It is no longer difficult to
understand why society seems to have started dreaming of a future without the
ANC as a governing party. As unemployment figures grow, crime and criminality
are rewarded, public infrastructure is collapsing, disposable income is raided
by fuel increases and their attendant inflationary impact, and a government
that does not inspire any hope of change in sight, current efforts to reverse
the declining voter confidence in the ANC appear woefully inadequate.
Compounding to the frustration, the Zondo Commission report, which is about to
be released, will be as fraught as its drama-filled hearings. The governing
party is in the throes of a fully-fledged political legitimacy crisis with
declining voter confidence in its ability to govern, and this is making its
leadership at the branch level lose requisite confidence to inspire hope for the
future. The state of paralysis, also exacerbated by the loss of influence in the
local state, will make any effort at recovery to liberation movement glory days,
require the best of its cadres to regroup and give direction.
Proponents of the ANC's renewal
and rebuilding prospects believe that in addition to mitigating the loss of
voter support through in-ANC institutional reforms such as the anti-corruption
posture of its current President, Ramaphosa, will lure back its membership and
supporters. Whilst there is some truism in the possibility of the
anti-corruption drive resuscitating support, and potentially transformation of its
internal political dynamics, the cost of dislodging from an established
patronage system as currency for in-ANC upward mobility, has to date choked the
integrity of the very renewal and rebuilding program. The inevitable transition
to a corruption-proof ANC NEC will reconfigure a substantial part of how it has
been conducting politics since its unbanning and formalization as a political
party contesting for state power through the agency of government. Relentless
pursuit of this anti-corruption posture independent of a social justice-based
transformation program has now shaped the in-ANC renewal and rebuilding program
to be tradable with how anti-corruption is supported. Far from fostering comity
and cooperation between the warring ideological factions about anti-corruption as
a platform for renewal and rebuilding, its drive has instead been delayed sufficient
enough to produce new forms of leadership contestation and confrontation
factions before any unity about and for renewal can be imagined.
Dreaming of unity in the ANC has
become more illusionary at the least, and at best fanciful. With an overabundance
of branch elective conferences, sub-national elective conferences, a policy
conference, delegate to national conference wisdom list compilations, and a
national elective conference in less than twelve months, there is no way the
ANC can avoid upheavals as it works on renewing, rebuilding, and remaking
itself into a unified force, still with a mandate to transform South African
society. This situation begs the question of who stands to win and who stands
to lose when the ANC fails to recover from falling over into the precipice. In
his address to professionals in Gauteng, October 2021, former President Mbeki
made an emphatic statement to South Africa that the ANC is too big and
important for our democracy's stability, to fail. With the not so farfetched prospect
of a new national, and almost certain in Gauteng, governing coalition in 2024,
and a low depth in analysis academic-media-complex, as well as a hostile and
resourced constituency that sees the ANC as an affront to colonialism and
apartheid-era gained privileges, the issue of who wins or loses has become off
base. The decline in ANC support, which in itself might be a sign of a maturing
democracy, is to such constituencies a triumph and representative of a
possibility to return to known prosperity, even if they also face the worst
consequences of a society wrought with political instability. Notwithstanding,
and assuming a maturity and readiness by experts in fomenting ungovernability
if excluded, the outcomes of our thus far near perfect constitutional democracy,
might turn out to represent a new source of social cohesion and common national
interest defense by all political parties and coalition if indeed life without
the ANC as the government is that inevitable.
This rendition, and I must
declare, is not intended to proffer an argument in favor of slowing the winds
of change sweeping South Africa's democratic life and experience. On the
contrary, democrats should welcome the development to the extent that it
advances the liberation promise as entrenched in the country's constitution and
spirit. The era to work within what this democracy expected of its citizens as
beneficiaries has in fact arrived, lest we might go the route of rule without
laws, and a prerogative state outside a normative framework might be our
inheritance. This rendition is instead proffered to encourage South Africa's
economic establishment, political elites, cognitive elites, and the media
complexes to look beyond the challenges of dealing with a liberation movement
that has been actively at the center of our national politics for more than
five decades and appreciate the risks and dangers of not paying attention to it
being outside the 'proverbial tent' and doing all sorts of things from outside.
