Can we still talk of a Revolution

      The idea of liberation in South Africa has entered its consequential crisis. Until recently, a conviction of the liberation movement reared cohort of South African politicians has been confined to the rhetoric of seeing anything and anyone wielding institutional power as an enemy of 'the revolution'. That the liberation ideal is in crisis was confined to those its success threatened gains accumulated during the (apartheid) oppression era. This realisation has however started to gain traction among loyalists of the liberation movement itself. Society, communities, civil society bodies, iconic individuals, anti-apartheid struggle stalwarts, and ordinary people have increasingly realised that the reigning concept of liberation is reaching the limit of its appeal. 

Constructed as a creed built on faith in --sloganeering, sustenance of the ritual of still conducting some revolution whilst in full control of state power, problematising the correctness of the legal system which protects sovereign individual rights, relating with reported facts as media conspiracy to discredit an ascending elite, and defence of mediocrity/corruption by seeing it as an attack ---.what this liberation ideal represents has assumed interpretations that threaten the correctness of the struggle to be where we are. The crisis has been long in the making. What has brought the crisis into sharp focus includes runaway corruption and state capture as chronicled in the Zondo Commission Report, the dismal service delivery failures in local government reported by the auditor general, a collapsing public infrastructure as manifest in the disintegration of state-owned entities,  the energy and by extension water insecurity caused by the grid collapse at ESKOM, and sheer failure of leadership to reverse the tide and inspire hope.

Government has progressively gotten itself to a position where it can no longer claim that it is about the people who voted it, without one push back or another by citizens. The dashboard of development calls for a new relationship with facts and how decisions should be about dealing with messages from the dashboard.

As of the 2022 first quarter, the unemployment rate was reported to be at an official rate of 32%, with 42% for persons in the 25-32 age cohort.  StatsSA reports that gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 1,9% in the first quarter of 2022, representing a second consecutive quarter of upward growth, juxtaposed to an official population growth rate of 1,3% and excluding the uncontrolled influx of more than 150k undocumented foreign nationals per annum, the country is tittering towards a crisis state mode. The teacher-learner ratio as an indicator of investment in the future has stubbornly been getting worse with public schools reporting 1:60, and private schools increasing to out of the norm 1:30. 

Defenders of the liberation rhetoric have for a while been choking the agenda of the powerful not to respond to evidence-based planning. They have, and correctly so, been arguing that in the midst of unemployment and poverty, the welfarist policies of government have been cushioning those that could be rescued out of the wrath of poverty. The social grant package that the state is giving to the poor remains one of the most elaborate in the world when you add on top of social grants, free education, free health care, free water, free electricity, provision of low cost housing, and subsidised public transport. 

However this defence does not seem to acknowledge the role that the institutions of leadership inherent in the state as a continuum since its formalisation in 1910. It was the inherited public administration system which made it possible for the freeness to happen, it was the very system that held together with the institutions which defined the successes of the liberation ideal. 

       The idea of liberation has as a consequence been interpreted to include a free ride in the economy, from cradle to grave. The notion of encouraging society into self-reliance and getting involved in primary industries has been choked by a lack of incentives to break out of the circle. As the confidence of society, especially those liberation has altered their victim status of being excluded from the political economy, about being free increases, new establishments start to threaten existing ones. The consequence of this has thus far been the 'liberated' merely trying to co-exist with 'beneficiaries of the erstwhile oppressive system' rather than fundamentally overhaul if not fracture templates of economic dominance.

In fact, the ambiguity of the ascending political elites about the transformation or continuum of a revolution they are supposedly still pursuing has at best been about avoiding provoking unfavourable responses of 'the market' to their otherwise legitimate economic transformation policies. Instead of pursuing a developmental state agenda that locates government as the propeller of infrastructure investment to support private sector investment, there has been more of a refrain to stir the comfort of the 'economic establishment'. 

To date, the liberation promise has been succeeding by not provoking green economic arrangements and contracts in the mainstream economy, and continuously increasing the social grant system which created a fictitious growth etched on shopping mall investments that have created a consumption driven economy. Yet there are limits to how an economy and socio-economic change can be sustained by a social grant-based revenue without directly increasing the tax-paying base of the state. 

