When fate decides, even the great obey: Zuma's MK reshapes the in-ANC power politics.

The launch of the uMkhonto we Sizwe political party has upended the normality of established electoral politics. As the liberal establishment is consolidating a consensus on the possibility of a liberal right coalition government, the politics of the historically marginalised are also consolidating into an anti-establishment bloc. Consequently, the post-apartheid political accord seems to be more in crisis than ever. What is emerging is not discontent with the country's politics but how those politics are recalibrating or fracturing the templates of economic dominance. 

Since the adoption of the 1996 South African Constitution, the outcome of the negotiations, which is the primary source of law in the Republic, there have been calls for its review to address the economic transformation gaps it purportedly has not filled. The dominant economic paradigm is that the state should use economic policy reforms to substitute for radical economic transformation and support institutional changes. This view is attracting scorn and rejection. 

Under Nelson Mandela, South Africa signed global agreements that entangled it into architectures its post-apartheid bureaucratic capacity could not deal with. The shift, not abandonment, from the philosophical foundations that instructed the RDP and embraced what GEAR represented created an ideological complexity in which economic direction shifted from the governing party as the centre of policy to organs of state in the economic cluster. These mandate drifts saw the introduction of policies to redefine the developmental role of SOEs, the increased say of the Bretton Woods institutions in economic policy, and the rise of 'multi-racial' monopoly capital as a factor in determining South African politics. 

The battle to capture, control, or influence the state's legislative, executive, and judicial authority became one of the most funded activities by the private sector and is increasingly becoming a political coalition. Public policy review outside the realm of organs of state has been growing through the creation of highly endowed non-governmental organisations and think tanks. These institutions' research and development outputs have become the substrate content the state bureaucracy relies upon for ideation in the policy-making process. Policies that interrogate status are challenged in court, on the streets, and in public participation forums with a sophistication that the new legislators have not advanced to comprehend.  

The rise of the 'leader' over 'the collective' is the new feature of electoral politics. In-political party patronage purchase systems that guarantee success for those who can afford 'in-party' voting farms and factories have been accepted as getting leaders. The constituency system is replacing the party system. The state will be the horse, and the individual leaders will be the jockeys to be betted by those who can afford to gamble. The people will only govern to the extent that the funders of candidates have agreed on what is good for society. 

Since 1994, South Africa has been birthing a new political party for every national and provincial election contest. Most of these parties were breakaways from the governing ANC, save for the latest trend of establishing black-led homes for liberalism. The signs that the ANC's hegemonic hold on South African politics was in decline started to be more apparent in the 2016, 2019, and 2021 elections in all spheres of government. With little evidence to show, it is arguable if this is part of a long-term strategy by the establishment to weaken the ANC purely because of some of its policy positions. 

The brute truth is that there has been ineptitude, government dysfunction, a commission of inquiry reports on corruption, unresolved criminal cases of malfeasance by some influential leaders in the governing elite, increased levels of organs of state capture, disintegrating public infrastructure, and poor performance of the economy with unemployment and poverty as evidence of sieves of state failure. 

The dominant response to these crises has been acrimonious battles within the governing party, using civil society movements to facilitate factionalist succession interests. Reflections of dysfunction were pegged on individual leaders rather than the functionality of the entire political system. Except for Mandela, appraisals of ANC leaders who led the government are most unfriendly from within its ranks. In the unlikelihood of friendly appraisals happening, it has always been to show how the incumbent is not better than his predecessor. There has not been a consistent reporting of ANC performance as a governing party but factional biographical reporting on the "performance of past presidents". This has created permanent factions whose logical end could only be forming new parties. 

 

The response of establishing a profoundly ANC new political party, MK party, which declares that the ANC is the problem, communicates a vote of no confidence in the current leadership to take South Africa out of its self-created quagmire. First, former President Mbeki articulated his discomfort about going on a campaign trail on behalf of the ANC because of the members it has attracted and allowed to lead it at all levels. He boldly asked how do you deal with the fact that a branch leader is a known criminal. Then Dr Wally Serote declared the ANC had failed 'the people'. Mavuso Msimanga resigned from its veteran's league and mother body, and after 'persuasion' and realising 'renewal needs him inside', withdrew his resignation. Few of its prominent veterans are able to sustain a conversation about the ANC without decrying what it has become. 

 

If there was a Richter scale to measure the size of the 'political quake' of Zuma's announcement that he will not be voting for the ANC but the MK party, its reading would help us debunk myths about its impact. Except for proving that no society can rise above the imagination of its leadership unless, through a rebellion or similar, the Zuma action has hallowed the legitimacy of the current ANC leadership to claim the total support of ANC members. The characterisation of the current context in the ANC as being reminiscent of a condition when it was banned in the 60's and thus necessitating the establishment of uMkhonto-we-Sizwe, is an ideological posture which declares it to be either non-existent or, at best, collaboratively similar to the bantustan system.

 

Given the multiplying pressures on a Ramaphosa-led ANC, including from within his NEC, several in-ANC intellectuals have warned of its possible demise and replacement as a governing party. The uncharacteristic readiness to enter into a coalition with 'other' parties confirms a theory that a coalition executive authority will be accountable to Parliament and never to any ideological orientation of one party. Hegemonic battles will be fought in the public arena and be grabbed out of party positions. These theories have as a convergence point that a mandate of the majority of minorities will usurp the liberation promises written into the Constitution in favour of 'Establishment Interests'. This will extend the Establishment's iron grip over the templates of economic dominance and social control. 

 

Even though the current ANC NEC had recently been confirmed at a conference of ANC members in 'questioned' good standing, and Ramaphosa reconfirmed for an unprecedented second term as ANC president, in-ANC mistrust of the process was higher than at any previous point in its three decades as a governing party. The public policy spats and inconsistent applications of its member integrity management system have been eating at its centre's moral authority. There seems to be a 'don't tell about me, I won't tell about you' that runs deeper than the nation would appreciate. 

 

With very little left of his legacy defenders from within the ANC and an almost fractured-by-the-Zondo commission report, Jacob Zuma's move on a Ramaphosa-led ANC has more gains to him than many in the leadership of the ANC. At the end of the day, it might be a triumph of both image and substance for Zuma. The extent to which a Ramaphosa-led ANC will respond in substantive terms might be what this round of the battle for the 'fragile soul' of the ANC is all about.  

In this battle, it will be necessary for those in it to remember, as they think critically about renewal, that they all have the capacity to act in ways that destroy, secede, and potentially sell out the NDR. It is necessary to remember that it is first the potential sell-mutilation within that they must resist and the potential renewalists within that they must rescue; otherwise, as a society, we cannot hope for an end to the downward spiral of the movement. At the end of the day, it was all about the people who should be beneficiaries of the Revolution. Anything less than that deserves rejection. CUT!!!