Decoding the category 1 State Funeral for Prince Buthelezi: Why the discontents, this is elite consensus at play.

A casual read of 'mainstream' in-ANC social media conversations amongst 'comrades' reflects a managed discontent at the decision by President Ramaphosa to give Prince Buthelezi a category one state funeral. In a veiled show of this discontent, the leader of the ANC Veterans League, Dr Snuki Zikalala, interrogates the category one decision and decries the criteria with compelling comparisons. Notwithstanding the discontent, support, including a general reverence of Prince Buthelezi, and arguably a precursor of still-to-come national veneration functions in his honour, the question is why was it so easy to have consensus amongst South Africa's elite on this matter. 

This consensus is growing into one of the questionable axioms of political thoughts about how power is distributed in society. The dawn of a democratic order after 1994 meant that South African society was on a definite path to create a ruling class out of the new democracy-created governing leadership cohort. The reality of integrating those that must rule and those that should be ruled has for a while pitted radical power should be equally shared democrats, and a few elites across political persuasions should monopolise power and divides. This ignited a new 'revolution' to structure and circulate elites in concretising a post-apartheid political order process called establishment building. 

 

The 1994 democratic breakthrough remains a departure point for other secondary breakthroughs South Africans have not invested time in understanding or decoding. Between 1994 and 1996, South Africa was intensely involved in defining political, political economy, and socio-economic power arrangements through which 'interests' would be registered, ... . This was essentially an elite project. The process brought together elites up to that time, sworn adversaries capable of being partners, given the right conditions. The men and women who led the Constitution-making process agreed on what could be and should be about political power and how it should be distributed. The natural reality of social ranking by a share of any good, wealth, skill, or political power, including political, social, and moral reputation capital, started to recognise these outside the realms of history and condition. 

 

Confirmatory to what turn of the 19th-century elite theorists said that in any society, and after chauvinism has been disabled, elites are internally homogeneous, unified, and self-conscious. They are not a collection of isolated individuals. Instead, they know each other well and share similar values, loyalties, and interests. There is group consciousness, coherence, and conspiracy amongst the elites than meets the eye. Their character is self-perpetuation and the ability to organise themselves as an exclusive segment of society brought together by wealth, class history, and the three capitals: political, social, and reputation. They are profoundly autonomous as a group, whence their notion of majority rule is inextricably linked with their capacity to buy and control whoever leads a majority.

 

True to form, radicalised democrats and near-struggle memory social activists have voiced legitimate arguments on how South Africa should memorialise those the state considers leaders in society.  In advancing their reasons for the discontent, those wanting to recalibrate the criteria have often been compounded by a tendency to confuse issues of fact as those of definition. These activists might not be aware that as a democratic order stabilises, its stratification of political elites is getting more sophisticated. The establishment is in such conditions enabled to know whose reaction matters in the same way they would determine what noises are unimportant anymore. Implicit power has become more important than potential power. 

 

Stratification, as we have observed in Mahlabathini, on the occasion of Prince Buthelezi's funeral or send-off, is a function of interest in politics, political knowledge and sophistication, political skill and resources, political participation, political power, private capital, knowledgeability and education, social prestige, and political power. The position of the Prince in this stratification was arguably one of the most powerful of all that attended, even in death. The formal institutional or positional power he commanded and, in nostalgic terms, still occupies makes him the most helpful node of power relations by any standard. Being a Prime Minister of Southern Africa's most extensive monarchy and culture-defining benchmark makes your person embody power beyond any formal power. 

The men and women who attended the funeral supported President Ramaphosa's timely decision to declare Prince Buthelezi's funeral a special category one state funeral, collectively making up the totality of South Africa's political power. Their consensus, through attendance, including invoking the highest echelons of South Africa's organised 'violent power', the army and police, makes any discontent to be, at best, a town hall circus event and, at worst, the highest form of political hallucination. The institutional power displayed at the funeral is sufficient to have redefined the complex legacy that Prince Buthelezi has painstakingly threaded, including through deceit, violence, and conspiracy (proven or otherwise). 

The sheer number of ordinary folk and the record television viewership of the funeral further indicate the endearment he enjoys amongst those he called his people and the disdain he attracted from those who watched in that context. He has captured society's imagination in how his legacy of culture-church-politics traversed a cross-section of South Africans and global admirers. The appeal to the dominant South African faith, Christianity, by his almost dogmatic allegiance to the Anglican Church has earned him the respect of South Africa's clergy, a core node of elite formation because of its capacity to unite humanity under the rubric of the concept of God. 

At Prince Buthelezi's funeral, we observed evidence that 'nothing brings elites together so much as mutual respect which flows from sharing in the confraternity of power'. Their 'psychological affinities which make it possible for them to say to one another: he is one of us create a class consciousness of self as a power elite'. The abundance of protocol, the language of power, creates normality like ordinary folk. They enjoy being a category. So, anyone advancing discontent is temporarily outside the elite space. CUT!!!