Undoubtedly, South Africa is on almost autopilot mode when it comes to how society is being led. It has one of the most liberal Constitutions, where every human act survives the wrath of state law enforcement agencies if it can be able to be argued as a human right. The bare-knuckle politics of fighting for the control of the distributive prowess of being in government have attracted all breeds of leaders into the vocation of politics, and it would seem the gangster breed is becoming hegemonic. In their design of the current Constitution of South Africa, its founding thinkers positioned the judiciary to be an independent arm of the state. This arrangement established the judicial platform if it does not get corrupted, as one with which the civility of how as a society we contest for predominance over others through the use of the law, a core substrate of the rule of law as one of the values undergirding our society.
The transformation of society, the building of a National Democratic Society, and the establishment of a National Democratic Order has for a while presented themselves as an idealistic crusade by South Africans. Emerging from a past that subjugated a people into a position where they can be easily predated by anyone possessing the worst of human traits at levels apartheid was, the meekness of South Africans would always be vulnerable to a dictatorship, benevolent or otherwise. As the moral truth of a human rights-based dispensation gains ground, so does the sophistication of tyrants adapt to operate within the very system to pursue an agenda of defending past gains of human subjugation with the tacit collusion of the judicial system. In the absence of a national plan to redefine South Africa as a democracy with a purpose beyond being a consumer of what other nations dump on its doorstep, the rights context got flummoxed.
The capacity of interests to organise themselves within the human rights parameters the Constitution has set is as powerful as the capacity of individuals to cohere as a political unit to enter the state apparatuses as the governing party. Being in a political party is fast becoming the weakest of sophisticated ways to accumulate the most interests as currency to determine the cadence of South Africa's politics. Membership, therefore, to the cognitive elite levels of society is better accessible through how you aggregate your interests away from the party political realm, and into the civil society space, which has to date attracted the most influential resourcing.
The levels of human development in a society are a function of its civility. The more poor people you have in a society the more coercion you need to impose civility. The better the living standards of society the more likely will it utilise its civil instruments to enforce its rights accorded by law. However, as Snyder argues "democracy based on individual rights has been by far the most successful form of modern social organization not because of its selfless moralism but because it has usually been far better than the alternatives at serving people’s interests". It is also a fact that "the expansion of literacy and commerce gives educated, industrious subjects greater leverage against their rulers and invariably underpins the development of constitutional rule". With the varying levels of human development in South Africa, the option to utilise this leverage is more a political economy outcome issue than a mere right.
In South Africa, the constitutional arrangement of its democracy has built a powerful core constituency for a rights-based system. This system has to date made it possible for resource-endowed social movements to use it to consolidate historically accumulated rights, some through violent subjugation of others, rather than extend them to the excluded groups. Notwithstanding that 'the excluded' is both a past and present reality, in that as a past it structurally, including by law, marginalised the majority of South Africans, and as a present, the natural majority of those excluded in the past create a possibility for the exclusion of the present minorities, especially if restitution becomes a background of permanence in all matters policy. The past successes of the poor to have their 'grievances' recorded "depended above all on mobilizing and sustaining mass social movements based on broad moral principles that gained the sympathy of powerful majorities in their own societies". This resource which the poor had, has been shifting hands since the dawn of South Africa's democracy. It has gained traction, support, and resources in favour of status quo maintenance than transformation, with the government, left with the burden of sometimes being 'activist' against its own 'constitutional' policies based on a sovereign human right defending democratic firmament.
This has now become high-stakes politics. Disturbing though, is that those in charge of government do not seem to understand the depth of the ideological warfare they are presiding upon, and if they are, there is either gross incompetence to respond or collusion to keep the status quo. This has undoubtedly created frustration and discontent. Those with access to state power start to believe in the might of wealth as power and invariably involve themselves in acts of corruption and state capture. Those that cannot have started seeing the state as the economy, and have ganged up to take it over and repurpose it away from its developmental objectives.
In fact, the economic depression that South Africa finds itself in has started to spawn new breeds of radical leadership. Individual citizens are starting to see political power as a tool to serve themselves, rather than a means to serve the public weal. The entrenchment of this political settlement in society is one of the greatest risks to the civility our political system assumed. As despair settles amongst the majority, passion for an ideal future will replace reason, and everyone might be ready to get into a mode of smashing everything in the hope that a better world might magically emerge out of the ruins.
Unlike in 'democracies' where the barrel of a gun is the currency for a political settlement, in South Africa, the currency has become 'lawfare' or legal, battles, and the courts have become political battlegrounds, to levels where the judiciary presides closest to being the executive. However, this emerging in-court subversion of the will of the majority, and legitimately so because the democratic system allows it, has now given birth to a dangerous cohort of activism which is gradually introducing violence as the language and currency of political dispute resolution. Mavericks are becoming heroes and somewhat political Robin Hoods, given their rhetoric's appeal to the poor. Within political movements, the acuteness of factions, notwithstanding their existence in almost all political parties in the world, has grown to assume characteristics of armed rebel movements found in democracies that give little to no space to freedoms of assembly, association, speech, and the like. What has to date been assaulted by these rebels, instead of humans as in other parts of the world, is investor confidence and by extension the capacity of the economy to grow commensurate with the population.
The proliferation, therefore, of violence, including assassinations of politicians by the governing party activists, as well as the maiming of civilians, is a manifestation of civil discontent, even if the democracy has mechanisms to absorb the nature of the discontent. The crass materialist posture of the political and generally all elites has sent a message that public power is not about serving society but more a self-aggrandisement vocation, if not enterprise. The civil strife that has begun in South Africa will, in such conditions, start searching for a leader, as those that lead are not hearing the interior of the strife. The risk of this search for a leader as we are now observing is that anarchy may have to precede the emergence of such a leader. As chaos grows, the real leaders might rise, unless incumbents show their worth to can stem the tide. Active citizenry is in such contexts going to be a costly affair.
The opprobrium flying in South Africa's ideation space, with an idealist youth that has abrogated itself a theory malnourished generational mission of economic freedom in our lifetime, are lying in wait for a maverick to come by and galvanise them into a movement. Whilst the grievances are presented as racial, there is emerging evidence that the non-racial character of poverty and economic exclusion is fast creating spaces of commonality for the poor blacks and highly indebted whites. The construct of an economy dependent on black cheap labour has been liquidated by the non-racial character of the New Democratic Order thus limiting the advantage of whiteness, including how they join the unemployed brigades. The facade is dissipating, and a new economic depression non-racial nationalist movement is about to be birthed if the rising youth leadership in the ANC are not its stirrings.
Signs of discontent in society have even raised the 'proverbial tails' of 'old dogs' in the leadership complex of South Africa. The growth in stature and interaction with business leaders of South Africa, as well as the structures being established at the Thabo Mbeki Leadership Institute, Foundation, and complex, is fast creating a new centre of power that only requires sufficient political capital to be an alternative. In its current form, it is arguably a civil society space, yet constituted of past political players and strategists. For the country's sake, we would rather have a leadership of the discontent being driven from such centres. As chaos breeds survivalist leaders, generally populist in character and genuinely concerned in form, a 'Nhlanhla Lux type of leader', and funded by a predatory underworld, or hegemonic orientation not interested in the future of our democracy, is a reality we should expect. Suppose a former President is able to go on a public podium of the governing party and pronounce on non-delivery on promises, and on a matter his complex of supporting organisations is arguably ready to engage, building a social compact. In that case, it follows then that social partners might be represented in his critique. CUT!!!!
🤷🏿♂️Have a good weekend
🤷🏿♂️Swi ha ta vuya la tikweni.
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