Vectors that will define the upcoming national elections will undoubtedly be energy security, a job-creating growing economy, and a functioning criminal justice system. The 2023 SONA will have failed to grasp the true feelings of society and emergencies in South Africa if it does not address what proposals will be in place to stop the growing fragility of the democratic state pragmatically. Society will not be holding its fragile breath for answers from their hope in the human and institutional leadership of President Ramaphosa, organs of state, and the private sector. Murmurs of an economic CODESA euphemistically called the need for a social compact, are striking indicators of a national consensus that the governing centre might not be holding as it should. There is also a view that from 1990 to 1994 (cognitive, political, or otherwise), the elite consensus is disintegrating at best and, at worst, no longer in existence and should be restored.
The
liberation promise in the Constitution is not only in a crisis of legitimacy
but risks being regarded as no longer worthy and working. What is scary is the
proliferation of activist movements, including those organised under one
chauvinism or another, and proffering prescriptions for fixing our problems
that will make 'tribes' thrive at the expense of a 'fragile nation'. These build on the growing inequality, poverty, and unemployment as catalysts
of discontent. The collapse of public infrastructure, electricity supply
insecurity and its multiplier down the livelihood value chain have compounded the
crises.
Except
for wartime experiences we have not gone through as a post-colonial and
post-apartheid society, the pre-1994 political legitimacy-induced conflicts and
their attendant stresses are closest to what we can compare as causes of the
growing hopelessness in society; otherwise, it is more and more apparent that
this is a uniquely post-apartheid matter. This makes the challenge
unprecedented and potentially risking a medium to the long-term crisis. The
absence of an immediate memory of solutions to deal with the crisis, except
lessons from the apartheid state, is reigniting a then martial law mindset, and
the expectations to churn out proclamations and decrees to quell policy
discontents is becoming the new default, instead of thinking. This is now being
considered under the guise of invoking the declaration of a state of national
disaster.
The
known experience of those in charge of the state, notably the leader of the pack,
President Ramaphosa, is his celebrated prowess in building coalitions of
consensus. Out of congruence with the expertise of the executive authority wielding
centre of the state is the country's demand for the prioritisation of action
and delivery. Calls for energy security decisiveness have been made to a centre
that was simultaneously masterminding a climate change consensus which resulted
in the catastrophic decision to abandon base load stability in favour of green
energy consensus obligations. The immediate impact of an otherwise global
citizenship responsible and legitimate decision to detach from fossil-based
energy generation is the delay of the need for industrialisation-based job
creation at the altar of energy instability.
Alternative
voices to the current approach have been found in brave spokespersons and
activists who have been involved, directly or by association, in acts only
found in the heap or bouquet of malfeasance and corruption. The integrity of
messengers has been the most potent tool utilised by the anti-fossil fuel-based
energy generation lobby to thwart any reconsideration of bringing to life
mothballed power stations, notwithstanding these being necessary to keep the
base load as we transition. The legitimate calls to build job-creating economic
growth through controlled and new carbon emissions filtering technologies have
been silenced, if not marginalised, by a dominant and sophisticated alternative
energy narrative which has thus far been blind to coal exports to climate change
accountability monitoring authority hosting continents.
A
slew of ideas and a maze of influence policy and think-tanking institutions are
already attuning knowledge generation legitimacy platforms to see alternatives
to the narrative as a new abhorrence in elite science societies. Ivy league
researchers and institutions, including journals and thus the ideation market,
are activated to churn new breeds of scholars whose preoccupation will justify
the new paradigm. This happened when structural adjustments and legitimisation
of economic modelling were introduced according to the Bretton Woods
Institution's academic media complex's hegemony.
What might be the challenge?
Paraphrasing
Patrick Smith, editor of The Africa Report, "shifts in the political
weather can be harder to interpret than disruptions in demography, technology,
and climate change, but they are just as substantive" it is clear that in
African democracies, more is required to shift the policy ships. The interplay
of political, social, and financial capital is still the dominant firmament to
resolve Africa's development crisis.
