‘AN APT OR AN INAPT INTERVENTION?’: THE POLITICAL EDUCATION PROGRAM OF THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS (ANC) IN SOUTH AFRICA

Abstract

Based on the theoretical insights of desk research and critical analysis, respectively, this article interrogates and critically evaluates the political education program which the currently governing African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa launched and began implementing in 2019 through the OR Tambo School of Leadership. It raises questions and casts doubts about the program’s pertinence, its potency for wider public buy in, and its chances of success within the presently volatile and adverse South African social, economic, and political climate. As well as teasing out the issue of whether the program represents what the country really needs at the present juncture of its democracy, it is also contended that there are many factors / hurdles that are both intrinsic and extrinsic which are highly likely to obviate the program’s wider public buy in and the success thereof. It is further contended that the adoption and implementation of the said program has not only been an inapt, untimely, and a knee-jerk intervention but also that it is to all intents and purposes an exercise in red herring and clutching at straws, and therefore peripheral to the more pressing political and policy issues that lie at the heart of the problems which beset both the ANC as the governing party and the country at large. The article concludes by predicting the foundering of the said program and posits the notion of a broad-based, nationalistic-oriented, and inclusive civic education program, as opposed to a political party-driven one such as that of the ANC, as a viable alternative for the country going forward.

Keywords

• political education
• civic education
• cadre deployment
• political renewal
• african national congress
• oliver tambo school of leadership