There might be costs in supporting a personality outside what s/he stands for: We are from there.

The past four elections for national and local government (2014, 2016, 2019, and 2024) have communicated voter sentiments about how they feel about those who govern them in all spheres of government. The granularity of details about the growing discontent at those that govern has voter numbers as evidence of shifting support to other political parties and outright withdrawal from participating in the approval or otherwise of those procuring for the political mandate. There is undoubtedly emerging consensus that the governing party 'has recklessly pursued policies that have not improved citizens’ quality of life to warrant wholesale approval of the democratic order through increased voter participation'. The result has been protracted periods of economic inequality, social pain, and political strife, notwithstanding successive mandates in the hope of a better life for all. 

If the standard of measure is that of checking to what extent are our 'freely elected representatives' (1) healing the divisions of the past and establishing a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights; (2) laying 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; (3) improving the quality of life of all citizens and freeing the potential of each person; and (4) building a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations, the score sheet might be worrying if properly weighted scales are applied. Whilst there should be agreement that the scope and scale of backlogs in what our 'freely elected representatives have had to deal with in the four areas were huge, the task’s size and difficulty can never be why the task was not executed. Modern-day politics seems ruthless in its insistence that politicians are as good as their last performance unless some despotic arrangements to neutralise this measure are stronger to turn off voter opportunity to be final arbiters. 

Staying on the path of social justice, human dignity, the pursuit of human rights, unity and democracy, the rule of law, supremacy of the Constitution, and political stability has to date been argued as being what is required of democracies to stay on the path to prosperity. The basic structure of the democratic order being created has been contending with withdrawal symptoms by those charged with ensuring that they become a background of permanence for the performance, survival, and recovery of a bruised South Africanness. The tension between the liberation promises in the Constitution being a motive for the radical transformation of society by 'others' and its being a conservative constraint to protecting the status quo has put the Constitution at the risk of being seen as a problem than a solution. 

In such conditions, criteria for leadership selection in society can easily be about personalities than what they stand for about how society has constituted itself, defined the objectives of being a democracy, and agreed on the founding values of being a nation. Instead of focusing on judging those society designates as leaders from criteria set by the Constitution, which should represent the ultimate standard for every citizen, nostalgic considerations out of the past might take centre stage. 

The brute truth is that nostalgia is not a good look for a beyond-now and progressive agenda. This is as true for building a democratic order as for economic and social policy. In politicians, "nostalgia privileges a status quo that locks in incumbents’ advantages and ignores the difficulties that many people are already suffering". Allowing this to persist in society might trigger the wrong platforms and criteria for dealing with leadership succession conversations. 

In November 2016, I wrote, "Succession is in politics a function of continuity preservation and never orthodoxy preservation. Overt and covert principles instruct what needs to be continued if a successor is to be anointed or elected. In the absence of an ideological path and framework, as is the case with the current period. ANC convention and tradition will often be relied upon when succession debates start. In these circumstances, leadership becomes vulnerable to the highest bidder regarding resources required to capture the state and the ANC as a sure conduit, assuming the electorate is a constant to state power. If continuity were a criterion in the ensuing succession discourse in the ANC, the question is, what should be continued from what the incumbent has started?"

Given that the immediate past President of the country and the incumbent are the subjects to be succeeded and, arguably, an inconvenient point of departure to many, ‘what is to be followed’ will have to be construed from a prism with their legacy as a dominant feature. If the governing party's policy position is bracketed to discern what its past presidents stood for, their recorded pronouncement when assuming office would serve as a point of reasonable departure to determine what should be continued for continuity’s sake. Of all past Presidents, 'the political term’ obligations from which continuity can be derived are those set by the most notorious of its Presidents, Jacob Zuma, who, In his inaugural speech in May 2009, declared that we (the governing party) commit here and now, before the eyes of the world, that: 

 

For as long as there are South Africans who die from preventable diseases. 

 

For as long as there are workers who struggle to feed their families. 

 

For as long as there are communities without clean water, decent shelter, or proper sanitation. 

 

For as long as there are rural dwellers unable to make a decent living from the land on which they live. 

 

For as long as there are women who are subjected to discrimination, exploitation, or abuse. 

 

For as long as there are children who do not have the means nor the opportunity to receive a decent education.

 

For as long as there are people who are unable to find work, 

we shall not rest, and we dare not falter.

This list can be calibrated to create a continuity template with which personalities that should be suitors to the proverbial throne could be filtered. Beyond this list, and there is a definite beyond, should be what the new leader and this must involve those that have led before, stands for about what the liberation promise is about. Beyond the requirement to be beyond reproach, as in in-ANC member integrity management parlance, a commitment to South Africa and its national interest will be the ultimate which such a personality should stand for. CUT!!