Last week, the ANC fired Carl Niehaus from his position in the Secretary General’s office. 

Social media responded quickly. Even the most dedicated ANC members reacted with a general sense that this was long overdue. “One has to ask wonder what took them so long?” said one member.

She echoed my thoughts - not only in relation to the sorry (perhaps even tragic) saga of Carl Niehaus - but also the ANC’s general state of affairs.

There can be no doubt that the ANC is in organizational disarray or, as NWC member Joel Netshitenzhe put it, “an organizational state of emergency.”

The ANC’s financial crisis has been well-known for a while, but it came to a head recently when they were no longer able to pay the reported R18 million in salaries to their 380 plus staff members.  

The ANC blames the new Party Political Funding Act. However, it is simply mind-blowing that they did not see this coming, for as the majority party they were not only part but the major driver behind the parliamentary process that passed the Bill. Furthermore, the bill was passed in the National Assembly on 27 March 2018. There was then an almost three year-delay before the President signed it into law on 22 January 2021, and a further three months before the Act came into effect.

It was always clear that major donors might no longer be so keen to donate to political parties once their names would be in the public domain. So why had the ANC not taken action years ago to mitigate this?

As far as I understand, the ANC has a number of assets or investments.  Surely, they could have liquidated some of these in anticipation of the imminent cash crisis.

They should have also cut back on some of their senior officials’ pay. For many years, the ANC had a policy that everyone redeployed to the organization would continue to receive the same salary as they did in government or parliament. Although I understand the motivation behind this (i.e. to not penalize people who work for the organization), it was clearly not sustainable. 

I’m not sure if that policy is still in place. Even if it has been amended, there are still a number of people in Luthuli House who are entitled to a government or parliamentary pension. Nomvula Mkonyana, Andries Nel, and Malusi Gigaba etc. might all prefer not to dip into their generous pension benefits (you can access parliamentary pensions at 50 years of age), but surely that is better than letting low paying staff without any alternative go hungry?  Come to think of it, even Carl Niehaus must have a small pension fund from his brief stint in parliament and four years as Ambassador - unless of course he spent it all on family funerals.

Perhaps this is the opportune time for the ANC to streamline their operations.

According to reports, the party has just under 400 staff members. This seems ludicrous – even for a massive machine like the ANC.

The point is that the current crisis could have been avoided with some foresight. I’m not sure if it was part of the ANC’s perpetual optimism that things would somehow work out, or total organizational disarray, that led them to this point. Whatever the reasons, it is embarrassing. Not only to their faithful members, but to the country. After all, this is the party that is supposed to represent the image of SA Inc.

So, let’s hope that they get themselves out of this hole.

After all, one should never waste a good crisis.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for “onse” Carl. There is an Afrikaans song: “Die kat kom terug” (the cat returns). Like some of his family members, this guy has had more than nine (political) lives already, but I won’t be surprised if we see him back in some ANC position before too long.