The succession debate is with us again. 2022 is officially a in-ANC election year, primaries of the real 2024 battle for governing South Africa have begun. Compounding this season is the compressed backlog of regional and provincial conferences that could not sit because of the 'social distancing' COVID19 imposed on political activities. Trust accounts for those that want to support particular list, and hope to be sealed by a Justice Mlambo judgement have opened. The battle lines are not yet drawn but are somewhat visible even on water surfaces.
The annual January 08 ANC pilgrimage to one province or the other has come and gone. The President of the ANC has said his sayings, the rhetoric has been the same, the ANC is still in a National Democratic Revolution, it is still fighting state capture, it is still the force of the left, and it is still pursuing a radical socio-economic transformation path. Its elected Secretary General is still on suspension, the Commission on State Capture Report littered with most of its former deployees is released and more is on its way. The in-ANC political activity is at present choked by the anxiety of the second and third part of the report. The December 2022 clock is ticking, every hour that passes makes the date of the conference nearer.
President Ramaphosa looks to be the most relaxed leader of a political party during its election year. He is less interested in 'side shows' of small boys playing with a ball out there. With the National Prosecution Authority preparing files of those implicated at the commission for charging and court processing, 2022 might be the most consequential for the entire criminal justice system. The commitment to the rule of law by the governing party as the prerogative political coalition of interests will be put under severe test, and stress.
The ANC still believes in its outdated approach of choking election campaigning for the position of President. Despite the campaign being full force on social media platforms, and facilitated by the political analyst communities, the ANC is dogmatic about its 'wait until you are called mantra'. In this whirlpool of Alices in wonderland, ANC Provincial Chairperson of Limpopo Stan Mathabathe introduces the ANC President Ramaphosa at the January 08 rally, by openly announcing his province's preference for him to go for a second term. The election season was, through this act opened.
Lindiwe Sisulu, a withdrawee of the 2017 chapter of the ANC election series, writes an article that introduces her into a constitutional debate raging, albeit in muted tones, within the ANC. The promise of a better life for all has only been emphatically delivered in, by, and through the Constitution, notwithstanding growing disagreement by some with the ANC that adopted it in Mafikeng. Her article raises issues that are not new in ANC circles about the extent to which the Constitution has lived up to the liberation promise. Finding a relationship between the Constitution and the triple ills of poverty, inequality and unemployment, is not only a favourite pastime inside the ANC, but has been galvanised into a central thematic issue to regroup the 2017 defeated Radical Economic Transformation thrust.
In presenting her arguments Sisulu attempts to invoke the legality of Colonialism, Apartheid and Nazism as constitutional constructs that facilitated their oppression, to draw comparisons or parallels with the 'apparent' inadequacy of South Africa's Constitution to decisively deal with poverty, inequality and unemployment. She questions the rule of law in a manner that reflects a in-ANC frustration about the normative demands of the Constitution at the altar of the adjudicative prowess of an independent judiciary. Meandering through several, and somewhat disconnected themes, she brings in the political economy issues in a verbose style that attempts to make the rule of law a variable to her 'argument'.
The cognitive elite and non-racial economic establishment was also not spared her meanderings of trying to extract a posture to draw in the President as a candidate of Capital, and thus a neoliberal proxy on a force of the left position. The emotive 1913 land act, and the 1652 oppression point of departure was not spared the collection towards a yet to be established central theme.
If the intent of the article was to launch a woman ANC President campaign, Sisulu might have made it in the ambush marketing sense. She chose a subject that ambushes the edifice of the value system a Ramaphosa Presidency is all about, the rule of law, supremacy of the Constitution, and protection of property rights as the basis for anchoring economic stability. The article is at best an echo from the chambers of the battle for relevance to an otherwise unemployed populace faced by pornographic inequality, and race defined poverty. The tone of the article seems to be an attempt at getting through to the RET constituency inside the ANC, the disgruntled unemployed youth, and a COVID19 ravaged black middle class which is facing the real prospect of regressing out of the middle into an undefined periphery.
As a candidate for President of the ANC and country, the affront on the Constitution she has sworn to defend since its adoption, was a miscalculation of gigantic proportions. South Africa has adopted a Constitution whose values and normative force is a free for all that understand how it can work for them. It is unfriendly to racism, homophobia, and many other chauvinisms, and yet a open society construct that guarantees equal opportunities without guaranteeing equal outcomes. Problematising the rule of law in a cesspool of proven corruption, rampant crime, and a collapsing infrastructure plays into cleansing the incumbent to be given further chance at another term. The shot that she fired, might have made the right sound but very short on being lethal, it is a scary blank. CUT!!!!
🤷🏿♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela
🤷🏿♂️Be ngisho nje
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