South Africa is going through a difficult period of redefining itself as a democracy beyond the rhetorics of its past conflicts and tensions. Almost thirty-five years since the Mandela-De Klerk Accord, whose processing went through the robust test of the CODESA negotiations and ultimately chronicled as the 1996 Constitution of South Africa. The country is yet to find congruence with the nation-building pulse chiseled into its constitutional democracy. The various convergences of purpose by its diverse people around day-to-day challenges that society faces are creating social cohesion away from the preferred rhetoric of some within its political elites. The discontent of communities, propelled by the chronic failures in service delivery consistency, is a reality that has in recent history emerged as an arc that bends society's trust in government away from the delusions of liberation grandeur.
The struggle against the inhumanity, which the apartheid state dispensed on the majority of South Africans, both as perpetrators and victims, has left scars only a common purpose about the future of this country and all its people can heal. While it is accepted that the nature of post-conflict politics is anchored on the restitutive character of ascending policies and leadership as a hegemon, historical evidence is that this does not last and is often outlived by exigencies of humaneness. Victors in such conflicts, including those that live a life of believing they are victors, tend to operate in ways that establish a firmament that advocates that their hegemon will endure forever. Reality has unfortunately dictated to generations of humanity that no matter how stable or legitimate a hegemon is, it rises, falls, and competes with the interests of society until it strikes an equilibrium point with a collaborating generation cohort to the extent that subsequent ones allow.
As December 2022 will be kickstarting the election season for South Africa with the ultimate primary of the largest political party expected to decide on policies, most of which the opposition parties would plan around to draft their manifestos, the governing party cannot escape its status as the omnipotent nexus of South African politics. Its politics and policies, including the leadership it agrees on, will drive interests and coalitions within the party in as much as it will decide the concomitant capacities rival and opposition parties will present as alternatives. The rhythm and momentum of politics, and for the period after policy pronouncements of the governing party have been adopted by its highest decision-making organs, will find a cadence in the pace at which such response to the day-to-day challenges of society. This means mid-course changes or corrections to South Africa's development path will be inextricably linked to the ideational failure or success of those at concentration camps of leadership at whatever level of their affiliated organization as members.
Just as society has been allowing the governing party to use its borrowed public power to define the destiny of South Africa, culture has in the recent past demonstrated its capacity to borrow other parties the same public power when it senses abuse by those it had last borrowed. The structure of the South African Constitution is such that voter choices can be calibrated to create jurisdictional political autonomies that will enforce cooperation of rivals for society's sake or face gradual liquidation of whatever legitimacy they may have or had earned. With the borrowed power it had, the liberation movement governing coalition/party operated in a manner that did not factor in resilience to withstand the dangers of believing in the permanence of borrowed power. In this context, there were little to no preparations to co-exist with rivalries for service delivery's sake. In fact, eventually, and somewhat inevitably, it has been the conduct associated with the sins of incumbency which seem to have foregrounded the possibility of a South Africa without current political configurations in governing party terms.
The obligations of the country's constitution were, for the most time managed as though policies of the governing liberation movement were the context of all contexts in South Africa. The logic, as it ran then, was that the liberation promise to South Africans was proprietary to the liberation movement, and thus no other party or coalition could deliver it other than them. Society was left in an untenable position of knowing who has the history of fighting for what is suitable for it and yet knowing some can deliver what is suitable for a society better than those who know. The result of this challenge was that society invited those who seemed to know how to deliver on their doorstep (local government) and left the abstract aspects of delivery to those who knew what is legitimately good for South Africa.
Brute truth is that where such has occurred, there seems to have been interesting doctrinal shifts in how society is treated, including communication when delivery challenges are experienced. A risk associated with these shifts is a growing display of lack of depth in what is good for society by the ascending cohort of liberation movement leaders that have clearly displayed a passion to only elect persons into positions without determining why they elect them. With its illustrious heritage of democratic consultation and policy development, the balance of ideational power which underpinned the liberation movement during its struggle years is imbalanced and progressively giving in to the emerging ideational power of civil society organizations, and ignored policy think tanks loyal to it.
As capacities required by the demands of a profoundly liberal, sovereign individual rights intensive, federal in character, and beyond legacies of apartheid constitutional democracy wane within the ascending leadership of the liberation movement, corresponding faltering wills to continue supporting the liberation ideals are replaced by ambitions of self to capture and abuse state resources to feed the ambitions. This process has reached a stage where the character of the liberation movement has to expire, before it collapses, and calibrate a character that accommodates individual ambition to lead it with objectives of those standing being interrogated independently of that of the party. This will be the most visible recognition that the secretive and underground machinations associated with liberation movements do not have space in an open society promoting the democracy that our Constitution espouses. Acceptance of this inevitability by those that are in the 'establishment' will send a message that the old ways of politicking are never coming back, and the creeping in stalwart(ism) and veteran(isation) should not be allowed to resurrect it.
In the meanwhile, as these fissures of conduct occurred, civil society movements as drivers of the inside-the-Constitution liberation promise started to grow in influence. The concentration of legal legitimacy started to shift away from the governing party as a hegemon. The sovereignty of the individual, which the Constitution and lady justice only sees, became the major beneficiary of the liberation promise, as the focus on 'the collective' by the governing party created institutional set-ups that bureaucratized freedom away from beneficiaries that saw themselves as a collective. The defense of privilege and gains from the apartheid (oppression) era, and via the sovereign individual rights conduit, could be recalibrated into instantaneous and merit-based demands a constitutional democracy cannot deny its citizens. As these merits and the legality of their existence are defended, precedence, a core plank of our jurisprudence, is both created and established for general applicability even in morally indefensible claims of legal correctness. As these contradictions within the liberation promise capsule prescribed for a social cohesion sick society like South Africa ensue, those excluded from asserting their perspective of sovereign liberation as a collective experience are boiling up to near explosive proportions, as we observed in July 2021.
As the frustration about having to operate within the less envisaged rule of law during the struggle grows, public service delivery dysfunction has also taken root. As though that was not enough, corruption and its adjunct state capture grew into a monster very few had envisaged. As the corrupt amongst the governing party elite gorged themselves at the trough, they overlooked the impact it had on the reputation of the liberation movement as a facilitator of the liberation promise for individuals inside the sovereign collective. Interesting peripheries consisting of the newly marginalized within a liberation promise capsule started new breeds of leadership most of which bordered on demagoguery with an impenitent vengeance.
Thereat lies the leadership challenge. The wreckage that we see emerging out of the convulsions of factionalism and veiled tribalism, might give birth to a new leadership order. As nostalgia about the leadership of past icons, whose contexts required secrecy and tightened democratic centralism gives way to leadership whose scrutiny goes beyond a coterie of agreeing comrades, its irreversible demise should not attract from elders and stalwarts loud voices of interpreting it as inevitable chaos and calamity for the movement. Instead, there should be efforts to manage the inevitable disruptions that come with any generational change to avert the catastrophe of demise, but rather accept the pains of metamorphosis. The concerts of civil society movements that supported the essence of liberation could in fact be better convened by veterans and stalwarts in support of the liberation ideal for South Africa's sake. In doing this, stalwarts can teach South Africa that in the anti-apartheid concert, there was no complete agreement amongst those involved on the envisaged end state of the struggle, but the concert worked because each organization, and dare I say every person, had their own reasons for supporting the overall objectives of the movement. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️A ndzo titsalela, la va nga twa, va twili
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