The product of Leslie Bank’s interesting marriage of historical analysis and policy commentary is rather disappointing (Deficiencies of our decolonisation efforts contain lessons for the future, March 27). According to Bank, our prospects for development lie in "alternative readings and engagements with the hybrid ideological, institutional and political DNA of the ANC and… other liberation … movements". Yet it is precisely the ANC’s failure to transform itself from a liberation movement into a modern political party that has stunted the developmental agenda. The ANC continues to imbibe a noxious ideological cocktail of racial nationalism and Marxist-Leninist theory, long past its expiry date. An internal culture of secrecy, fear, patronage and corruption — the history of which is well documented by Stephen Ellis in External Mission: the ANC in Exile, 1960-1990 — is antithetical to progress and development. The ANC approaches state institutions as if they were neopatrimonial network...
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