Thinking about an enduring hegemony, the staying power of the liberation promise

In the years leading up to the 1994 democratic breakthrough in South Africa, what the ANC stood for, as a hegemony of the liberation struggle, was unquestionable. The inhumanity of apartheid, the flagrant marginalisation of women, and the moral authority of the apartheid state to govern without the will of all the people had liquidated the Republic of South Africa of its standing amongst nations of the world. No matter what metric of social and political capital one would look at, they all showed an unprecedented lead in the anti-apartheid struggle by the ANC. Save for the Greenpeace movement, it was challenging to find a morally appealing course to support, in global terms, like the anti-apartheid movement, with the release of Nelson Mandela as its uncompromising symbol of ending the system. Attached to the anti-apartheid movement was the pursuit of constitutional democracy, the sacredness of public accountability as a value system the new dispensation should subscribe to, the supremacy of a constituent assembly-drawn Constitution, and the rule of law anchored by a human rights-conditioned democracy. 

As the ANC hegemony dictated, the emerging post-apartheid state would be subjected to an accountability ecosystem tied together by institutions of leadership neatly packaged into the separation of powers. The Legislative, Executive, and Judicial authorities of the Republic would be supported by organs of state as defined in the Constitution. The ANC could, if it realised the depth of the institutional architecture, transform the society it had at its disposal and conduct its national democratic revolution to establish a national democratic society under fewer constraints than any other liberation movement of its ilk. And as threatened as enemies, adversaries, and the envious were with their hegemony on the political economy, social, and political capital, they realised they could do little to overturn it.

Pity that we are at a historical phase; that was then. The ANC's hegemony has diminished and is diffused into centres appended with trajectories from which it can rescue itself. In the intervening three decades of post-apartheid South Africa, the ANC had gone through high moral ground liquidating episodes characterised by a rise in public sector corruption, recorded acts of corruption classified as state capture, a decaying public infrastructure which undermines prospects of economic recovery and growth, and a declining citizen confidence in the legitimacy of public representatives as manifested by voter apathy. 

The below-par economic growth expressed in GDP growth, the political polarisation within the ANC, as arguably the nexus of political life, and the apex office's indecisiveness where the Republic's executive authority vests are costly realities the ANC hegemony is facing. Meanwhile, the opposition complex continued its remarkable ascent, and through the utilisation of the institutional architecture to transform society, the ANC has, and through its hegemony, bequeathed to South Africa, grown more assertive. 

The confidence to litigate the return of lost ground through re-institutionalising templates of economic dominance and chiselling them into jurisprudence might be the sounding of a death knell to the authentic objects of having engaged in a liberation struggle in the first place.  It might also be a sign that the ANC can no longer hold back the forces of revisionism and enforce the consistent delivery of the liberation promise it has painstakingly entrenched in the Constitution. 

The opposition complex's confidence has created a false impression that ANC hegemony might have come to a definitive end. With their majority of minorities numbers and conveniently airbrushing large numbers of voter apathy, survey polls indicate have not changed allegiance; the opposition complex has been clamouring to declare itself as a new bulwark against ANC hegemony. Pundits and analysts working with selected and peddled data have argued that the ANC hegemony is on the verge of depletion. Dominant components of the opposition complex, notably its civil society sector and funders, have endorsed this view, one which it is now an open secret that they are leading a sophisticated revisionist movement to restore their power to shape the understanding and/or templates of the liberation promise to their liking. The pro-ANC hegemony civil society complex, some of whom are creations of the ANC, including its known and respected thinkers, have been hoodwinked into reaching the same conclusion and starting to believe in coalitions that have no hope of advancing the liberation promise in the Constitution as intended. It would not be surprising to find out that some members of the ANC also believe that its hegemony is in retreat. There is no more widely accepted myth about ANC hegemony today than the idea that it is no longer as definitive to South African politics. 

 

This rendition argues that this is not true. In articulating what true liberation means for South Africa and Africa, no hegemony has surpassed what the ANC has institutionalised as part of the political order. For all its sins, the ANC has been in retreat due to breeds of leadership it allowed to predominate its governing party roles. Still, its stated and chronicled policies remain the hegemonic firmament the opposition complex is competing for aspects of its patent rights. The matrices with which the opposition complex measures itself against this hegemony indicate that South Africa is still largely devoid of a force either than the ANC, which shapes the cadence of its national politics in times of crisis from the beginning of its constitutional democracy since 1910 to its modern state system through a morally legitimate struggle. The opposition complex of South Africa, most of whom are ideologically strands of what the mainstream ANC hegemony is all about, cannot match, in content, the power of ANC hegemony by creating majority-of-minorities coalitions. Admittedly, as President Ramaphosa said, and rephrased herein, 'the ANC leadership is not alone in the dock of public sector driven malfeasance, but it is arguably the number one accused', its leaders have lost the moral standing to represent what it stands for boldly. This has made the dwarfing of a breed amongst a cohort of leaders look like it is that of ANC hegemony. This development must be put into its proper perspective where it should be clear that the ANC hegemony is not at issue; it is still intact. With the liberation promise entrenched in the Constitution, the nature of the hegemony as a substrate of its renewal and recovery might be the issue. 

