Policy overreach is a consequence of the ANC. They over-elaborated on policy, ignored the fragility of the institutions called upon to implement their rich imaginings and, worse, pursued as a matter of policy institutional discontinuity and the marginalising of key skills.

The ANC sought to re-engineer the state and society with little knowledge of what actually constituted either, let alone the long-term impact of their actions. And they compounded it all by making the bureaucracy an adjunct of the ruling party, thus condemning it to the same dysfunction as the movement itself.

To qualify this statement at its national conference in December 2017, the ANC adopted the "step-aside resolution", ostensibly to cleanse the party of corrupt elements. But the resolution is bitterly opposed by some of the cadres, especially in Limpopo and KZN. By doing this, the ANC unwittingly rendered its decision to cleanse and redeem itself a joke.

The step-aside rule is very much in the tradition of other such documents as the National Development Plan (NDP), the Reconstruction and Development Programme and, indeed, the constitution: they are adopted with great fanfare but then largely ignored.

Thus there is no provision of any kind for the implementation of the resolution of the sixth ANC policy conference.

Dr Amos Sekhaulelo, email