The stability of an order is a function of how integrated or complementary its political elite is. Elite consensus on basic values that should undergird a society is as much a prerequisite for a high performance political system as it is a potential guarantor for unresponsive and oligarchic government. Either way, the common denominator is a society's political elite and the arrangements they would have made to create stability that would not disrupt the status quo to the extent that it facilitates predominance of their interests. We often hear of things that 'fall apart', in South Africa, the structure of its elite is very much a 'things (interests) come from apart'. It is in fact a cocktail of what 'apart-heid' had set apart, and yet finding a common reason to co-exist without perpetuating the grand objects of 'apart-heid'.
In this rendition an attempt will be made to demonstrate that beyond race as a vector to most of South African politics, political elitism has reached the pinnacle of non-racialism; a consensus to establish one 'political power elite' is established. It is its interests that will define its relationship with posterity. Facilitated by a multi-racial complex whose composition is persons of similar origin and education, careers and lifestyles, social bases and economic class, and a social homogeneity that transcends creed and race, this elite is integrating upon a liberal democracy platform.
As the struggle against apartheid was gaining traction, its momentum became elite consensus on what to replace apartheid with, in the event Apartheid fails as a social experiment upon which South Africa's political economy would be modelled. This was made possible by the limited number of higher education institutions colonial South Africa had established to manufacture its own elites, and the generosity of mission school education authorities that facilitated international higher education exposure on a multi-racial basis. The outcome of this structural elite integration created an expectation of belonging to one elite. Pity it seems to have been truncated by apartheid's deliberate targeting of education as the basis of entrenching inequality. Nevertheless, the political elite was thus established before apartheid could recalibrate society to produce strange breeds of elites roaming around.
The recruitment patterns of elite construction in South Africa followed the established trends of career or profession specific fraternities that could cross pollinate in church boards, school boards, advisory boards, music concerts and other social events. In these configurations 'inner cores' to private political discussions, secret societies, internationally linked sororities, and denominational fellowships developed, and ideological discussions about democracy found traction. Sociometric ties started to take centre stage in creating personality centred nodal points out of which cells from which a network of elites could be established.
In South Africa, political elite classes that exerted the most influence on its politics were in the main nationalist, racially organised, liberal in political thought, capitalist in economic thinking, and anti-colonial in posture, and yet lacking a common national interest. Its intelligentsia was educated in foreign universities, some embraced the white suprematist life philosophies that dominated early twentieth century philosophy ideation, whilst others became default followers of its anti-thesis, the civil rights movements that were Marcus Gaveyist in character, and yet liberalist in content. One nationalist political elite took root. What was peculiar about it, is its capability to have allowed itself to grow into two race defined blocks, all of whom raised the greatest of leadership this country could have enjoyed as an investment for it to be globally competitive. In fact, one of its leaders, Smuts, helped define the global governance order that later found our domestic policies to be a crime against the humanity he so craftily imagined for the world.
As a political elite on mainly race-defined nationalists, their perception of South Africa's self was so high level that they crafted a consensus to create building RSA into one of the biggest industrial economies in Africa. As a society South Africa produced some of the best written political approach and direction documents and charters whose repentance towards might have come late. For instance, the African Claims document responded to the global birth of a human rights based order, later the Freedom Charter responded to a purist apartheid political system that saw South Africa's industrial economic potential as a preserve of race and creed defined nation, were not only proffered to pillar the then new nation, but were flag posted to redefine into posterity the political future of South Africa as a liberal order. Since then, the political economy of South Africa, despite its non-black privileging character, has had to deal with how it transforms itself into a non-racially inclusive enterprise capable of having a moral high ground to compete with its global peers.
As this matter pre-occupied several elite enclaves, formations, and secret societies, it also created ideation questions whose research and analysis created elite communities whose integration drew from the institutional apartness created by racial segregation, apartheid, and separate development. As the winds of change, in Churchillian parlance, of the early sixties in the twentieth century interrupted the Westphalian concepts of sovereignty and its adjunct colonialism, the new 'post-colonial' African states created political elite structure that accelerated the demands for new arrangements on how to govern South Africa. The then dominant political elite of South Africa, mainly non-black, had consolidated itself through legislation and thus the entire adjudicative power of the state, underpinned by its monopoly of enforcement and violence through an army, decided to truncate these demands by silencing competitor 'elites', mainly black. From amongst the 'excluded political elites', and as a feature of its separate development trajectory, the stream of nationalist elites, established ethnic-based political elites as a bulwark with which a non-black elite consensus could be sustained beyond.
The excluded 'elites', 'the included left of liberal' elites, 'co-opted black elites', and 'profession defined elites' of South Africa grew as an elite with 'apart' interests, and yet contesting to be 'a national elite' of a 'nation state without a nation' and by extension 'no national interest'. In this whirlpool of diverse elites, an 'opposition mentality' to the state and its government settled as a modus operandi for the excluded elite and its networks, otherwise also referred to as the liberation movement. In the 'national' of the 'liberation movement' a consensus of 'anti-apartheid state and/or system' created its own 'political elite' with varying end goals, but a truly non-racial national interest. The race and machination to oust 'apartheid' was led as a 'united front' of 'elite interests' whose unity, it was hoped, would be codified into a 'non-racial' constitution with values that would transcend the diverse 'inside-a-nationless-state' interests. The ethnic-defined 'nationals' which cohered around the deliberately nuanced 'tribal' or 'ethnic' interests developed own 'elite consensuses' whose momentum became cultural dominance and 'identity politics' affirmation as the dominant substrate with which any possibility of a national elite consensus could be negotiated. The striking feature of this ethnic mobilisation of 'elites' has in South Africa been its 'non-racial' manifestation; the Afrikaner and Zulu ethnic groups tower this ethnic-defined elite consensuses. The ethnic resources, such as numerical strength, control of economic value chains, predominance over mega communication systems, have in recent times been deployed as substrates with which they are now negotiating new 'supra-their-national-elite' consensus. Empowerment of the less powerful and disempowerment of the weak has now occupied the centre stage as 'stakes' to be traded in the 'stakeholder' games whose ultimate price is supposedly the establishment of a 'national interest' defined 'elite consensus and integration'.
In the meanwhile, the solidarities that define enclaves of elites have been concretising into rigid 'elites' commuted to 'own affairs' agendas. Those that were or are able to amass sufficient influence over the various rigidities defining the enclaves, and package it as an above the 'narrow national interests' of elites dominant therein, have now organised themselves into a 'ganging elite' whose consensus is fast growing into a oligarchy. The capacity of this oligarchy to be kleptocratic is in the main propelled by their crafty way in which they took control of government as the most active of agencies the state relies upon. From the vintage of state, and lately, and more acutely, its adjudication and prosecution power, as well as access to global order architectures, these 'ganging elites' have been able to construct a consensus whose impact might be the Rockefellerisation of the South African political economy with few and powerful dynasties becoming the contexts of all contexts in so far as any 'national elite consensus' is concerned.
The absence or otherwise of an elite consensus of what is or should be in the national interest of South Africa, might look to an unsuspecting eye as a 'things fall apart matter', and I submit herein, it is not. Our falcons are attentively hearing the falconers, instead of anarchy been loosened onto our world, oligarchy is. A Rockefellerisation dimmed tide is loosened everywhere, a ceremony of dominance is at play, and it is not innocent, our best thinkers have conviction to make a success of the consensus, THINGS ARE COMING FROM APART. CUT!!!!
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela, ndzi tsala ke
🤷🏽♂️Be ngisho nje
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