More consequential will be the truth of underdevelopment, poverty, and squalor
in constituencies the ANC, in its correct and right frame of mind, has over the
years mastered organizing to protest anyone in authority, sometimes even
against its own authority. A failure to appreciate the unintended consequences
of the ANC’s rather too early a departure from political power in municipal
jurisdictions defining to what a South African economy is, will not only have
national stability and economic implications, but it will also undermine the
very democracy itself.
The dangers of a one-partied
multi-party democracy are well documented in Africa and elsewhere. It remains
desirable to have a democracy whose possibility is solely determined by
regularized voter choices in a free and fair electoral system. This context, we
can successfully argue, is now firmly set in South Africa. We have had several
transitions from one administration to the other that have been peaceful and
matured. However, the most dramatic of these was the Tshwane transition from
the ANC to a DA-led 'coalition' or 'arrangement' in 2016. Whilst democracy
prevailed, service delivery for certain of the Tshwane constituencies suffered,
either more, sustained or otherwise. We noticed how provincial government tried
to usurp voters' will through section 139 administration, and many other difficulties
that undermined that administration in one way or another. The plausibility of
our kind of democracy is its capacity to humble political rhetoric and subject
it to the will of the electorate, rule of law, and supremacy of the
Constitution. The overall hold of the ANC on the urban spaces of South Africa
has not only been in decline because of service delivery dysfunctionalities,
but more precisely the decline of in-ANC capability to rise up to the
challenges brought about by its condition of legality as well as its true readiness
to handle a sophisticated political economy through a profoundly open society
advocating constitution.
In his letter to the Top Six of
the ANC in November 2021, President Mbeki raises several issues that trace the
decline of the capability of the ANC, and that of the state from the
triumphalism that kicked in after the Polokwane elective conference. In the
letter, Mbeki, insinuates that the idea of have treated the South African State
as a subject to be changed at all costs might have been the reason for all
attendant failures that came with the approach. The State needed, even during
his term, and all other terms for that matter, to be repurposed to achieve the
objects of a new government. The State as an institution that embodies public
power in its various forms should have been seen as a terrain to experiment
within what the law provides all transformation or otherwise policies that
government makes. The Mbeki letter will be a subject of another rendition. Its
relevance here is the extent to which the liberation movement complex has
disintegrated. To this Mbeki sums it up when he declares “It is obvious that if
nothing changes with regard to the conditions and factors which helped to
produce this outcome, and certainly if matters get worse, this will certainly
lead to a strategic defeat of the progressive movement and a historic victory for
the right-wing.” In essence Mbeki is saying the liberation movement complex is
in a crisis of being “disorganized, weakened and destroyed both from within and
from outside its ranks”, as the EFF President Julius Malema declared “we are
here to bury the ANC”.
WHATS NEXT, HOW TO REGROUP?
For the liberation movement
complex to understand the real issues eating into its many years of credibility
as an organization that can lead the socio-economic transformation of South
Africa, it is important for it to grasp what are those issues it might have
overlooked or is still overlooking to make its recovery as a movement relevant
to South Africans. Sticking to its conventional way of politicking, and its
ritual of arrogantly making its elective conferences a
'members-only-with-broader-societal-impact' affair, will have a review and
recovery end state that will in all material purposes be in discrepancy to what
they would have been accustomed to. Liberation movements or parties that led
'struggles' like the one the ANC did, have been able to continue dominating
politics in their countries through one or more attributes herein under.
