Some countries, like Greece, many Arab states and even, increasingly, the United States, have a problem separating religion and the state. In others, like Russia and many African states, the line between the ruling party and the state is unclear or non-existent. Either way democracy suffers.

South Africa has suffered from both problems since at least 1948. After we became a democracy in 1994, we succeeded in separating God from politics. But the dividing lines between state and ruling party became even more ill-defined. It is a serious flaw in our democracy.

The ANC's belief that its interests are the state's interests has its roots in the time many decades ago when the ANC fought tooth and nail to have only itself recognised as the "sole representative" of the people of South Africa by the international community.

It monopolised the international anti-apartheid struggle. Anything done in the name of the struggle against apartheid that did not have the ANC top structure's blessing was declared suspect.

It was this culture that led to the ANC's alienation of one of our greatest freedom fighters, Robert Smangaliso Sobukwe, and the cold shoulder it gave to another great South African, Stephen Bantu Biko. It was this attitude that made the ANC claim Sharpeville and the 1976 Soweto uprisings as its own victories.

It is, of course, normal for a liberation movement to fight for power and dominance. And it isn't unexpected when such a movement then gets voted into power by an overwhelming majority for it to capitalise on its dominance.

But one would expect a responsible movement like the ANC to mature sufficiently as a political party after a decade in power and not want to be so insistent on perpetuating its hegemony.

The confusion between state and party has now permeated our whole society. Party membership is virtually a precondition for black empowerment, and an absolute precondition for a senior appointment in the civil service or other public office.

More often than not party affiliation is a prerequisite for landing a state contract. The urban townships are full of stories of ANC heavies and councillors helping loyalists to jump the housing queues.

Some local authorities are run as virtual ANC fiefdoms. The most influential newsroom in the country, that of the SABC, is run by an ANC political commissar and every one of his underlings knows clearly what the agenda is. There are many other examples.

Thabo Mbeki, president of the country and of the ruling party, had a golden opportunity to firmly establish the separate identities of party and state - and to make it work for him - when a court implied that the deputy president of the country, Jacob Zuma, had a corrupt relationship with a businessman.

It should not have mattered what the ANC leadership or structures thought about it - that finding by the court made him unfit, at least temporarily, to be the second in command of the country.

As the president of the Republic of South Africa, Mbeki should have fired him, perhaps after consulting his cabinet. Then, as leader of the ANC, he should have asked the party what they thought should be the action taken against Zuma as deputy leader of the ANC.

Mbeki did not do that *1. He made the whole Zuma question an ANC issue. And it became very divisive, for the ANC as well as the country. His actions reinforced the culture that the ANC is the state and the state is the ANC.

It manifests itself in many ways. I was told recently of a clergyman of a certain denomination who was caught siphoning off some church money, and when he was caught, he ran to the regional ANC office and charged the church leaders with racism. It bought the offending minister a pardon, because his colleagues knew that annoying the ANC was not a good strategy.

The ANC leadership has been successful in its efforts to create a culture where disloyalty to the ruling party is seen as the same as disloyalty to the country.

I hope the deep divisions and public conflicts in the ANC over the Zuma affair will help undermine the party's image as the embodiment of the state. But civil society, especially the media, will have to work harder to make the distinction between party and state clearer.

Perhaps it is the one thing the two rebellious partners in the ruling tripartite alliance, Cosatu and the Communist Party, could spend their energy on now that their campaign to save Jacob Zuma has failed.

It is also important that we now establish the principle of a professional civil service. Professional in the sense that all appointments should be made from a body of trained career civil servants.

This should include our diplomatic corps. Political appointments from the lowest to the highest level in all three tiers of government have cost South Africa dearly in the past decade.

With acknowledgements to Max du Preez and the Cape Argus.

*1 And just why not?

External reality forced a non-preferred course of action. It's called hedging one's bets.

But then the torture never stops, the torture never stops.