Between 1985 and 1989, South Africa was dealing with the reality of having to enter into a political settlement between the governing National Party and the ANC as the then undisputed leader of the global anti-apartheid alliance anchored on the continuous delegitimisation of the State as the trusted custodian of a better and secure future of South Africa.
At
that time, the South African economy suffered one of its worst legitimacy
crises with the investor community. There was a growing belief in the desirability
of engaging with the ANC as heir apparent or potential successor in law of the state's
legislative, judicial, and executive authority. The white middle class was
feeling the pinch of global isolation and increased insecurity at the prospect
of some form of insurrection by the ANC and its then elaborate underground
structures.
The
state was in a legitimacy crisis. The Nelson Mandela enigma was being
foregrounded as reports of secret talks between him, and the National Party
started to be leaked. The buoyancy with which Oliver Tambo was masterminding
the conditions for negotiations indicated stirrings of a possible consensus
emerging between the two nationalist movements. The country was galvanised into
a psyche of a possible negotiated settlement. The ANC prepared its constituency
through discussions of its Constitutional Principles and mass action demanding
minimum conditions to negotiate. The National Party took along the white
constituency through a series of processes, including the Kwa Zulu Natal Indaba
with the IFP, calls for a referendum, and engagement with the Africa Eminent
Persons Group.
These
activities were happening in the context of intense internal leadership
tensions within the governing National Party. The contest included a race to
deliver the historic settlement while ensuring the retention of accumulated
privilege and social status of the then National Party constituency. At stake was the
surrender of political power without losing economic power. Economic power was
to the South African non-black think tanking community the software whose algorithms
would be essential to regulate political power as the hardware which lacked
societal legitimacy for the established political order to prevail into
posterity. Fast track to 1996, PW Botha was taken out, FW de Klerk stepped in,
negotiation had happened, compromises were made, Constitutional Principles were
agreed upon as the basis with which the Constitutional Court would certify the
Constituent Assembly drafted Constitution, and the Constitution was adopted and
certified to be in accordance to the political order envisaged by the set
constitutional principles. A (political) social compact was consummated.
Almost
thirty years since the reigning (political) social compact was struck, there are
emerging fissures in the social cohesiveness of the then settlement. The
inequality gap, poverty, and unemployment are growing to unmanageable levels.
The demography of these triple challenges undermines the political accord
between 1990 and 1996. This makes the emerging democratic order vulnerable to worse
reactions than the July 2021 'insurrection-labelled' reaction to the contempt
of the court-induced arrest of former President Jacob Zuma. Whilst what was at
issue between 1985 and 1989 was the enfranchisation of all South Africans, thus
democratically releasing political power to a legitimate majority, the current
issues at stake are etched in the recalibration of templates of economic
domination and thus guaranteeing economic freedom for all. Given the
oligopolistic character of the economy and the churning of oligarchs as an
outcome of the inequality-breeding political system, the concretising political
order seems to need more time to be ready to engage on an economic CODESA when
they are not sure of its end. However, the endgame is a function of a consensus
of the right within a mistaken to be left only governing ANC.
Arguably, NASREC 1.0 was about preparing a platform for the internal-to-the-ANC right to consolidate all levers of political power. If there ever was a genuine left inside the ANC, it is has either disintegrated or receded into an unrecognisable background. Except for its tripartite alliance obligations, leftist thinking in the ANC has been progressing towards a leftist nomenclature packaged right. COSATU grew more as a 'mind-of-the-state membership' federation as it lost most of its 'coal face' unions in the economy. COSATU's public sector numbers indicate that it relies on those that calibrate policies it opposes outside its dominant 'shop floors'. Operatives of the executive authority of the state, and thus the mind of the state, have the largest vote in COSATU. On the other hand, the SACP has been undergoing an unprecedented existential crisis of transitioning from a socialist alternative vanguard, as previously led by the USSR to a State Capitalism type of socialism modelled by China.
The crisis of the left is that the collapse of the Soviet Union continues to be seen as the collapse of communism. The conventional interpretation is that capitalism won, which is hyped to mean that unbridled capitalism is unequivocally the better option. The silence of the in-ANC-left at how the ascending right is allowing the private sectors to seize too much power and leaving public sectors marginalised and maligned indicates the developmental state dream is waning. In economic thinking terms there has been unprecedented doctrinal shifts in the ANC, it has now become a interventionist state to the extent that it neutralises the state to be in control of the commanding heights of the economy. Only the plural sector can tie society together to create a modest constraint on the profit-driven excesses of what is in ascendance. The plural society institutions might be new terrains within which the developmental state paradigm could find a platform for it to be expressed as a better pathway to deal with the triple challenges of poverty, inequality, and unemployment.
With the clinical repudiation of the RET orientation within the ANC, its lead proponents being associated with 'the Zondo Commission version of corruption and state capture', society might have concluded that if that version of leftist thinking was corrupt and ineffective, then unbridled capitalism and private sector takeover must be inherently good. In fact, the recession of the left within the ANC, save for its still dominant nomenclature, brought about a catastrophic end of thinking; comrades are no longer pondering about the long-term consequences of private sector takeover and the dictatorship of excess profiteering. Instead we are seeing a policy posture that is working itself in a co-existential relationship with either a liberal, neoliberal, or right economic thinking.
The
outcomes of NASREC 2.0 are thus a triumph of a growing liberal-to-right thinking and orientation within the ANC.
The doctrinal shifts on how to marshal the commanding heights of a
developmental State economy tell of the new trajectory being followed. The growing demise of in-ANC traditional policy discourse at its conferences and its replacement
by the new focus on who leads, is a context which has made it conducive for the liberal-to-right thinking to thrive. In that continuum there seems to be sprouts of kleptocratic tendencies and an encroachment by a criminal element whose posture is promotion of crass and reasoned anarchy. The virtually discussed resolutions, and once known, might unleash a mixed economy
with profound economic right characteristics. The might of the State will be
unleashed to push through such an agenda.
Like in the 1980s, the leadership tensions emerging at the center might yield deeper right thinking if key networks of who are waiting on the horizon are anything to tell a story. The contest is which faction of the economic right must govern. Undoubtedly, there is an emerging condition of self-interest within the movement, which was rightly understood in the beginning, and has left the tendency overwhelmed by self-interest fatefully misunderstood. Crass materialism has settled. Truth is "a society out of balance, with power concentrated in a privileged elite, can be ripe for revolution'. As one pundit declared, South Africa might be rescued only by another revolution, unless the governing center becomes a constraint to the ascendance of crass and its known adjuncts.
The South African left is generally less likely to express loyalty to leaders and more likely to pledge itself to issue campaigns that bubble up from extra-party institutions, such as labour unions, racial justice and environmental groups. Its growing irrelevance within the governing ANC might be the inevitability of it being antagonistic to the ANC as a governing party and, thus, part of the targeted political order. What has emerged is that the concentration and growth of liberals within the ANC have made it indistinguishable from vintage liberal party policy positions, save for a leftist nomenclature. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️left, right, left, right, left...
🤷🏿♂️phanda mulenge rho dhuwa
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