Dramatistic Criticism of the African National Congress’s January 8th Statements Pre- and Amid Democracy in South Africa

This article examines the rhetoric of political party founding anniversary speeches delivered by the African National Congress before and during democracy in South Africa. While scholars have analysed a range of artefacts using diverse research methods, South African political party founding anniversary speeches have not previously been examined through a dramatistic criticism framework. Adopting this approach, the study employed a pentadic analysis method to uncover the underlying motives of a corpus of eight purposively selected January 8th statements delivered by the African National Congress across two political junctures. The findings reveal that the January 8th statements delivered during the apartheid era privileged scene to agitate the masses against the apartheid regime and to purify the party of guilt (1972); to praise and celebrate the strides of anti-apartheid forces while simultaneously demonstrating political power to the enemy (1985); to coordinate mass action and construct the party’s national identity, conceptualised in this study as “ANCness” (1990); and to advance a particular ideological position and standpoint on political transition (1993). Similarly, in the democratic era, the African National Congress privileged scene to shape understandings of the attained democracy and reconstruct its identity (1995 and 2002); to repair identification with its audiences (2016); and to defend its status as the ruling party (2024). Based on these findings, the study concludes that the ANC used its founding anniversary speeches to induce audiences’ susceptibility to its construance and framing of political contexts in response to specific political demands faced at the time of each address.