POLITICAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW: Remembering an ANC founded on intellectual values
THE MAN WHO FOUNDED THE ANC Bongani Ngqulunga Penguin Books It is one of the most enduring questions in South African politics: how is it a faction-driven, diverse and ideologically challenged party such as the ANC has survived for so long? A starting point to determining an answer is that the ANC stands for the liberation of black South Africans from apartheid. But that is as far as one would get to arrive at a broad explanation for its success as there are myriad views and opinions, with some commentators calling the ANC a "riddle" or an "enigma". Whatever the case, the ANC is certainly the prime political reality in SA. It has been the governing party for the past 23 years after a chequered history. For 50 years, it functioned as a largely conservative and moderate organisation and then disappeared from the South African scene for about 30 years before emerging as a broadly social-democratic party after 1994. Now, it typifies itself as an organisation seeking "radical economic tr...
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