INTRODUCTION

In the process of bringing remarkable change to South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) has, itself, become a remarkably changed organisation. The power it wielded over the country was persistent and strong, yet simultaneously post-peak and declining across the ‘four faces of power’ – the ANC in state and government; the ANC electorally, in competition with other political parties; the ANC in relation to the people; and the ANC organisationally. Its ‘continuous struggle for liberation’ was, by 2012, especially social and economic, yet also political in its interrogation of the 1994 constitutional values. Its struggle had, after more than 18 years in power, in many respects become a struggle to retain its power, while recognising that its liberation project was phased and incomplete. Even while the project was incomplete, processes set in that detracted from and undermined the power the ANC had gained. The odds were that the liberation it had wrought was probably never going to be complete.

In many respects the ANC's decades-long challenge to apartheid power and its own ascent to dominance are well recorded. Yet the details of its contemporary position and the change in its political power between 1994 and 2012 are only occasionally explored in an integrated and systematic manner. In the years after 1994, the ANC worked to build, extend and consolidate its base. The ‘four faces of ANC power’ offer an inclusive analytical framework for tracking its consolidation of power and its ability continuously to reinvent itself and retain that power. This framework gives an all-around perspective of its political operations since 1994.

This chapter uses the four faces of power to deconstruct the ANC's continuous reinvention since it took over the running of the state. These years have been both kind and cruel and the burdens and seductions of being in power changed it. By 2012, it had become an amalgam of contradictions, with all four faces displaying blends of continuous strengths (no new strengths) and accumulating weaknesses. Still, new visions, new plans and turnaround strategies were recorded, albeit with moderated expectations for realisation. This chapter presents an interpretative synthesis of arguments and research data to arrive at an appraisal of the state of ANC power circa 2012.