. Some of the chapters in the relevant volumes of the South African Democracy Education Trust on the struggle in the 1970s and 1980s emphasise both the armed struggle and the links that the ANC had within the country. It is now generally accepted by historians, however, if not always by ANC spokespeople, that the armed struggle was never more than mere armed propaganda, and that the ANC did not instigate the Durban strikes of 1973, the Soweto Uprising in 1976 or the Township Revolt in 1984. In all three cases it was caught unawares by the new resistance in South Africa. Te question of the infuence of the ANC in exile on the United Democratic Front (UDF) within the country in the 1980s is more problematic, given the contacts between Allan Boesak and other leading fgures in the UDF and the ANC leadership in exile[754]. But what is clear is that the one-way infuence that, say, Govan Mbeki tried to draw[755] is not correct, and that the ANC had no efective infuence over much of the internal resistance that took place in South Africa in the 1980s[756]. As a reviewer of Ellis’ book writes: «Te few examples of genuine liberated zones such as Cradock were the product of grass-roots community activism and charismatic leaders such as Matthew Goniwe, with which the exiled ANC had poor links»[757].

4. The ANC since exile: 1990 to the present

Te most detailed study of the ANC’s years in power is now to be found in the book published in 2011 by Susan Booysen of Wits University, and as the centenary year drew to a close, she contributed a shorter version to the volume that Wits University Press published on «100 Years of the ANC»[758]. As she says herself, her book is «more of a reference book than a casual night time read»[759], and not being a historian, her study lacks the necessary chronology that a historical study would provide. Te way she jumps from one period to another is ofen disconcerting, while she is not able to rest her account on the kind of archival evidence that historians use for earlier decades in the history of the ANC[760]. She shows how the ANC had, post 1994, both to consolidate its power and adopt new methods to retain power, and suggests that, for all its adeptness at reinventing itself, the ANC is now in decline, though of course she does not enjoy the perspective to be certain of this. Why the ANC remains dominant in our political system, Booysen explains by pointing to the its liberation credentials, claiming that people are not yet ready to vote for another party, and explaining that in recent elections many eligible voters have abstained from voting. She investigates what she calls the «multiple faces» (Chapter 3) of the ANC’s power, including cadre deployment, the use of state institutions, foor-crossing (Chapter 7) and the presidency (especially Chapter 11). In a chapter entitled «ANC and State Power», she analyses the scramble for resources, summed up by the phrase «it is our turn to drink at the trough». She shows how it has become increasingly difcult to separate the ANC from the state, and how people in the ANC have increasingly used state institutions for their own political and personal purposes[761]. In 2012 Martin Plaut, the Africa editor at the BBC, and Paul Holden, who has done much to reveal the scandal of the Arms Deal[762], teamed up to write «Who Rules South Africa?», a much broader and more readable account than Booysen’s, and one which has the additional merit of being more directly focused than Booysen’s book on the ANC as part of the tripartite alliance, for they argue that power does not reside in Parliament or even the Cabinet, but with the alliance, a loose structure with no constitution linked to business and criminal elements[763].

5. What is needed…