This was developed into a fully-fledged Working Paper, published by the Thinc Foundation
Ours has always been a
struggle for the creation of a national democratic society. For this noble mission, we are proponents of the National Democratic Revolution that must usher in a national democratic society in all its dimensions. At its zenith, the National Democratic Revolution should be best represented by a society that complied with and practised its unquestionable objectives. It is a revolution
of South Africa, in South Africa, by South Africans to create a society they
have all agreed will best reflect them, as the Constitution instructs.
The issue of
establishing a National Democratic Society impacts the quality of democracy and
the livelihoods of people, the lofty ideal of a unified democratic society, and
the future of humanity based on social justice and fundamental human rights.
Our society, its context, history, and aspirations are changing and subject to
different perspectives. The social forces known to stand up for the NDR have in,
recent times, been confronted with multiple challenges, risks, and threats.
Ideological Insecurity
of the National Democratic Revolution in the new context the primary contact
areas society has with the democratic order, municipal governments, are
embroiled in frequent instability, lack of direction and turbulence. Poverty-inequality-unemployment
as a scourge persists. In-liberation movement contestations to ‘phatha’ fueled
by factionalism, ageism, monopoly capital ambitions, and the decisive
infiltration of the movement by interests inconsistent with its objectives are
intertwined realities of our time. The deficits in service delivery,
energy-water and inland logistics security, globally competitive human
development, and the capable mind and muscle of The State are growing, and the strategic
response prowess of the liberation movement is at a crossroads in history.
Whilst this is an era
of challenges, it is also one in which optimism and belief should reign. In a similar
way that the movement responded to the reality of the liberation struggle being
dictated by a hostile ascending neoliberal onslaught in the aftermath of the
collapse of the Soviet Union and in-ANC ideological fluidity; the ANC is
expected to invoke its ideation prowess to spawn a win-win context necessary to
save both the constitutional and democratic order. Upholding and energising the
objectives of the National Democratic Revolution, the people’s aspirations as
summed up by the Freedom Charter, and the liberation promise entrenched in the
Constitution of South Africa,1996, should be the new terrain of struggle to implement
the comprehensive realise National Democratic Society ideal.
This article proposes
that the NDR is still relevant, and there is a case for reimagining it. It calls
for ANC members to have a dynamic relationship with the NDR’s changing
character, not content. The business of being ANC, or ANCness, should adapt to
the profoundly changing character of the motive forces of the NDR, the people. It
submits that the inaugural benefit of political power has opened the floodgates
of contestations to control the ANC vehicle for interests out of which a
National Democratic Society cannot be established. The objectives of NDR have
always been the true north of the South African anti-colonial struggle
(including its adjunct apartheid) pursued in the quest to create a National
Democratic Society. A case will therefore be made that a reimagined NDR is
relevant and required.
The
NDR in the Constitution
The
National Democratic Revolution is explained in an ANC OR Tambo Political School
manual[1]
as “a process of struggle to transfer power to the people. (Such) Power is
political, economic, and social control. The objective of the NDR is to build a
non-racial, non-sexist, united, and democratic South Africa". The
architecture of what the ANC stands for and has been building as the basis of
its existence as a 'leader of society' is etched on the execution of the NDR to
establish a National Democratic Society. The South African Constitution, because
of an ANC two-thirds majority in the 1994-1996 Constituent Assembly, is the
ANC's best-ever foot which translates the NDR from just being an ideological
construct to being the ideological firmament over the Constitution as the supreme
law of South Africa. The South African Constitution is the framework of how the
National Democratic Society can be achieved.
The
convergence of the monumental policy documents of the ANC and the universal
constructs of freedom, democracy, social justice, and human rights have given
the NDR a new terrain; “transformative constitutionalism and thus the
Constitution”, through which its (The NDR) execution is both legal and
enforceable through the machinery of The State. Arguably, the NDR can no longer
depend on who ultimately is government but more on whoever is government as an
agency of The State that implements the Constitution as the legal basis to create
the National Democratic Society. Government as the agent of The State, is
constrained by the Constitution from departing from the ideals of a National
Democratic Society. The constitution is the ideological glue of the NDR.
