Published on 10 December 2023 in the Sunday Times.
A study on the Black Middle-Class Report by the University of Cape Town in 2020 shows a dramatic growth in the black middle class, eclipsing that of the white middle class. It reflects on the segment’s significant and continued rise, the nuanced changes over the years and trends likely to influence and entrench the sector as the foremost market, consumer or otherwise, into the future. Whilst the report focussed on the economics of this class, the soft (social, political, and cultural) power issues, which are somewhat underplayed, might be decisive in defining society’s decision about who should govern South Africa. They might be the authority to define “the will of the people” and which party best represents that will in the current phase of the country’s political development.
Expanding the middle class has always been the key to
realising a modern and prosperous society. It is required to transform the
economic growth model and reform templates of generational exclusion in any
economy. The network variability of this class is critical to building and
maintaining social harmony, stability, and long-lasting national peace and
social cohesion. Given the general homogeneity of this class across race and
gender divides, members of this class have in common their membership to it and
their acceptance of certain rules which enable the class to hold together.
It is usually the differential character of the
economic, political, social, and cultural system and the ambitions of members
of this class which is sufficient to ensure that society is never uniform, even
in its texture. The relative relationship with the right to choose and the
defence of the cardinal freedoms of speech, conscience, association, press, and
assembly has obligated the middle class to advocate for a society where
diversity is a keynote of social condition and opinion. They are, therefore, the
most political and opinionated strata of society. They understand what the
critical prizes of politics are. As such, they know the importance of
Government as the ultimate prize of politics and somewhat the residue of past
politics.
As individuals, they constitute the cognitive elite
component of society. Their exposure to the conceptual world makes them
capsules of ideological orientations and can thus be easily consumed by society.
How they are created as a class creates nodes
of influence that can be coordinated through the alumni; most belong and interact
within their education occurrence. Given an opportunity and space to influence
society, and most of them, by the vocations they have enjoyed access to
society, they can determine the cadence of politics in a society.
Contrary to popular belief, most revolutions were
conceptualised, planned, and orchestrated by a middle class that the political,
governing, and ruling establishment ignored. This class is usually the first to
point out the inequality of access to political power. With almost
certainty, they will use their influence or available mechanisms to challenge and
ultimately change the status quo. The intercorrelated nature of social and
political status, which defines the middle class in democracies with gross
inequalities like South Africa, makes members of this class strategic elites
who ultimately structure backgrounds as exclusive as those of economic elites.
They are the penultimate strata to be in or out of the higher circles of
society.
This class’s interests, which embody active
diversities in any society, generally become practical politics and thus
structure continual tensions with which the unstable equilibrium of power will
be managed to be about the will of the people. In a report to the British
colonial office, Lord Milner explained the late 1800s and early 1900s black
middle class as having “emerged from mission schools strongly attached to the
ideals of Christianity, wore Victorian attire, adhered to British cultural
values, and put much of their faith in what they referred to as a white sense
of fair play…detached from traditional society, they were employed as teachers,
church ministers, clerks, interpreters and journalists, and aspired to show how
easily Africans could adapt to white civilisation. They envisioned a
‘non-racial civilised’ society where merit counted more than colour”.
Theoretically, they could be dubbed the ‘new black
elite’. They embraced modern political thinking and modern (read Western)
behaviour and practices. They practised a mainstream, European-derived
Christianity and became South Africa’s first generation of African (non-ethnic)
nationalists. It is the extent to which colonialism, apartheid, and the liberal
order that was driven by an imperialist Western global order has allowed
post-colonial and post-apartheid black middle class to be different to the
template of the 1900s, save for new ‘colonial nodal references.
As a self-defined class full of sovereign individuals with
an omnipresent demand to be recognised as the bulwark for full economic
development and success, they tend to see themselves as an institution to be
curated into posterity. The daily decisions they make in their normal
day-to-day work have created a belief that beyond those with political power,
they embody the rest of the power, not mere opinion. If durability is the
essence of a political, constitutional, and democratic order, they are the
background of permanence upon which the power could be sanctified.
The middle class’s ability to on-board and influence rather
than coerce society to its programs, or soft power, is one of the profoundly
undermined determinants of electoral outcomes deep into post-conflict
democratic orders; the 2024 national elections will be no different. The moral
authority of the anti-apartheid struggle was equally a function of the calibre
and breed of leaders who executed a global campaign that was rewarded by a worldwide
statute declaring apartheid a crime against humanity. How the early middle
class, and notably the Mandela-Tambo and others cohort, shaped society's
preferences for the freedom they defined, through appeal and attraction,
cements the power of the middle class in any society.
What is unfortunate about the upcoming elections is
that the depth of discontent within the middle-class points to a condition
where those who need opinions of those confirmed by status or otherwise will be
reliant on members of this class. They command access to most platforms where political
parties seek to be invited or allowed to address them. They are still teachers, journalists, academics, priests, police officers, clerks, lawyers, and leading
members of civil society organisations. Any conceivable institution that has
custody of society, either repeatedly and at determinable intervals, is led,
managed, or dominated by the middle class. They operate most social
infrastructure gates. Those in the celebrity sector, and the most crowd-pulling,
touch society far and near.
It is foolish to think of middle-class
interests as not a factor to impinge upon an ideologically undefined diversity
of voters. The middle class have knowledge and mastery of the terrains of
planting their ideas, which they know will relate to what is going on;
political rhetoric and nostalgia wither in the terrains they work within. CUT!!
Comments
Post a Comment