The constitution should be the
standard bearer, cautiously
One source of being in charge of
society's politics is to lead in the setting of court precedence. Governing
from a platform of legality, rule of law, and at all times be seen to be the
foremost defender of the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, puts your
organization in the club of normative institutions. In the eyes of rating
agencies, multilateral governance institutions, the foreign direct investment
community, smart voters as well as the academic-media complex, a relationship
with normative government processes gives any organization not only a
competitive advantage, but a head start. For example, the integrity management
system to the effect of stepping down when criminally charged, adopted at the
Mangaung Conference, and the displayed commitment to implement it, without
favor and prejudice, at the highest levels of the organization, is a step in
the right direction to start a recovery process that carries the confidence of
society along. For an organization that has spent almost 30 years of its
productive and consequential life in clandestine and secrecy governed management
processes, unbanned into a sophisticated negotiations process, and then plunged
into a responsibility of governing one of Africa's sophisticated economy and
polity, creating a normative framework of governing itself is long overdue. The
ability to keep its social justice and socio-economic transformation demands
will be best served through optimization of governance systems with the
organization, and from that solid platform launch its deployees into political
executive and in-organs of state positions they seek to influence society
through.
While being subjected to the
supremacy of the Constitution will be plausible as an act of entrenching the
constitutionalism the liberation movement has fought for, some interpretations
of the constitution might advance a right-wing agenda whose interest is to
render the movement’s core constituency “leaderless and rudderless, and thus
open to manipulation against their own interests.” Constitutions can be
interpretated into contexts where they could in essence break down the intended
will of nations, especially if in their establishment there was a dominant
substrate of thought that was deliberate in ‘establishing them with a certain
lack of accurate balance so that they may oscillate incessantly until they wear
through the pivot on which they turn’. Those that negotiated the constitution,
generally from a historical-originative context that is a stranger to the
philosophical foundations instructing its construct, would have, and trustingly
so, agreed to the constitutional settlement under the impression that they have
wielded it sufficiently strong to justify an expectation that the scales of the
social justice it promises would come to some magical equilibrium. What they
might have not foreseen, and not out of ignorance or being unintelligent, is
the extent to which the pivots of the very constitutionalism, the elected and
appointed organs of state, including the judiciary, will collude as part of a
network that operates in a way which renders them with no means of getting to
the beneficiaries of the idea of freedom, in their midst. Inside these
constitutions rules of engagement are defined on how the needs of the
subjugated can find expression through bubbling and babblers preoccupied by
oratorial contests in legislatures and accounting authority managing boards.
These rituals, if in the hands of an unsuspecting and less discerning leadership
“existing for itself or simply to perpetuate its own existence”, may leave
society in a disconcerting condition of having lost the habit of thinking
unless prompted by suggestions of specialists interior to the intents of what
the constitution should not achieve.
Accept that politics is now a
formal career, few will be called, to many is a job
The second area of
dominating the politics of South Africa will be that controlling the supply
side of leadership and skills that come into the liberation movement complex.
Truth is that most people that found themselves leading the movement did not
come to it as a conscious career choice to be in politics and governance of
society. The exigencies of fighting the demon that apartheid colonialism was,
attracted many who would otherwise have been in other career paths to invest
time to clear ceilings of progress constructed by the apartheid system, many
were thus absorbed into politics, this has interestingly also included in the
mix, the criminal element. The supply chain of leaders created all sorts of
criteria, chief amongst these was the extent to which you could be fearless and
thus unafraid to face the consequences of just being anti-apartheid. An anti-system culture and tradition set in,
and in the process a system of not vetting or grooming leadership required to
meet the demands that our constitution expected of its leaders took root. To
illustrate the depth of this problem, Mbeki in his letter quotes the Communist
Party of China thus, “the quality of its members is the core element for the
Party’s long-term development. If those who neither perform the member’s duties
nor qualify [for] the member criteria are not timely eliminated from the Party,
the overall impression of the people about the Party will be damaged.”
