Are we entering the battle of establishments? We just asking?

In Politics, the concept Establishment "describes the dominant social group, the élite, who control a polity, an organisation, or an institution. In the praxis of power, The Establishment usually is a self-selecting, closed élite entrenched within specific institutions; hence, a relatively small social class can exercise all socio-political control". Suppose you thought South Africa does not have a sophisticated Establishment. In that case, you only need to follow how Paul Mashatile was received as Deputy President of the Country and potential heir apparent. 

Mashatile is separate from the dominant secret and unauthorised power network operating independently of our state's above-ground political leadership in pursuit of consensus many of us are not part of. Despite the political mandate politicians receive from the public, these networks, which have constituted themselves as a deep state, have succeeded in manipulating the public state for a while. In South Africa, these networks have been managing that government continues to display characteristics of being based on the people's will whilst it draws its legitimacy in how sophisticated it is in advancing the interests of The Establishment. 

Consequently, this has pitted the dominant network against the ascending network. This I call the battle of Establishments. It should be known that all organisations have their Establishments, either self-funded or funded by bigger Establishments pursuing their own or geopolitical interests. The African National Congress, unlike ZANU PF, has never been in the plans of a global regime change stratagem. Its international and national brand power and diverse interests represented by its internal Establishments have instead made it a candidate for 'liberation movement capture'. For South Africa, the plan has always been taking it over and repurposing it for what a regime change would have achieved elsewhere. As President Mbeki once declared, it is too big to collapse, yet very cheap in cost terms to control. 

The ANC's propensity to rally behind personalities has made the scope of capturing it smaller, though sophisticated. There are few centres where it can be bought for a cause. If you can't purchase the delegates to its National Conference, you can fund a narrative to undermine what the Conference has agreed to be leadership and policy direction. 

As indicated in another rendition, what Paul Mashatile stands for still needs to be clarified and thus cannot be articulated as the reason for him being the face of what some faceless narrative or Establishment does not want. Because we now think of our democracy as a state of actual equality, in which every opinion is as good as any other on almost any subject under the sun, we are easily blinded by narratives that might derail our pursuit of what is in the National Interest. The anti-economic emancipation movement disguised in these anti-nodes of economic transformation narratives targeting persons of ilks such as that the history of Paul repress itself a means of short-circuiting democracy. This is because the objectives of a stable democracy in any society rely on the public understanding the implications of its own choices, and Paul seems to be a choice this narrative does not want.

It would be prudent for the Hands-Off-Paul-Campaign (HOPC), which has attracted the ire of the lead platform of the anti-Paul narrative, new24, to find out what drives this campaign. The HOPC should now invest in articulating what about Paul, beyond his struggle history, are the defending in policy terms. South Africa has been through defending-a-person political phases whose consequences leave little to be desired. The time to neutralise obsession with individuals has arrived. The pragmatism that Paul has historically displayed should be a moment to make the leadership of South Africa to be issue-driven, and this trait defines Mashatile. The ANC has a battery of policies and Conference resolutions which HOPC can anchor its campaign around. If you don't define your agenda, responding to your critics can easily be your agenda. 

What is interesting is that the narrative against Paul is also targeting his inner circle. This can only mean that his inner circle might be nodes of what is not wanted around state power. Without the benefit of what is interior to the narrative, society is subjected to facts that amount to 'Paul-Gevaar' without taking the nation into the confidence of  'wat eintlik gaan hier aan?' The object of the narrative is the collapse of the relationship between Paul and his inner circle, thus creating a dysfunction of a possible new Establishment ascending. In short, this is a battle to be included in the Political Order in which the journey to where Paul finds himself was built. Otherwise, the battle can be successfully argued about refusing a new Political Order to emerge. Either way, Mashatile has become a natural node of contestation. Besides him, only a credible woman candidate can emerge as the alternative to discontent-defined narratives, true or false, about the incumbent, President Ramaphosa. 

What is at issue is an emphasis on making 'non-establishment-approved politicians appear untrustworthy. As Benjamin Ho summed it up in his book Why Trust Matters, "The line that I remember most from my own studies in political science is that the most important indicator of the strength of a democracy is not the set of things that people vote on, but instead the set of things that people are not allowed to vote on.” Since 1912, ANCness has been about fighting tribalism; with the emergence of new tribalism disguised as purveyors of freedoms that society has fought for, it is natural that in-ANC purveyors of the strand of the liberation promise Paul stands for will rise to defend what they believe is the freedom they fought for. CUT!!!