Economic history has shown that if an economy grows at rates lower than its population growth, the available gross domestic product base will start to shrink the per capita income no welfarist intervention can magically convert into sustainability. Government will, ultimately and unfortunately so, become the economy, a condition whose currency will be interests that respect no ethics. 

This does not mean that the situation is hopeless, but it calls for a liberation protecting order to be deliberate in bucking the established trend. If indeed there is still a revolution to pursue or conduct, the ascending establishment or order, would have to come up with;

1. A thesis of development customised to the needs of South Africa
2. A thesis of a post-apartheid, and not anti-apartheid state
3. A thesis of energy, water, logistics, and food sovereignty 
4. A thesis of self-determination in respect of how sovereign the state and its individuals are, and
5. A thesis of value systems within which social cohesion could be attained 

The dictionary meaning of a thesis is "a statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved. In fact, a thesis is a reasoned argument for a particular strategic path a society might choose. It is often backed up by research and analysis. Its pole standard is accepted to be when it can display capability to be taken from an abstract concept to a recommendation for action. In short, it is both a playbook and a game plan.

The still-in-a-revolution constituency of South Africa, with its profound influence on politics and the political economy, is due for its policy review, and leadership renewal process. By December 2022 the country will receive a report on the outcome of its policy and leadership review and renewal process, a report on which contestations for the 2024 National Political mandate to govern South Africa might be based. It follows therefore that the theses alluded herein above should in the main have as an ideational epicentre, and not context, what the still in a revolution constituency proffers as a value proposition. 

A casual journey into what is on the table for discussion at the upcoming policy conference lands South Africans on the following high-level strategic paths under consideration;

1. There seems to be a doctrinal shift from referring to a National Democratic Revolution, and a new concept of National Democratic Order is being introduced. This, if it is a shift, rearranges the entire edifice of ideation in the liberation movement complex, and might be redefining how economic power relations will henceforth unravel. 
2. There seems to be another doctrinal shift emerging on how the State views its relationship with State Owned Entities as the commanding heights of the developmental state model undergirding the entire policy discourse if all other documents are integrated into a thematic thrust. The commitment to unbundle what is now referred to as network industries with a view to unlock state monopolies, and create space for independent (power, water, and logistics) producers and players to introduce the market mechanism into these industries, is the flagpole of this doctrinal shift. Salient in this shift is an unapologetic privatisation policy path that will result in the sale of state-owned entities and infrastructure assets on their otherwise difficult-to-audit balance sheet. 
3. There is a confirmation of a policy trajectory to reduce the size of government in the day to day livelihoods of South African, notwithstanding its contradictory developmental state ambitions. The service provider-regulator-policy maker triangle where government facilitates policy, appoints a regulator or compliance authority, and leaves the delivery of the service to a matrix of providers is what is also emerging as another doctrinal consolidation.  The essence of the National Health Insurance Fund and similar policy instruments in other traditionally government-provided services is disengagement of the state, save for policy making, quality assurance, and ombud services. 
4. There is a further doctrine of non-alignment in the geopolitical contestations obtained in the international relations spheres to protect the capacity of the South African financial services industry from being a victim of SWIFT battles frustrating international trade in the aftermath of the overuse of sanctions to police the world by the west. A non-alignment posture in international relations positions South Africa as the go-to SWIFT authority for the Global South and Africa in particular. 
5. With a deliberate posture to embrace a market fundamentalist doctrine in the reorganisation of the economy, a mandate-drift on the role of the public service is an inevitability all policy ideation on professionalising the public cannot ignore. The redefinition of service delivery functionaries in the public education, health, police, corrections, and national defence as operating capital and not overheads to the public service system should tag along with emerging doctrinal shifts

The above five doctrinal shifts, if triangulated with policy documents, will result in either a new revolution or multiplying variables as exponents to bring all emerging policy discourses into line with the exigency of reversing the precipice towards a crisis-cum-failed state. The question is thus, CAN WE STILL TALK OF A REVOLUTION. CUT!!!

🤷🏿‍♂️A ndzina nhlamulo 

👆🏿Ndzo tihleketela shem bakithi