In defence of Carl Niehaus: An open letter by Dr LF Ivings

After yesterday’s National Disciplinary Committees’ verdict against comrade Carl Niehaus I have felt it my duty not only as a friend or party member to come to his defense but also and I think most importantly as an historian to put my thoughts to paper.

Because what happened yesterday was not merely a travesty of administrative law but also with regard to the history of the ANC as a liberation movement. Never before has the ANC or any of its alliance partners published a verdict of its disciplinary committee on social media before the accused in the disciplinary process was even informed of the sanction! This is the sort of method and pronouncement that you would have found in the most brutal of dictatorships. Where armed men would arrive at your home and escort you to the nearest wall and shoot you for being an enemy of the state. Everyone knew. Except for the victim! The ANC has indeed turned Kafkaesque with an invisible feeling of terror that might hang over every dissenting voice of every member that wishes to speak out in the hopes of justice.

In an organization that used to pride itself on debates and political schools even at one stage launching within its own ranks the battle of ideas campaign, where members from different regions could debate versions of policies and socio-economic programs that could be adopted by the ANC at a National Policy Conference! Now there exists only an air of stifled acquiescence to greater individual patronage and loyalty to one. During these campaigns in the early 2000s, an NEC member would even be deployed to oversee the rigorous debates that happened within regions.

Now if someone is contrary they are the nail that must be hammered down in the decision to expel comrade Carl from the ANC, the committee stated that the party is bigger than an individual, if this was truly the case the findings of Judge Sandile Ngcobo in the Phala Phala report would have by implication alone meant that the party would have sided with the rules and not the individual against whom a prima facie case exists.

There are several other examples in the recent past where the individual has triumphed above the party. We need only look at the so-called commission on state capture where many prominent ANC members were implicated in alleged corrupt activities. However, none of these individuals has faced either disciplinary or legal proceedings. Instead many of their names can now be found on the nomination list for the upcoming ANC elective conference.

In the end, what do we have then it is nothing more and nothing less than plain old double standards being applied by a party afraid of any form of dissent. A party that is now divorced from its own core values and subsequently the masses of poor individuals in this country.

It is my fervent wish and desire as someone of no importance, just one of those faceless individuals living under the veiled perception of a functioning state, that comrade call should continue to speak the truth to this vacuum this absence of leadership. I dare not call it power because that might indicate that they also could do the right thing in the end!

*Dr. Ivings is an historian and concerned citizen