South Africa, Our fearful trip might have begun. Voters demand honesty.

   The South African voter reacted to the lack of service delivery and the failed state at local government by voting new parties and the opposition, as well as abstaining from voting the governing ANC. A casual look at the IEC published list of political funding also shows a decline, if not withdrawal, of donor support to the ANC, and a bold statement by some of the richest dynasties of South Africa that there is a change they want and are funding it. Society has shown its resoluteness in insisting that the ANC, and/or anyone that has their vote, should henceforth deliver on their commitments to build a South Africa promised by the country's Constitution.

The governing party, even after repudiation by voters in several municipal jurisdictions, and especially the major economic nodal points, seem to be insisting on its version of understanding the South African voter and still force-fitting its factional choices of leaders that would have otherwise not made it if it was individuals that society was voting for. The post-election reviews and public statements that followed have still not started to directly respond to the core 'grievances' of the voters about government where they best experience it. The criteria for 'deployment' into won municipal jurisdictions seems to be still etched in an 'own mirror' approach which insists on in-party preferences that are already repudiated by abstentions and vote shifting.

Whilst in some instances the ANC NEC has made efforts to respect the known will of its party members to coincide with that of communities that voted 'brand ANC', there seems to still be instances where dominant in-party factions have prevailed.  This is notwithstanding evidence that the way the ANC has dealt with voter reaction to how it handles them reflects more than its refusal to accede to the demands of its internal 'in-touch with communities' factions and much of the rest of ANC-friendly civil society coalitions; it also reflects a refusal to acknowledge that a contemporary South African voter is a fundamentally different one from those that harbor the nostalgic liberation struggle rhetoric. 

This new and diverse voter poses a profound challenge to the ANC, and an opportunity to 'struggle history' and/or 'apartheid past' unencumbered political parties and coalitions to rethink their approach to electoral politics. Even if the ANC can insist that society should accept it on the basis of its terms that have legitimized and optimized the liberation struggle system it so gloriously led, the ANC is, and as I write, presiding over, and not limited to, 

1. A crumbling economy that does not show any promise of a recovery sufficient to stem the tide towards 2024
2. A population ravaged by the aftermath of a poorly managed response to the COVID19 pandemic, with job losses and a choked human potential as visible manifestation of a population under stress
3. A collapsing public infrastructure that is 'load-shedding' energy, transportation and logistics, water, public health system, and sovereign border control and management.
4. A collapsing public health system that is about to fail in providing a minimum response to the minutest of health threats
5. A resurgence of reversed health threats such as malaria in Limpopo and the east coast areas of the country, child mortality increasing diseases that will be occasioned by shrinking budgets for vaccines South Africa had institutionalized as primary minimum benefits of its health system
6. The most energy insecure industrialized economy of its size caused by a near egoistic failure to make leadership calls that could allow the available capability to restore ESKOM and the country to a better and proven energy availability factor beyond the minimum requirement of 71%
7. A Public Service that has lost a capability of "how to govern" as the minimum basics of insisting on standard operating procedures or work procedures within the proven generic public administration processes that are known to have anchored South Africa as an operating democracy, notwithstanding its race vector.
8. A state security apparatus that does not seem to be combat-ready, if the detection, response, and post-event analysis of the July 'uprising/rebellion/insurrection' is anything to go by. Compounding this is the extent to which undocumented foreign nationals are armed and able to traffic whatever is on-demand in the underworld.

As the above continue to become normal and create their own political economy, the investor community, frustrated by a lack of comprehensive responses to these issues, has embarked on an investor strike and hoarding much-needed private sector investment to provide a pure market-driven stimulus to the economy. To his credit, President Ramaphosa, with a private capital nomenclature, has been able to attract pledges to invest that were not followed through by visible capabilities in other areas of managing a complex economy such as the one we have as a country.

The voter response we saw on November 1, 2021, should be seen as a deep stick of the depth of challenges we will be facing as a result of the management turnover that will come with it. The truth is, over the past 27 years, the exigencies of transformation have weakened the government's capacity to build a strong state we now require to be the substrate of managing the much-needed post-COVID19 recovery. The 'enter-new-local government' euphoria that will follow the establishment of six administration municipal governments will create new coalition government triggered executive authority fluidities and fragilities that might compromise the idea of a strong local state to undergird recovery plans. It is at this point that the economic nodal point significance of municipal jurisdictions should be managed as national interest priorities to ensure that whatever economic stimulus package makes sense.

These challenges will test the emerging spirit of coalition governing as demanded by the voter, as well as the resolve of the governing party to drive economic recovery in the interest of South Africa and the region. The time for pragmatism to occupy center stage in ANC NEC and the National Executive, as well as all centers where any form of executive and accounting authority is vested has come. As the ANC's own election season is about to begin, those vying for its take over, especially its hard-liners who are committed to the extreme of its ideological posture, should enter the race being conscious that they might inherit a carcass that might face much worse coalition negotiations for national and provincial governments than the current cohort of leadership is facing.

What is true of this situation is that the current crises faced by society will lead to popular resistance, maybe at proportions worse than the one we saw in the aftermath of Jacob Zuma arrest, to government, and trigger a new revolution out of which new trajectories could emerge on how to save the country from itself, again. True to form, the governing party might again dismiss such an eventuality, purely because the dominant paradigm is still that of seeing control of the party as the ultimate prize of politics. The growing dissent outside the party, as manifest in the sporadic service delivery protests, violent rebelliousness during protests, and lately voter apathy and response when they do vote, does not seem to have sunk into the deeper plannings of response. 

As frustration at how this economy is managed increases and is multiplied into the region, economic migration as a national security matter has started to attract anarchists to South Africa as a base from which they can launch an international program. The integrity of the country's home affairs department, its internal security apparatus, its financial intelligence capability, and adherence to global security protocols have already been put into question. 

 

The question is how do we get out of this quagmire? Answers to this question will form part of a later rendition, once responses to this problematization one have been received. The time to be brutally honest with ourselves has come. 

We must be honest as members of political parties we belong to, and strip in-party discussions of nostalgia and rhetoric. We must also be honest as South Africans and know that the country has a Constitution that requires us to make it work for all of its citizens. CUT!!!

🤷🏽‍♂️A ndzo ti hleketela, hlamulani