Accordingly,
and how the movement has always seen it, the theoretical optimisation of the
NDR has been left to its structures to set goals for each phase of the NDR, as
both a struggle system and a continuum towards establishing a National
Democratic Society. The structures of the ANC have done this through the
meticulous review of the strategy and tactics document, which at every phase
and epoch of the continuous journey to realise a National Democratic Society,
defined where the NDR is, supposed to be, could have been, its strengths,
weaknesses, and resources it commands to advance itself. To this end the NDR
sees all people as "the forces that drive or push for change or the
revolution itself, and stand to benefit from the change", otherwise called
motive forces. Consequential to this posture, it acknowledges the existence of
antagonistic or opposing forces in society, despite all of them being the
people it is about.
Having
defined the power it aims to transfer, incumbents in the power and the
beneficiaries to it would, in defence of the power they wield, become a force
whose interaction with the change the NDR is about, be an opposing force. The conceptual
breadth of the NDR objectives has removed the dimensions of race, sexism,
disunity, democracy, and blocking social justice as the basis to stand against
the National Democratic Revolution. In fact, in chiselling these as a
constitutional imperative of being the “new South Africa”, the National
Democratic Revolution has arguably been positioned as the nexus of political
life in South Africa through the democratic breakthrough of 1994/1996. The
reimagination of the NDR must accept this victory and celebrate it.
For
much of the thirty years of South Africa's life as a laboratory of the National
Democratic Revolution and a society enabled by its Constitution to recreate
itself into a National Democratic Society, successive cohorts of the governing
party have been grappling with answers to the questions posed by analyses from
the strategy and tactics document as it unravels what phase the NDR is in. As a
standard, all members of the ANC are obligated by their membership always to
seek to understand the current phase of the NDR. They do this through a
continuous search for answers to the questions of the ANC's objectives for
power and transformation. In terms of what the Constitution provides-; the government
as a predominant agent of The State, the economy as an enabling
interdependency, socio-economic transformation, reconstruction and development,
and service delivery as a manifestation of making South Africans as
beneficiaries have an organic relationship with the NDR.
The
NDR brigades
Since
a revolution is a human construct and thus a human endeavour, its execution
would require people organised into “brigades” with which its execution will be
guaranteed. These brigades must have as a context a recognition of the
injustices of the past and that South Africa belongs to all who live in it[2].
Being a member of the ANC and wherever you are, your primary task in
association "remains the mobilisation and organisation of all the classes and strata
that objectively stand to benefit from the cause of social change. The dictum
that “the people are their liberators remains as relevant today as it was
during the days of the anti-apartheid struggle[3]."A National Democratic Revolution requires an
effective developmental party with the necessary capacity to govern a diverse South
Africa. It should be able to inclusively manage the complex development
strategies and policies needed to build a National Democratic Society.
The
first brigade is "our freely elected representatives"[4],
all of whom the preamble of the Constitution obliges to (a) "heal the
divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values,
social justice, and fundamental human rights, (b) lay the foundations for a
democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the
people and every citizen is equally protected by law, (c) improve the quality
of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person, and (d) build a
united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a
sovereign state in the family of nations[5].
These brigades include members of the ANC who have been ‘freely elected’ as Members
of Parliament, Members of Provincial Legislatures, and Councilors in
Municipalities.
The
complexity of the national tasks this brigade will face, including the
constitutional provision that those who will be exercising the executive
authority of the Republic, which vests in the President, together with him as
members of the national executive, dictate a necessity for those deployed
therein to be the most advanced in understanding the comprehensive character of
a National Democratic Society that should emerge an an outcome of their
endeavours. Besides their political competence, there should be a higher
premium placed on the technical capacity to see how the convergence of the
different aspects of the Constitution; its preamble, founding provisions, Bill
of Rights, representative democratic character, cooperative government
philosophical outlook, the integrative role of chapter 9 institutions, the
chapter 10 principles of the public service, the democratized treasury
function, the independence of the judiciary within what the Constitution and
its undergirding basic structure, the developmental role of local government,
the people’s power structures it creates or allows for their creation, are scaffoldings
in the continuous building of a National Democratic Society. They should posses
competences (skills, knowledge, and attributes) requisite of an advanced force
of the revolution, special forces.
