South Africa's liberation movement-dominated politics are entering a new phase, and politicians as practitioners, intellectuals, and voting citizens are pontificating about the future. The end of politics to liberate the people, the occupation of the political center stage by interests-driven politicians, the 'transactional character' of party politics, and the conflicting pulls of interests as the currency of modern-day politics, amongst others, are defining the moral firmament of politics as a human vocation. The scene is set for how politics in South Africa will turn out to be beyond the oncoming ANC elective conference in December 2022.
The source of the new context of
politics, mainly conflictual and self-interest driven, will neither be
according to an ideological orientation nor sheer pragmatic societal
development focus, but rather economic interests and self-aggrandizement. The
great divisions among erstwhile comrades and the dominating source of the
emerging in-liberation movement conflicts will be commercial and crass
materialistic. Factions within the liberation movement have become the most powerful
actors in broader public affairs, which has to date impaired society's judgment
in favor of its predominating and preferred personalities. The core conflicts
of national politics now occur between defenders of a liberal democratic and
substrate cohort of during liberation struggle system leaders and groups of
confused hot-and-cold 'Gucci leftists' who are 'the proverbial cat that catches
the mice,’ yet ideologically deficient. The clash of 'ideology empty' politics
will dominate the ANC-as-a-political party. The fault lines between
personality-defined factions will be the battle lines of the future as
demagoguery replaces the force of reason.
Conflicts between in-ANC factions are
the latest phase in the evolution of socio-economic conflicts in post-apartheid
South Africa. For most of its century-old history, the liberation movement has established
an in-ANC order of fighting for an alternative to systematic and legal
exclusion from determining the economic destiny of South Africa and proffered in
its place a consistent and ideationally institutionalized new order with which
society will, in framework terms, be led. In the process, a liberal democratic
consensus within a constitutional democratic order anchored on the supremacy of
the Constitution, the rule of law, and the independence of the judiciary was
created and institutionalized. The tensions between races over resources were
replaced by tensions between classes contesting for class progression in
templates of economic dominance defined in social and economic relations
context.
During the anti-apartheid struggle
days and its muted denial, how the liberation movement was organized became a
catalyst for its current factions. Amid these challenges, a
larger question looms about how long anti-apartheid rhetoric instructed unity
on the transformation of South Africa and fracturing of all its templates can
be sustained and what might cause it to collapse. The greatest threat to the
post-apartheid restitution and retribution coalition may not be the lack of
progress in ending the heightened arrogance of the economic establishment, as
has been the case up to now, but a comparative dearth or withdrawal in the
ideational prowess of the liberation movement's cognitive elite. This dearth or
withdrawal could allow the economic establishment to lure some in the
liberation movement cognitive elite into pressing the movement to make
concessions, particularly if the debt and interest rate crisis, and the
economy, continues to get worse by default. Paradoxically, by giving in to the
illusion of a stable democratic order based on a constitution, the majority of
the population does not understand or have an affinity with South Africa, and its
cognitive elite could end up prolonging pending civil strife at everyone’s
expense.
To
salvage the nationalist policy-making and implementation deficiencies
occasioned by a transformation nomenclature that castrated the state’s power to
enforce its intentions, there might be a need to go back a few decades and draw
lessons on how to galvanize society around a national ideal. After winning the
1948 elections, also considered an anti-colonial democratic breakthrough by a
resiliently anti-British 'occupation' of the 'Boer Republics,’ the national
governing party showed a remarkable resolve about changing the templates of
economic dominance. The government and the then academic media complex,
generally not known for its speed of delivery, managed to pass a series of templates
establishing legislation that still defined practically all socio-economic
relations and social cohesion within the first ten years, and the apex of this
resolve was the declaration of the Republic of South Africa in 1961. With
precision, the public administration system and the predominate posture of the
bureaucracy as the mind of the state were given a set of legislations to occupy
their imagination of a post-pro-England Union government.
