When the 2021 Municipal Elections were finally announced, a new truth about South African politics started to paint itself as a new canvas to contend with. To some, it was a shock and frustration, to others a triumph of the sovereignty of the individual in all matters South African politics. To democrats, it was a manifestation of the true essence of people's power as expressed through the medium of a free and fair ballot. To the investor community, it was a manifestation of yet another milestone in the capacity of South Africa's democracy to withstand the disruptive implications of political power transfer as directed by voter preferences.
Out of the frustration we saw President Mbeki declaring that South Africa cannot afford not to have the ANC at the center of its politics, he went on declare that the ANC was too big to collapse, as a party, and I guess also as a governing party. The questions to be asked are, is Mbeki correct, what if the exit of the ANC is what society awaits, and what if the opposition complex rises up to the occasion? Out of concern for the implications to non-racialism in South Africa, the DA, which has unfortunately shed most of its colored and African votes, took to the Fukuyama 'identity votes' nomenclature and declared it does not engage in identity politics. Rebecca Davis sums up the fragility of non-racialism by submitting that the DA's 'identity politics' posture is in essence an admission that 'it is not making any special appeal to voters of color', and yet embracing of identity politics when it comes to Afrikaners.
When the African National Congress entered into an accord with the then governing National Party to engineer a political settlement through Constitutional Negotiations, it did so with expectations of a process that would provide a democratic breakthrough with which its liberation objects could be further advanced. Legitimately, the ANC occupied a high moral ground, which was its most visible political capital to bargain with against a regime reduced to a political skunk of the world, notably its branded reputation as having presided over a system declared a crime against humanity. What the ANC may have not factored in its beyond CODESA strategy is how to sustain its moral high ground over apartheid and racism, both of which defined a version of whiteness whites abhorred its institutional application in South Africa, and yet embraced its filtered versions in global domination terms. The assumption that the demise of apartheid, which carried with it aspects of whiteness rejected by humanity in its non-racial character, would not procure for a context where the burden of historical injustice is replaced by a social ill with which blame for past injustices could be shared with, was a strategic mistake whose cost might be the ultimate liquidation of historical grievances as the basis for restitution unless corruption is resolved as a post-apartheid diversion. In fact, the loss of the ANC in the November 2021 election is attributable to its self-liquidation of the moral high ground it had, with voter apathy as the highest manifestation of voter disgruntlement that could not translate to voter migration to new parties, save for the new youth entrant voter.
What the opposition complex garnered as voter support in the November 2021 Municipal Elections, changed the course of South Africa's politics, and maybe forever. It might have saved what a Ramaphosa Presidency represents from what was clearly a snowballing and galvanized defeat by the force of 'radical economic transformation' as an inside proxy of the expelled 'economic freedom in our lifetime' call by a generation of ANC youth leaguers that defined a generational mission for African youth. The translation of the mission into a program whose intent remains that of fracturing the templates of economic dominance as manifest in the ownership patterns of the economy. The ascendance of the opposition complex, with their anything but not the ANC unifying glue, is not an ideological consensus about South Africa, but an 'away from the ANC' coalition of convenience whose intents are to some vengeful, to others economic status quo protecting, and to the DA a liberal order building path.
Appealing about the liberal order building path is the promise of the cardinal freedoms of speech, assembly, conscience, association, and press. Further to these are the guarantee of individual human rights outside the utility of justice, the supremacy of the constitution, an independent judiciary, and the rule of law without interrogating the basis of the very law. The liberal order also advocates an equal opportunity open society, albeit not guaranteeing the equity of outcomes. It is the innocence of these promises that create grey areas between the liberal order and social democratic order which requires the invoking of state intervention to tilt scales where social guarantees become fragile when faced with the human pursuit of profit and benefit. This aspect of the liberal order can be spun with any social ill to justify why its limitations are not of its creation. What a liberal order achieves quicker is the creation or establishment of particular modes of government and policymaking, which work on the basis of inculcating certain patterns of mentality in a broader population such that it is possible for the ends of the establishment to be attained with decreasing levels of direct intervention and with a greater reliance on self-government or self-regulation. An omnipresent condition that has over time sucked towards the right of the center most ANC thinkers commensurate with their ascendance into the economic establishment of South Africa.
If the opposition complex gains full and stable control of the major economic nodal points represented by the Metropolitan Municipalities the ANC has lost political control over, a new political era would have begun in South Africa. The template of coal face of delivery politics will henceforth define ideation based on household lived experience of government as in opening the tap, switching on the light, cleanliness of the streetscape, and many other bread and butter issues. Liberation movement leaders would thus face the dual challenge of reimagining its transformation objects without alienating those that have problematized transformation into a proxy of corruption. All sides in the contest for political control of South Africa would have to consider the potential of all-out civil strife occasioned by a choked-in 'political adversarial relations' development potential of South Africa when dealing with each other. The responsibilities of leadership in robustly defending the continuity of the state as an institution with which societal change could be effected, and prudently avoiding conflicts and tensions with a heavily invested right-wing economic thinking, and progressively non-racial, investor community, will not necessarily be compatible. The governing African National Congress could find itself being unprepared for the task of providing leadership to society outside the narrow sectarian interests represented by an overwhelmingly funded opposition complex.
For the opposition complex, a victory against the ANC could take various forms. Like we have seen after 2016, they may install 'delay transformation' compliant governing coalitions, and not care what that does to the health of the democracy for as long as its health represents the demise of coloniality as a condition of governmentality in South Africa. A closer look at electoral support trends since 1994 indicates that the number of people not voting in a national election has been increasing. In fact, the combined total of persons who voted for all political parties is now below that of those that abstained. This condition, albeit not uncommon in elections-based democracies, creates a majority of a minority that voted to get access to public power they would exercise even on behalf of a majority that is onlooking and disinterested or derives no value in being involved. The risk though, as the November 2021 Municipal Elections outcomes have shown, is that a coalition of minority parties can create a majority of minorities who might take control of the active agency of the state, government.
In a grievances-infested society like South Africa, the dislodgement of the ANC as the governing party will create a new government that might have to carry the blame for deferred dreams of liberation by an otherwise truncated revolution. As we are witnessing in Metropolitan Municipalities in the hands of the opposition complex, the service delivery protest incidents have spiked, and the protest industry will soon be on a growth path. Whilst this might be an unfolding scenario, there is no conclusive evidence that a change of governing party status in South Africa is not what society is waiting for. The reputation battering of the ANC and most of its post-Mbeki leadership should not be airbrushed to argue that society cannot continue supporting a non-ANC establishment in charge. What humanity expects from a state will ultimately be what determines its contract with citizens. History might be a factor to the extent that its narration has a relationship with the services that people get.
🤷🏿♂️A ndzo tivulavulela
🤷🏿♂️Tiki rhi le ku fambeni!!!
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