ANC and INC: Story of two grand old parties and their one big crisis

India and South Africa have had many things in common. They were ruled by a common foreign power — the British, which out-competed its rivals through the 18th and the 19th centuries to establish strong colonial rules in resource-rich countries that supplied cheap labour for its industries. The two countries had to wage long nonviolent struggles to win equality and freedom for its people. The campaigns were led by parties that followed Gandhian philosophy — the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa and the Indian National Congress (INC) in India. Now, the two grand old parties are facing similar problems of leadership and dwindling mass connect.

The common history

The Congress and its South African counterpart ANC would not have come into existence had there not been the brutish British power, trampling the rights of the people they denigrated by calling them natives or kaffirs, purely on their racial profiles. While India was rich and an industrial country before the British came to trade and became its colonial master, South Africa was economically poor despite reserves of natural resources but it was a bunch of self-sufficient units governed largely by chieftains.

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Industrial explosion in Britain in particular and Europe in general pushed trading companies to seek new markets during the 16th-19th centuries. The British East India Company established itself as the main political, economic and, most importantly, military power subjugating local aspirants of power and thwarting foreign attempts to capture power to rule India. In South Africa, the British power came as an extension of Europe’s wars — in the 1790s, in particular. The British forces won the Cape (the southern portion of the African continent) and made deeper inroads later on.

By the end of the 19th century, both India and South Africa were witnessing protests and riots against the British rulers but without much success. India took the lead in organising its energy for a political outcome with the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885. South Africa reached that level in 1912, when the ANC was founded. This came against the backdrop of Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagrah movement in South Africa. Mahatma Gandhi had described it as “the awakening of Africa”. Mahatma Gandhi’s touch to the INC was to come a few years later.

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The making of the parties

The Congress began its fight for India’s freedom in 1885 but it gained pace after 1905 when the British divided Bengal which further intensified when Mahatma Gandhi became the driving force of the party 1917 onwards. In South Africa, the ANC gathered momentum of scale after 1948 when the all-white ruling dispensation (National Party) enforced segregation of the blacks from the white population — apartheid. By this time, the ANC had seen Gandhian ways working for India, which freed itself from British rule. It employed the same principles particularly under Nelson Mandela, often remembered as the African Gandhi.

Constant pressure from the civil disobedience movement by the ANC under Mandela forced the British to leave South Africa in 1961, making it a republic but with limited political power to its majority black population. The black people were denied voting rights in most provinces and districts. And where they were allowed to vote, they had to meet very high property criteria. In any case, only the white candidates were to be elected to South African parliament. The ANC, however, had been banned.

Mandela’s party launched an armed sabotage campaign against the new republican government, which had withdrawn from the commonwealth but continued the policy of apartheid. Mandela was tried for high treason for sabotaging the government and sentenced to life imprisonment. He spent the next 27 years mostly in solitary confinement and the white supramist regime didn’t allow him to attend the funerals of his mother and eldest son.

Rise to power and the high expectations

While a series of events — including the Second World War, the massive civil unrest against British rule and rebellion in the ranks of the naval forces — forced the British government to grant India Independence in 1947 handing power to the Congress in India as the country was partitioned into two sovereign countries, Mandela’s ANC got the power when a pro-reform leader FW de Klerk rose through the ranks in the National Party became South Africa’s president in 1989.

Mandela was freed from captivity in 1991 following an agreement with de Klerk in 1991. Three years later, Mandel ended the long reign of the National Party (1948-94) as all black people got the right to vote in the 1994 national election. His rise to power was similar to Nehru’s. When India got Independence, Nehru emerged as the automatic choice in the first election (1951-52) that happened more than four years later.

Both the leaders in respective countries came to power with high aspirations of the public, who identified themselves with the leading political parties.

Two big leaders and the crisis after

Another factor that was common between the INC and the ANC was that at the beginning of their rules, they had charismatic leadership in Nehru and Mandela — both heavily influenced by the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. Both governed their nations with the sense of guardianship. Their respective parties had the affection and respect of the masses.

Both leaders played key roles in bringing out new constitutions for their countries based on equality of rights and freedoms. Just as Nehru allied with leaders of different ideological streams (such as BR Ambedkar and Syama Prasad Mookerjee), Mandela formed a coalition with the National Party of de Klerk. Incidentally, as Ambedkar and Mookerjee fell out with Nehru, de Klerk’s party too chose to part ways with Mandela’s ANC.

The Congress had to battle infighting post-Nehru, who passed away in May 1964). Its political dominance came under serious challenge in 1967 elections with some of the states electing non-Congress governments for the first time. At the national level, Indira Gandhi rebelled and formed a new party, which drew its leaders and cadres from the old party amid serious political bickering in 1969. Through the 1970s, the Congress leadership faced allegations of corruption and malpractices. The party lost power in the parliamentary election in 1977.

The 1977 moment for ANC?

The Congress in India had ruled for 30 long years before it tasted its first defeat in the national election in 1977. This period was characterised by mass euphoria followed by emotional disenchantment with the Congress and its leadership against the backdrop of political nepotism, military humiliation at the hands of China, the dashing of hopes of prosperity in the post-Independence era, growing prices amid food shortages and rising unemployment.

The ANC is standing at a similar crossroad in South Africa, having ruled the country for 30 years since ending apartheid. But the corruption and favouritism have marred the ANC, whose leaders — Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma — had to resign over corruption related allegations. Despite the uninterrupted reign of 30 years, the ANC has failed to address the basic issues of South Africa — unemployment, rising prices and lack of civic amenities.

South Africa is voting for its 400 members of its parliament, the National Assembly, which will then elect the country’s president. This comes amid reports that the ANC is fast losing mass support in the country, where over 80% population is black for whom Mandela’s party fought a long battle.

A crisis of credibility, and numbers

It is election time in both South Africa and India. Both expect to find their new ruling dispensation in early June. In India, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi — whose meteoric rise at national level in 2014 decimated the Congress, leaving the grand old party struggling to secure the nomination for the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha — is being seen by political observers and analysts as the front-runner in the national election. This means the Congress could be facing its third consecutive loss in the parliamentary election at the hands of the BJP, if analysts are proven right on 3 June.

Reports from South Africa are not welcoming for the ANC. News agency Reuters this week reported, “South Africans will vote on Wednesday with widespread anger over power cuts, joblessness and corruption threatening to end the dominance of the African National Congress, thirty years after Nelson Mandela led it into power.

“At no point since world media beamed iconic images of Black South African voters queueing to cast ballots for the first time following the end of white-minority rule has the ANC looked so likely to lose its parliamentary majority.”

Pre-poll surveys suggest that led by President Cyril Ramaphosa, ANC’s vote share could drop to 40 per cent — a continued decline in popular votes after reaching its peak of 70% in 2004. In that case, Ramaphosa may have to depend on a wobbly coalition with his rivals.

While the ANC is showing decline in recent years, in India, the Congress has been facing a similar crisis of credibility for quite some. It has not won a single election with majority on its own after reaching its peak in 1984 when it won 415 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats. It formed three governments during this period — a minority government during 1991-96 and two coalition governments during 2004-14.

This year’s national elections are testing the two grand old parties that emerged under similar circumstances, following similar political philosophies and grappling with a similar credibility crisis.