There
will be some within this brigade that will remain with the legislative
authority of the Republic as others take up the Executive authority roles. Equally,
the technical competence of those in the legislatures should be honed to a
level where their demand of accountability from the executive is about the NDR
and building the NDS. This includes their commitment to using the chapter 9
institutions as their information gathering capacity on the various areas of
focus the do surveys on and about. The authoritative nature of these
institutions are sufficient to drive the social transformation agenda, the
social justice obligations of all juristic persons in the country, follow-up on
the public protector reports if remedial actions on service delivery matters
are implemented, and if the general redress, restitution, and building a
national democratic society issues are on track. This brigade is core to the
integration of all the transformation prowess inherent in the Constitution as a
platform and tool to legally execute the NDR.
The
second brigade is those members of the ANC that find themselves in
positions of authority, resourcefulness, and influence in society. They are not
elected but appointed, and on the merits of what the position requires, into
their positions. These should not be deployed, but their membership in or
affinity with the ANC should be sufficient to consider them deployed without a
set and formal process of gerrymandering their appointment. As a brigade, they
should understand, as members of the ANC too, that "for (the ANC) to
exercise its vanguard role, it puts a high premium on the involvement of its members
in all centres of power. This includes the presence of ANC members and
supporters in state institutions. It includes activism in the mass terrain of
which civil society structures are part. It includes the involvement of members
in the intellectual and ideological terrain to help shape society’s value
systems. This requires an advanced member, strategy, and policy that
encourages creativity in thought and practice and eschews rigid dogma. In this
regard, the ANC promotes progressive traditions within the intellectual
community, including institutions such as universities and the media."
Beyond
those elected through the Electoral Act, there are members of the ANC that
should be part of this brigade who are also ‘freely appointed’ into other
organs of people’s power and influence to the extent that the National
Democratic Revolution’s objectives are at stake. These are the Boards of State
Entities wielding legislated accounting authority, Ward Committees, and many
other structures that command societal influence. This brigade includes members
of the ANC in private sector boards, professional associations, think tanks,
trustees to various causes, international boards, boards of multilateral institutions,
church and other faith-based organisations, and civil society organizations,
including organised business and labour as well as senates and councils of universities.
Included
in this brigade should be ANC members serving in judicial service bodies such
as the Law Council, various advocate bars, and associations of legal minds as
well as judges. Critical in this group would also be members of the ANC that
command influence resources such as money and mega-communication systems,
including the media in all its forms. The distinguishing feature of being a
leader of society brigade should be the extent to which you do not allow your
membership to the ANC to interfere with your professional standing or fiduciary
responsibilities. Except for where your professional obligations encroach on
social justice and other values of the NDR the Constitution has otherwise
carried through, it should be good ANC practice to be on the side of what the
constitutional order expects of you to do as we build a National Democratic
Society. The advanced operatives of the leader of society brigades and
adherents to the objectives of the National Democratic Revolution should include
those that join other political formations because they believe the NDR is best
served in those spaces.
The
third brigade is members of the ANC that find themselves always among
the people. They are either beneficiaries of the revolution themselves or
change agents to ensure the benefits of the revolution reach everybody. They do
not have to be leaders of the ANC; all they must be is its members. These
will help in the translation of bread-and-butter issues into a political
program whilst at the same time translating ANC programs into answers to the bread-and-butter
issues questions.
Out
of the various brigades there shall, in a natural process of leadership
development, emerge what are called leaders of society brigades. We cannot
bring about a National Democratic Society without leaders of society brigades. The
concept of leader of society has been fitting to the ANC as leader of the liberation
movement consisting of civil society bodies and individuals committed to the
objects of the NDR it has now bequeathed to South Africans via the
Constitution. Being leader of society assumes possessing “leadership that is
focused in strengthening society and in finding solutions to social challenges.”