The civil service (operating on the basic principles of public administration, which expects a bureaucracy to implement, as a vocation of life, policies of the governing elite, and facilitating through the system aspirations of the voters as a core substrate of a (troubled) nation South Africa), would have the following legislations as a program of their professional work life, and thus socio-cultural orientation,
‘the Group Areas Act (1950)
forcing people to live in separate areas; the Resettlement of Natives Act
(1954) empowering the then government to remove other ‘publics’ for the
settlement of ‘other publics’ and notably removal of blacks from Sophiatown to
Meadowlands in SOWETO; the Immorality Amendment Act (1950) which prohibited
interracial sex; the Population Registration Act (1950) that enabled race
registers in order to define access and opportunity; the Separation of
Amenities Act (1953) that kept races apart in public areas; the Abolition of
Passes and Co-ordination of Documents Act (1952) designed to control movements
of blacks in the country; the Bantu Education Act (1953) that dealt with skill
development ceilings for non-whites; the Extension of University Education Act
(1959) that enforced university separation; the Bantu Authorities Act (1951)
that established self-government structures in the homelands; the Promotion of
Bantu Self-Government Act (1959) and the Urban Councils Act (1961) that
regulated urban political co-existence, (Wilkins and Strydom 1978: 200)
Observing
how the liberation movement went about undoing the above legislations, a
coterie of fearful policy analysts and transformation practitioners agree that
current rhetoric about undoing the templates of economic dominance will not
deal with the issues. What the rhetoric has effectively done is to raise
expectations of 'freedom' which would not be met by the structural design of
the political economy and the socio-cultural make-up of political elitism as
well as the wholesale class structure of South Africa that has race as its dominant
vector of existence. The previous electoral wins by the liberation movement
only served to upend the narrative that a fight for 'majority rule' is
insufficient to push back against the true power of apartheid colonialism and
non-blackness. There is thus a painful realization, whence a new reformist
posture as an option is foregrounding itself through sophisticated means, that
the notion of targeting the change of what exists and not building new economic
ecosystems could reverse centuries of financial exclusion of Africans does not
hold.
While
the 1994 democratic breakthrough, and its ritualized victory against the dominance
of Africans, have momentarily established a semblance of political freedom, the
pathologies underlying the tough to repurpose political economy are largely
disconnected from the true meaning of having a Freedom Day to celebrate.
Instead, the more significant threat to the idea of freedom has now found
fertile ground from within the liberation movement itself. A toxic convergence
of factional in-fighting, pernicious ideological polarization, growing
state-is-the-economy posture by an otherwise unemployed youth generation, and
the rise of a cocktail of unscrupulous politicians in cahoots with a criminal
underworld ready to exploit the sentiments for civil strife have established a sky
of broken values in society.
As democracy
matures, so does its subversion within its legitimate processes. The South
African liberation movement has one of the most elaborate consultative systems
of policymaking and leadership succession. It boasts party branches in all
municipal wards, regional structures in the 52 districts including metros, nine
provincial facilities, and an 80-member directly elected national executive committee.
Theoretically, it has its fingers on the nation’s pulse; it can communicate
with all its members within a month and generate a national decision when its
systems are at their efficient best. This infrastructure can, however, and in fact has, also be weaponized
against the very democratic nature it has been designed to serve. Emerging
evidence is that membership in the movement is a commodity new traders in
democratic will have been able to buy and sell to the highest bidders. Those who
bid for this will use it to effect policy changes and install their preferred
leaders and puppets.
The power of
these traders in the democratic will has to date, developed into a form of
autocracy in the forensic sense of the word. Organized as a bought conduit for
a hegemon, these accepted branches can seize the political initiative and erode
the idea that all citizens possess inalienable rights and freedoms. These
monied 'autocrats' have mastered the art of entering the democratic space
through the most pronounced national grievances, packaging a program around it,
getting natural votes as a cost-saving mechanism, and trading with
fence-sitting and willing sellers of the democratic will of branches. The political
brokerage system has to date, matured to levels it can now be globalized if
current multilateral bodies are not the international version of it if the
pharma lobby is anything to go by.
The
liberation movement has embarked on one of its ambitious programs, the renewal
of the colossus it has now become in resource contexts. It has set for itself the task of restoring the legitimacy of democracy and society’s confidence in
it as its honest custodians. While this somewhat lofty rhetoric about renewal
is undercut by the political power calculations every time a sub-national
elective conference occurs, there should be large megaphones on the correctness
of renewal. Core to this campaign should be a realization that the failure of
democracy internal to the liberation movement represents a failure in society.
Nurturing a democracy is not necessarily an organic process and is also not
inevitable; it must be contended for at all times. Citizens must be kept in a
state where the democracy they have chosen is a trusted process; any cynicism
about its legitimacy will make that society vulnerable to maverick
dictatorships. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️Yiii! Swi ta tika, mintirho ...
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