Paradoxically,
at a time of a renewed scramble for Africa between the West and China, the unpredictability
of how African leaders plan to leverage each capital type they have is
worrisome. Beyond the leadership deficit challenges are the ruinous state of
African economies and the growing energy insecurity, which might trigger water
insecurity and, ultimately, famine where it is least expected. Even with the
shrunken labour market and a growing public sector-dependent job creation
economy, the high rate of inflation and dollarisation of African economies is a
function of dubious and non-productivity collateralised monetary policies.
Where
a semblance of sanity prevails, and the economy is 'left' to the market to self-regulate,
the market has demonstrated where its loyalties lie regarding investment
decisions. While the ownership of critical institutions necessary to propel
development is gradually changing from government to the private sector, the
new independence of these institutions might be the new problem, African
development speaking. The publicness of the economic commanding heights in a
development state paradigm demanding continent needs to be curated
somehow.
The
South African Constitution guarantees the independence of its adjudication system
through the judiciary and entrenches the Constitution’s rule of law and
supremacy. The State has also been relegated to a facilitator of opportunities.
Political power is highly regulated. The normative power of the Constitution
and the law always prevails when the omnipresent risk of politicians' arbitrary
and prerogative decision-making appetite is challenged. What has not sunk into
the psyche of South African politicians is that the normative power of the
Constitution and the rule of law denominates the political power they get
through electoral mandates.
The
target of South Africa's Constitution drafters was neutralising the insatiable
appetite for arbitrary political power, the need to dominate the state and
society altogether, and the propensity to want to be at the centre of economic
activity. With South Africa emerging from a rule-by-law past where the
supremacy of parliament determined the cadence of politics, its state-supporting
systems might be undergoing unattended stress of adapting to the new
dispensation. There has been a noticeable rise of rhetoric by politicians to
fault the Constitution and Constitutional Court decisions for the government
impacting woes they are unable to rationalise as them not having lived up to
the expectations of a rule of law environment.
With
governing party politicians having put themselves at the centre of everything,
it has positioned itself to be faulted for the country's ills, despite its
efforts to blame the past, including a past they governed. Worryingly those
that wield the bulk of the executive authority in the state have been
surrounding themselves with contexts that reinforce the incorrect belief in the
supremacy of a parliamentary majority. There is a general aversion to wanting
to hear that the extent to which a parliamentary majority can effect a genuine
transformation of society depends on how Constitutional such transformation
programs are. In such contexts, those who wrote and set precedents in and of
the law will always have the interpretive power to yield to or stop what the
majority had agreed makes sense. It requires, therefore, a differently nuanced skill
set to do politics in South Africa's Constitutional democracy. A casual look at
what goes into the induction and orientation of leadership in the governing
party and training programs at government schools, there are few spaces
where this fundamental change needs attention.
Unless
this aspect is considered a real risk to the democratic order, the judiciary
will soon be a target of capture if it is not already captured. In democracies
where parliament is supreme, the prosecution authority or office of the
attorney general is the target of capture. The model works well when the entire
criminal justice system is in the deal. Where the judicial authority of a
country vests in the courts or judiciary, and the rule of law prevails, the
cognitive legal community or elite have the ultimate power in the adjudication
of any conflict of interests. If interests are the currency of politics and are
a condition of diversity and opinion, then the power of an independent
judiciary is the highest level of sophisticated politics. There lies the challenge
of our crises.
In this context, the mooted declaration of a state of national disaster should be seen. In that context, the rule of law in the declared area will have some statutes suspended, and arbitrary decisions within the normative dictates of disaster management will be taken. In addition to removing the threat of opposing certain policy decisions, the state of national disaster starts off the restructuring of the electricity supply industry with two advantages: the government will entirely control the state and its resources regarding industry restructuring objectives, which it can deploy at will to support whatever interests that are thwarted, and the government will completely dominate the public space, there will be more 'family meetings' on ESKOM than parliamentary debates. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️Just thinking ... I lost track
🤷🏿♂️What was I saying?
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