Addressing the Biznews Investment Conference in Hermanus yesterday, the CEO of the Institute for Race Relations (IRR), Dr John Endres, told delegates that if the ANC did not bend to the economic realities facing South Africa, the party might break.

Central to that reality, said Endres, was unemployment, and that there “are already over 8 million people out of work in South Africa”. Strikingly, he said, “If you stood them in a line 1 m apart, the queue would stretch from the Union Buildings in Pretoria to the pyramids of Giza in Egypt”.

The cause of the unemployment problem was the low rate of economic growth, which Endres reminded delegates had again come in at below 1% in data released this week, and which he said was underpinned by the low rate of fixed investment.

According to Endres, “Put together, all these factors mean the ANC is now at risk not just of gradual decline but of sudden collapse”, but that despite this danger, its “response has been bluster and a dogged determination to keep going down the ruinous, fossilised path that has brought it to this point”.

In answer to his own question of what options the ANC now has, Endres said, “In my view, the ANC now has the choice of bending or breaking… bending means giving up some of its most cherished principles and instruments, such as heavy-handed state interventionism, race-based laws, the centralisation of power, cadre deployment, rejection of the merit principle, and a distaste for accountability. These are the bedrocks of the fake transformation the ANC has been pursuing for three decades.”

Endres concluded that the collapse of the ANC could be very destabilising for South Africa and that for that reason, “I believe it is in the interests of South Africa that the ANC bend and survive rather than break and go under. And of course, that is in its own interest, too.”

The Common Sense will run Dr Endres’ full speech tomorrow in its opinion section.