The nation, or rather a society, might have to thread the needle as its nexus, arguably, of politics and political economy, is threading its big thread into a tiny eye of the moral needle society demands. The lacerations on our constitution and the rule of law require knitting more than just sloganeering and chronic leadership battles of candidates we know nothing of their value proposition to society.
The internal battles for leadership in the governing ANC, and an ascending non-white establishment, have cut the liberation movement character of the ANC from its natural base, 'the people. Barraged by corruption and state capture, denounced by the urban voter, both in alternative voting and apathy terms, and ostracized from the civil society agenda-setting spaces, the ANC is increasingly becoming a rural party starved of cutting-edge ideation its urban support base could have proffered. What is left as the capital accumulated over its anti-colonial struggle continuum is its historical contribution and leadership to the anti-apartheid struggle, which is still fresh in the minds of society.
In the anti-apartheid phase of South Africa's history, the ANC's relationship with South Africans was that of being a leader of society; it was a home of ideas, a civil society conglomerate of note, and a nest out of which a rare breed of leaders was reared. The idea of freedom was more native in the ANC than in many organizations. Twenty-eight years into a franchise won freedom', the tables have decisively turned. Those that were oppressors have for a while boasted a more robust and dynamic 'political freedom' fighter status; they have become 'freedom through litigation' activists out of a Constitution the ANC continues to celebrate as an outcome of its struggle against colonialism and frankly opposition to its leadership has also gained clout. The asymmetry of political clout and socio-cultural power, including interpretation of the freedom we 'have' or 'are managing,' is destined to be more pronounced as the capability of the government as a transformation agency of the state is being eroded by policy choking decisions of an otherwise 'liberal democratic judiciary' and a sophisticated 'cognitive legal elite.' Well-resourced civil society movements, most of whom are converging on their understanding of the rights and obligations of citizens in a 'liberal democratic order, will likely gobble up more of South Africa's electorate's, especially its middle class and urban, understanding of 'freedom and transformation.'
Proxy and undefined concepts like state capture and corruption will become epicenters of ideation when transformation issues are put on the agenda. The moral legitimacy of restitution and the need to recalibrate the templates of economic domination have successfully been put on a filtration process that defines potential beneficiaries within the capsules of corruption and state capture. As the balance of forces in strategic think tanking still reflects demographics in the leading economy, the knowledge consumed by South Africans has to date been consolidating to the status quo, whence even the political school of the liberation movement is stuck in the comfort of regurgitating noble nostalgic historical moments. The predominant civil society activism has taken advantage of the liberation movement's predicament to assert its hegemony over how interests as the currency of politics are reconciled with the idea of freedom according to the liberation movement.
To be elite in South Africa has now gotten to a point where your nomenclature should be about protecting a politically moody rand, 'lady economic justice' that has not worn the proverbial cloth and thus aware of who must get economic justice and how to gentrify those that target the templates of dominance. The unfavorable terms of economic empowerment and the continuation of green contracts in sectors that are the commanding heights of the economy have become what political elites have accepted: to keep 'the economic establishment happy,' they must support their continuity. As the nature of political power assumes the dominant character of the criminality engulfing South Africa, there is a growing fear that a consensus of the corrupt to avoid jail terms might yield a gangster political elite. The oligarchic nature of crime-busting, party political voter buying including by mafioso, the dubious to ill-considered court judgments which point to a consensus about an orientation within the judiciary, as well as the free reign of global criminal syndicates and intelligence operatives, all point to a state that is in crisis and failing the promised objectives of their liberation.
Past leaders of the liberation movement, notwithstanding traces of their contribution to the political mess and the skepticism with which their intentions are treated, have sounded warnings that the costs of open and fierce leadership contests instructed by a pursuit of the public purse will destroy the ANC as the custodian of the liberation ideal. Despite the open bet by South Africa's business community on a Ramaphosa Presidency, the outbreak of sophisticated and less pornographic corruption and state capture has startled the political stability-focused investor community and presented it with a quandary. The investment of capital in the ANC as the ascending political establishment (which started with the Dakar talks of the 1980s, missions to ANC headquarters in Lusaka, secret negotiations with Nelson Mandela by PW Botha and leading members of his Cabinet, and the regional pressure on the ANC's Oliver Tambo to take strategic and moral leadership of the need to negotiate), seems to be under review with some in the economic establishment agreeing that a loose coalition of political parties led by a directly elected President appears to be a solution.
The strategic importance of a legitimate political leadership is in inequality, poverty, and unemployment-riddled democracy like South Africa, one of the most significant investment risks. With the ideological complementarity established between foreign direct investment, a euphemism for a continued extractive economic system, and leadership choices of political economy trajectories, South Africa has become more vulnerable to bought leaders than genuinely elected ones. In this disintegrating political tapestry, the ANC, as one of the surviving institutions that provided leadership to where we are as a society, is threading a needle and managing the pressure of balancing its leadership obligations to an otherwise unequal society and the exigencies of fighting for its electorally determined political survival. While the socio-economic consequences of an ANC-not-as-governing-party South Africa are still speculative, and the growing political courage that the country can do without the ANC is settling in urban South Africa, the strictures of 'political legitimacy' sanctions we have seen in Metropolitan municipalities should sound warnings of what might become of a South Africa led by a majority of minorities in a political coalition that excludes a below threshold majority.
What is left of the ANC to renew itself and the confidence the ideational in society has to rush into a consensus conference in December 2022. The cloning of delegate tags in the 9th Northwest Conference is an act of desperation that can not be ruled out at its 55th Conference and potentially the national elections if the crisis at home affairs is anything to go by. A competitive process to elect the next ANC President might be its most divisive act in recent history after the Zuma-Mbeki contest in Polokwane, which has become the background of near-permanent factions in the ANC. Fortunately for South Africa, these divisions have not taken an open tribal dimension, despite the stirrings. Without sounding like a rafting political prophet, the liberation movement should conclude its business of policy resolutions in December before elections are considered; in fact, there might be a need to restructure the organization before it agrees on who should lead it. The counter across-the-counter sale of branches should be neutralized. Otherwise, the country will have leaders that come into the 2024 electoral process being long 'captured' in the primaries of the governing party. Our democracy might be compromised as the ANC is threading the needle whose eye size is not standardized. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️Avuxeni South Africa, ri khomeni ri nga peli!!!
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