In Nelson Mandela’s parlance, such leaders “must be ready to sacrifice all for
the freedom of their people”. This is reason enough to let the NDR be led by a
leader of society brigade diffused into the different terrains where the
revolution is happening.
The
leader of society brigade
In understanding
the leader of society brigades, it would be important to restate herein the
character or what constitutes a leader of the society brigade, as posited by
Mathebula (2022). He submits that,
“The demand for
a 'leader of society brigade' from within members of the ANC
by the historical moment and a patient society is not only realistic but
defines its capacity to redefine the relevance of the NDR and itself as its institutional
memory carrier. Belonging to this brigade cannot be reduced to the mechanistic
payment of a membership fee; it should be a task given to those that have
graduated from being in the books of the ANC as unfortunate tradable
commodities during conferences,
but a quality brigade that understands what it means to lead society. This
brigade should refuse to mask the difficulties of reconciling exigencies of
political power contestations and the mission of the ANC being a leader of
society. A true leader of society will, and as non-negotiables, pursue a South
Africa,
·
that belongs to all
who live in it, albeit within defined citizen rights and accommodating to
national grievance-related restitution issues,
·
that has a
government which can justly claim that its authority to govern is based on the
will of all the people. This might also mean accepting that the will of all the
people might define the ANC differently after a free and fair election,
·
that will not
veer from protecting what the Freedom Charter professed as minimum demands of
society at all material times,
·
that will defend
the rights of all South Africans to the liberation promise written into its
constitutional settlement, particularly the Bill of Rights,
·
that guarantees
that our country will never be prosperous or free until all its people live in
brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities,
·
that ensures that
the democratic nature of our nation-state is based on the will of all the people
and secures all their birthrights without distinction of colour, race, sex, belief,
or any chauvinism.
The Leader of Society Brigade is a movement of
intellectually savvy, constitutional order-led, democratic order-led,
capability-driven, and ethicalness pursuing ANC members committed to the realisation
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 blacks yet did not succumb to the temptation of
joining the opposition complex, even if it dangled higher political career
prospects.
To this brigade, and as far as the systems of operating the
ANC as a leader of society is concerned, it has demonstrated that being
committed to its objects is untenable and should be overhauled, and new
templates of influence must be set up. It should not be assumed that they do
not have class interests out of how society is led, save to say that
fundamental to their interests is the creation of 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, this brigade is tying
itself to the central participation of capable ANC members that will deliver
the in-Constitution-Liberation promise to South Africans.
They believe that when competent and service delivery
battle-tested leaders of society brigades 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 and democratic
order. The 'leader of the society brigade', when harnessed to its full
potential by the contested political and social capital inherent in the ANC, is
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, and thus the NDR.
The strategic
posture to position those defined by the constitutional and democratic order as
its ethical threats, as victims of an otherwise human rights-based adjudication
system, has blurred the correctness of the cause to establish a South Africa
based on the values of the Constitution than that of personal aggrandisement, greed and
any form of crass. Tired of being the silent majority overwhelmed by unethical noises by a minority within the ANC, the leader of the society
brigade's organising prowess and courage to move to the centre makes it ready
to rebuild the liberation movement into a developmental political party with a
centre that holds.
While this
brigade might be the ANC’s hope to return to its leader of society status, the pedestrianised
discourse on how its Conferences, at all levels, including its leagues, should
select leadership might set it back to levels where it can only breathe in the
civil society oppositional complex; and maybe lead the society from there. As
the core substrate of what defines the ANC, this brigade should not only
understand that its mandate is not only the performance of the ANC at the polls
but also its survival and recovery as a hegemony by pursuing the NDR objectives”.
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The
NDR as an ideological or ideational posture
The National
Democratic Revolution, as an ideological posture, should be cultivated into a
language of being ANC. Because it is a language, gaining fluency in it requires
learning the vocabulary, grammar and idioms that work together to create
meaning. Its policies and the country's Constitution must be the vocabulary,
the eye of the needle level of the leader of society brigade’s conduct should
be the dominant grammar, and its monumental policy documents must be its
idioms.
