Two other key issues of ongoing debate concerning the exile period must be mentioned: the efectiveness of the armed struggle and the extent to which the ANC was able to control events in South Africa itself. Some of the chapters in the relevant volumes of the South African Democracy Education Trust on the struggle in the 1970s and 1980s emphasise both the armed struggle and the links that the ANC had within the country. It is now generally accepted by historians, however, if not always by ANC spokespeople, that the armed struggle was never more than mere armed propaganda, and that the ANC did not instigate the Durban strikes of 1973, the Soweto Uprising in 1976 or the Township Revolt in 1984. In all three cases it was caught unawares by the new resistance in South Africa. Te question of the infuence of the ANC in exile on the United Democratic Front (UDF) within the country in the 1980s is more problematic, given the contacts between Allan Boesak and other leading fgures in the UDF and the ANC leadership in exile [754]. But what is clear is that the one-way infuence that, say, Govan Mbeki tried to draw [755] is not correct, and that the ANC had no efective infuence over much of the internal resistance that took place in South Africa in the 1980s [756]. As a reviewer of Ellis’ book writes: «Te few examples of genuine liberated zones such as Cradock were the product of grass-roots community activism and charismatic leaders such as Matthew Goniwe, with which the exiled ANC had poor links» [757].

4. The ANC since exile: 1990 to the present

Te most detailed study of the ANC’s years in power is now to be found in the book published in 2011 by Susan Booysen of Wits University, and as the centenary year drew to a close, she contributed a shorter version to the volume that Wits University Press published on «100 Years of the ANC» [758]. As she says herself, her book is «more of a reference book than a casual night time read» [759], and not being a historian, her study lacks the necessary chronology that a historical study would provide. Te way she jumps from one period to another is ofen disconcerting, while she is not able to rest her account on the kind of archival evidence that historians use for earlier decades in the history of the ANC [760]. She shows how the ANC had, post 1994, both to consolidate its power and adopt new methods to retain power, and suggests that, for all its adeptness at reinventing itself, the ANC is now in decline, though of course she does not enjoy the perspective to be certain of this. Why the ANC remains dominant in our political system, Booysen explains by pointing to the its liberation credentials, claiming that people are not yet ready to vote for another party, and explaining that in recent elections many eligible voters have abstained from voting. She investigates what she calls the «multiple faces» (Chapter 3) of the ANC’s power, including cadre deployment, the use of state institutions, foor-crossing (Chapter 7) and the presidency (especially Chapter 11). In a chapter entitled «ANC and State Power», she analyses the scramble for resources, summed up by the phrase «it is our turn to drink at the trough». She shows how it has become increasingly difcult to separate the ANC from the state, and how people in the ANC have increasingly used state institutions for their own political and personal purposes [761]. In 2012 Martin Plaut, the Africa editor at the BBC, and Paul Holden, who has done much to reveal the scandal of the Arms Deal [762], teamed up to write «Who Rules South Africa?», a much broader and more readable account than Booysen’s, and one which has the additional merit of being more directly focused than Booysen’s book on the ANC as part of the tripartite alliance, for they argue that power does not reside in Parliament or even the Cabinet, but with the alliance, a loose structure with no constitution linked to business and criminal elements [763].

5. What is needed…

While the new works produced during the centenary year have added to the now vast literature on the ANC [764], there remains much to be learnt. We can agree with Philip Bonner that «the 100 year history of the ANC represents both a treasure trove of extraordinary episodes, magnetic personalities and instructive moments, as well as a Pandora’s box out of which something uncomfortable or unsettling is always likely to emerge» [765]. Much of what emerged from within the ANC during the struggle was, hardly surprisingly, partisan, polemical and propagandistic, designed to help promote the ANC in that struggle, while since the advent of formal democracy some writing on the ANC has continued in the same vein, glorifying the ANC’s role, while others, disillusioned with the ANC, have instead emphasized negative aspects of the story [766]. What is needed now is a balanced look at the entire history of the ANC over the century, exploring continuities and discontinuities. Only one short attempt was made to do that during the centenary [767].

In his short history of the ANC, published over a decade ago in 2000, Saul Dubow expressed surprise «that no reliable, unpartisan and well researched general history of the ANC from its foundation to the present exists», and this remains the case [768]. Te very complexity of the relationship between the history of the ANC and that of the broader liberation movement may help explain in part why we still lack such a history. Te «brief history of the African National Congress» on the ANC’s own website does not focus throughout on the ANC as an organization, but includes, say, Black Consciousness, the Soweto uprising and the Township revolt of the mid 1980s, without explaining the relationship between other movements and events to the ANC. [769] For the ANC was not always the most important resistance movement against segregation and apartheid: it was eclipsed by ICU in the 1920s; the All African Convention from the mid-1930s; the newly formed Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in late 1959/early 1960; the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in the 1970s; and the UDF in the 1980s. While, as we have noted, the UDF had links to the exiled ANC, neither the UDF nor the ANC was responsible for the bulk of the internal resistance of the 1980s [770]. Dubow warned against a teleological approach that saw the ANC as always in the vanguard of the struggle, and therefore necessarily the leading player in the transition to democracy [771]. Nor, within the Southern African region, was it always the most successful liberation movement. Its links to other liberation movements in the region remain largely unexplored. And its years in power, during which the fragmentation noticeable in its early years [772] increased, will require continuing analysis as the ANC’s position changes in the future.