Setting up internal systems of
elite party recruitment which is regimented to track and trace talent as it
buds in other social institutions such as schools, youth camps, trade Union
membership, and churches is long overdue. The hogwash narrative within the ANC
that politics is not a career should stop. The supply side of leadership
requires a deliberate plan to create a substrate of trusted politicians that
will sustain the form, character, and hegemony of the movement. With a critical
substrate of unapologetic career politicians, the movement will be able to
shift public opinion as well as shift with public opinion. The reliance on the
'streets' to produce leadership for the movement will result in it being a
coterie of 'street minded' leaders who will be unable to engage with the
demands of a democracy they are leading 50 years after they had left. The
movement should be a university beyond universities, a school beyond schools,
and a ‘how to lead society institution’ beyond the many ‘what to lead society
about institutions’ we have an abundance of in the country.
Guard your soul, focus on the real
mandate, changing lives
The third area of
dominating the politics of South Africa is to understand that to be in
politics, and in charge of government, you should manage that you remain chosen
by the voters, and not an outcome of a managed process of having you selected
as a result of your servile obedience to constituencies other than those who
mandated you. In the aftermath of achieving 'freedom', which is an idea, and
not necessarily a fact, liberation movements were given authority to be in
charge of the law they did not make but will enforce it within the idea of
'freedom'. Power that comes with 'freedom' is difficult to exercise in
moderation, overtime if those possessing 'freedom power' do not keep focus on
the purpose of that power, it can easily turn them into a disorganized mob
whose tasks include consolidating class gains after a 'freedom' struggle. The
inaccessibility of ideological intents of liberation movements by citizens make
them blind followers in that respect, and yet are fully conscious of its
translated versions of day-to-day citizen needs. Astute liberation movements
avoid taking their people into abyss so as to justify their existence.
To mitigate the risk of servile obedience,
the movement should take an interest in how the advisory, specialist, and
consultancy communities develop and coordinate their ideation activities. As
the movement intellectualizes, it should be sensitized to the origins of the
knowledge used, for once it enters the ideation space of the movement, it
settles as a currency with which ideas are traded to take the organization to ‘new
heights’, and if the currency derives its value from securities that are
hostile to the deeper intents of liberation, its game over. It is thus
indispensable for the movement to take account of the thoughts, characters,
tendencies of society to avoid making slips in directing socio-economic
transformation and restoration of social justice. To record success of these
renewal interventions their practical application must be based upon summing
the lessons of the past, as a juxtaposition of our present.
The greatest force that creates
movement of thoughts in people, and can shift opinion, as well as shifting with
opinion, is the media in all its forms and conduits. With the speed and
instantaneous nature of social media, its connectivity to all that are allowed
into the space, the cyber-social space has become a new accountability domain
whose governance is as fluid as its reputation punishing prowess. To be
indispensable as a person, organization, and in this case liberation movement,
the new and continuously evolving media systems have abrogated unto themselves
the rights of pointing out the requirements to be indispensable. They are not
only giving voice to communities that agree on your irrelevance to societal
progress, but they also provide platforms to express complaints and manufacture
discontent. Liberation movements as ideological custodians of the idea, and not
fact, of the freedom of the media should therefore school themselves on how to
de-weaponize this triumph of freedom and get to lay its 'influence hands' on
it, as a shade inside its peak of exercise.
Return to civil society activism, it worked
The fourth area of dominating South African politics is to rebuild collaborative partnerships with civil society bodies without vitiating their independence to critique the governing coalition where it is failing. The very nature of the ANC’s agenda is civil society mobilization. The absence of the liberation complex in matters of civil society has left a gap whose occupation was the weaponization of societal needs away from a civil society governance framework entrenched through legislation in the government and governance processes of the state. Integrated development planning, a convergence point for stakeholder engagement and intergovernmental relations to give effect and content to state wide planning from bottom-up, as well as affording spatial expression of community needs is one such innovation through which civil society engagement has been institutionalized. CUT!!
to be continued...
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela,
🤷🏽♂️Ek se maar net,
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