 

INTRODUCING THE LEADER OF SOCIETY BRIGADE (LSB)

 

In this vortex of wanting to liquidate the moral authority of the ANC, as it is constituted and led, and not as an institution of leadership, it is the content of its hegemonic influence on society that its thinkers must be worried about losing. In one of its earlier strategy and tactics documents, the ANC boldly states, "The primary task of the ANC (as an institution) remains the mobilisation of all the classes and strata that objectively stand to benefit from the cause of social change. The dictum that the people are their own liberators remains as relevant today as it was during the days of anti-apartheid struggle”, to underscore this need to defend the hegemony. The document instructs its leader of society brigades’ membership to understand that they need not be activists in the party political shenanigans of the ANC as that construct, save voting when called to do so, but have a higher order calling to calibrate its hegemonic influence wherever they find themselves continuously. 

 

Given that the document instructs... "for it to exercise its vanguard role, the ANC puts a high premium on the involvement of its cadres in all centres of power. This includes ANC members and supporters in state (and other) institutions. It includes activism in the mass terrain of which civil society structures are part. It includes the involvement of cadres in the intellectual and ideological terrain to help shape society’s value systems. This requires a cadre policy that encourages creativity in thought and practice and eschews rigid dogma. In this regard, the ANC is responsible for promoting progressive traditions within the intellectual community, including institutions such as universities and the media” there is a new need to see splinter political formations as more of an extension to its hegemony than adversaries. In its liberation mode of operation and ideation, the ANC should be tentacular in the ideological influence that it converts nodes of power into strategic centres of hegemony acceptance. 

 

The difference between the ANC hegemony required to navigate today's politics and its heritage-anchored hegemony is its application as a governing party and a liberation movement. Understanding that the Constitution marked a bequeathing of certain liberation movement roles to the whole of society, including the perversion of such a liberation to meet freedom to pursue whiteness as a distinct human right notwithstanding its potential racist defaults, is the first step the leader of society brigades should calibrate as a sixth sense of being free. The arithmetic of voter party political preferences and how these influence coalitions for state power can shift the balance of requisite power to roll out the liberation promise in the Constitution. 

 

In a November 02, 2022 rendition, this blog defined the Leader of Society Brigade as "a movement of intellectually savvy, constitutional democratic order-led, capability-driven, and ethicalness pursuing ANC members committed to their imagination of a South Africa promised by its Constitution. They are mainly straight-talking and proffer 'dissenting theoretical positions that have mostly been interpreted as diverging from the schematic revolutionary dogma of self-proclaimed prophets of ANC dogma and paranoid tendencies of nostalgic members'. They have thus far endured attacks of being classified as nascent (black) bourgeoisie or clever (black) people yet did not succumb to the temptation of joining the opposition complex, even if it dangled higher political career prospects".

 

This brigade believes "the current systems of operating the ANC as a leader of society, and commitment to its objects is untenable. It should be overhauled, with new templates of influence being set up. It should not be assumed that LSBs do not have class interests out of how society is led, save to say that fundamental to their interests is creating space for their imagination of South Africa to thrive. They want to assert the essential rationality of the emerging outcomes from their influence. The moral and political economy reasons for their quest to advance to the centre of the ANC instruct their purpose and objectives". Trapped in the transition phase of integrating the 'Political Freedom in Our Lifetime' gains of the founding fathers of South Africa's constitutional democratic order and the 'Economic Freedom in Our Lifetime' mission of the democratic order beneficiary generation, the LSB is tying itself to the central participation of capable ANC cadres that will deliver the inside-Constitution-Liberation promise to South Africans".

 

As a brigade, "they believe that when competent and service delivery battle-tested 'leader of society' cadres are on the frontline of leading the ANC, as the dominant political movement of South Africa, cognitively prepared and ready members of society have a higher chance of succeeding in the facilitation of processes to achieve an egalitarian constitutional democratic order. When harnessed to its full potential by the contested political and social capital inherent in the ANC, the LSB becomes a constant and real threat to 'a government-is-the-economy' cohort of members that have been at variance with the member integrity management systems the ANC designed to be consistent with the ethicalness demanded by the liberation promise entrenched in the Constitution". Shifts in the configuration of party-political interests, in certain instances, led in hegemonic terms by members of the ANC who felt their leader-of-society-brigade-ness being choked by inexplainable mandate drifts by strange breeds of leaders at the helm of the ANC, which manifest themselves as the formation of new political parties, might be an opportunity for the bequeathed liberation promise to stay on track. It is still ideationally or ideologically, including in hegemonic terms, difficult to find differences between the IFP, UDM, COPE, EFF, tangentially ACTION SA, and the latest kids in the block Xiluba and RISE MZANZI, and the ANC. What is glaring is the frustration of those leading those parties with how the ANC conducts itself as a leader of society. This does not vitiate the personal political power interests of those leading those parties as another vector to their posture in the broader opposition complex to the ANC as a political party. 

The mandate drifts and shifts, often pronounced outside ANC-as-a-liberation-movement resolutions, which are hugely consequential in hegemonic terms and decidedly breeding uncertainty in how government as the most active agent of the state will stay consistent in delivering the liberation promise defining a post-1994 South Africa, have contributed to the polarization of liberation politics necessary to foreground the preamble of South Africa's constitution. The frequent transitions within the ANC, punctuated by factional interests that find polyvalent expressions in its mainstream policies, and the fleeting nature of leaders of these factions’ grasp of the outstanding tasks of the liberation movement have eaten into the trust of its leader of society brigades. CUT!!!

Wo ti hleketela, shem.