Leaders of
society brigade members should have NDR literacy. The literate in NDR would
have command of what attributes of human co-existence should be present to show
that the cardinal objectives of the NDR are in place. It will thus be the
revolutionary fluency of these brigades that will permeate all centres of power
in society. Revolutionary fluency should therefore be understood as the
exchange of ideas with the NDR itself as a medium or currency. Consequently, if
revolutionary fluency is the fluid exchange of ideas using the NDR,
revolutionary literacy is the ability for leader of society brigades to
understand and draw meaning from the NDR as the substrate of the South African
Constitution.
Because the
National Democratic Revolution is a continuous ideological framework with which
a National Democratic Society could be built, it is not only reliant on members
of the ANC in their ordinary and leader of society brigade character but also
in the institutions of the Constitution, as the outcome of the NDR, create.
Institutions established by the Constitution to give society the 'ability to be
democratic', whence a democratic breakthrough, should be seen as that aspect of
the NDR that "captures actions and characteristics of the real world and
transforms them into something that can be examined and explored after the
fact.” The reports of Chapter 9 institutions should thus be the basis of
advancing the NDR.
The Chapter 9
institutions' reports, especially if their role could be anchored by the relevant
leader of society brigade activists, can help explain the NDR progress and how
it could be optimised. But the revolutionary content generated from these
reports will become truly powerful only when it informs, instructs, and leads
to smart discussions, decisions and actions from within the movement. In the
context of them being seen from an NDR prism, reports of Chapter 9 institutions
should be calibrated to answer specific questions or solve problems, especially
those that present themselves as obstacles to the creation of a National
Democratic Society.
Because
these institutions report to Parliament and, by extension, state-funded
institutions to inform our freely elected representatives to execute the
achievement of NDR objectives, they are central in determining the pace of our
national discourse about creating the NDS. The true objective for facilitating
dialogue, discourse, and discussion through them should be to gradually synthesise
the information extracted from their reports and data products into greater
national knowledge, shared expertise, and intuition, and eventually into NDR
wisdom.
Where
are we?
There
is a growing myth that the vision of the NDR is in disarray and the achievement
of its ideal, a National Democratic Society, is in danger. The shocks of
leadership malfeasance, corruption, state capture, state dysfunction, and
general ineptitude in agencies of The State, including private sector
dissonance, have all fueled this unfortunate narrative. Notwithstanding that
these have created an alternative narrative about the 'democratic order' under
construction through a 'constitutional order' whose basis, as argued, is a
legal translation of the NDR, the true narrative is the failure of society (the
brigades) and, by extension, leadership (leader of society brigades).
Subscribing
to narratives that unfairly interrogate the constitutional order is to abdicate
responsibility to oblige leadership and institutions we have created to see us,
the people, as the motive force driving and pushing the constitutional order as
the dominating instruct on how to carve the National Democratic Society out of
the relics of a divided past. Our national commons of poverty, inequality, and
unemployment require the definition of new pillars with which society needs to
be enrolled into the NDR struggle system for effectiveness.
The
drift away from anti-apartheid struggle era rhetoric and its nostalgia is
reshaping the politics of South Africa and becoming determinate to how we
constitute our 'freely elected representatives out of whom a government with
redistributive powers will be formed. The 2016 and 2021 local government
elections have supercharged the drift to levels where 'freely elected'
representatives are redefining representation within the arrangements of the
Constitution, thus lawfully, yet potentially not in synch with what is
envisaged by the NDR. Once constitutional order is set, it becomes an
arrangement with which society will govern itself. Unless through a revolution,
changing it would require how it has arranged to be changed because any
certification of its change will be according to 'the arrangement'.
[1] The choice of this source is informed by the simplicity with which it is written for the
purposes of rank and file members of the ANC. This definition has the widest circulation to members
of the ANC.
[2] Constitution
[3] Strategy and Tactics
Document
[4] Constitution
[5] Constitution of South
Africa, 1996.
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