If stadium filling is an indicator of
voter support for political parties, the battle is thus far between the ANC and
the EFF. The EFF filled the Calabash and Moses Mabhida, and the ANC filled
Mbombela and Moses Mabhida. Both are promising siyangqoba rallies to confirm
who has a greater mass convening prowess. However, during an election season,
the certainty sequence ends with voter numbers and data when votes are counted.
Stories, myths, and show-of-force rituals are essential components of the value
chain of the vote-for-me; they mean nothing if not translated into actual
countable votes. How parties sway public opinion is an art whose science has
little to do with the truth in our evidence about their performance. Instead of
religion being an opiate for the masses, if Marx were born in this generation,
he would have concluded that political promises and party political gimmicks
are an opiate for the voters.
To the opposition complex, the 2024
elections are more about ensuring that the governing party is not getting the
50% threshold. Political party funding objectives by South Africa's wealthy are
unequivocal about creating a coalition government. To this effect, a political
narrative, or a story that has the potential to change how people make
political decisions, has been unleashed on the desirability of coalition
government as an antidote to the ANC’s hegemonic hold on political power. The
political narrative of a below 50% performance by all political parties has
been spun to levels where many voters are fascinated by its regime change
potential. Despite its intriguing relationship with the liberation promise,
people believe it has been truncated by corruption, greed, and a
stubborn-to-change template of economic dominance by a few.
Since the 2016 local government
elections, the constellation of narratives that saw South Africa's economic
nodal points falling into the hands of the opposition complex has been
converging to create a story that coalitions are the saving grace for the democratic
order. Manufacturers of consents know very well that voters make political
decisions against a backdrop of narratives, whence the significant investment
in the story of the majority made up of minorities as a form dividend of the
liberation struggle. The coalition government story has developed into a
political contagion whose spread has infected a significant portion of
influential leaders with impeccable anti-apartheid struggle credentials.
South Africa might be under the spell
of a highly funded, nurturant political parent mindset committed to protecting
the reigning political economy as the context of all contexts. Given the
inaugural government of national unity, the RSA democratic order was, from the
onset, built on a nurturant principle. The nurturers might be funding political
parties to monopolise nurturing the political future of RSA.
What the new political narrative seems
to be struggling to neutralise is the true narrative of demographic inequality,
poverty, and unemployment. It has been unable to lighten the influence of
apartheid history, its visible effects on society, the continued benefits its
outcomes still define access to economic opportunity, and the stubbornness of
the economic templates of dominance to at least yield to what the Constitution
expects. Inevitably, this creates new electioneering juggernauts with similar
policy objectives, thus creating a majority of minorities favourable to the
genuine political aspirations of the majority, which is restitution and pursuit
of non-racial equality.
Given that poor people are generally
optimistic about the politics of alleviating their plight, they lack sobriety
about the downside and consequences of unrealistic electoral promises. The
increasingly significant role of the social grant system in mobilising voter
support from the poor has had a fundamental effect on the character of RSA
political narratives. This condition explains why the vote of the poor is a
target for splitting by self-appointed nurturers. In a sea of despair and
hopelessness, audiences to political rhetoric are highly receptive to
optimistic statements. Irrational political exuberance, the psychological basis
for some of the voter responses to unrealistic electoral promises, might be a
bubble whose result may debunk the myth of a less than 50% performance by the
governing ANC.
The regime change playbook etched in
the rejection of the liberation promise in the Constitution has kept the
governing ANC relevant in the lives of those its policies seek to better their
lives. The overstating of the ANC as a threat to what are otherwise ill-gotten
gains of the apartheid system has underestimated the moral authority to better
the lives of the majority the ANC has earned through struggle. The victories
declared after the 2016 and 2021 local government elections failed to
anticipate the scale of the chaos, which has collapsed governance in those
metropolitan municipalities.
The preference of political party
funders to believe in a "regime change process which allows them to solve
their problems with the economic transformation approach of the ANC by removing
it and replacing it with a less offensive coalition opposition complex, is in
many ways flawed and condescending. It is apparent to the naked eye that
private sector funding of political parties is a statement of discontent with
the current arrangements voters have determined in 2019. Without other
opportunities to show their discontent about how the economy treats them,
voters know what is best for them and who can be trusted to execute the task,
notwithstanding capability challenges.
The funding determined the command
power of RSA's democratic order nurturers, which has asserted its order seems
to have succeeded in subordinating the entire political party complex to a
market-friendly political order. Within the market-friendly contestants for
political power, a hierarchy has developed where 'the different degrees of
coercion- autonomy, bargaining and reciprocity' define the character of RSA
political order. The pretence in public by the opposition complex that they
will bring a rival political hegemony to that of the ANC when all of them are
bound to the hip by a profoundly liberal order promoting rule-based
constitutional order makes a farce of their regimen change ambitions. This might
make the ANC's performance less than 50% in the next election mythical. CUT!!!
Mandates work against freedom and diversity; laws require everyone to follow the same rule. Policy makers who set mandates may have limited knowledge and could make laws that don’t suit complex systems. These weaknesses should nudge governments toward caution and empirical research when establishing new mandates.
The way society relates to a democratic order has literally changed the type of citizen most constitutions define.
The rule of law, which is a modern day acceptable choice architecture, is a background of permanence upon which any 'deployed' official will operate it; it is in South Africa the context of all contexts pertaining to the constitutional order.
The sum total values the human rights chapter of the RSA Constitution represent are autonomy, human dignity, democracy, and public welfare.
Applied to the fullest they will constrain political and economic power induced actions, and provide criteria for the adjudication authority of the state to independently judge human and institutional actions.
The public power or legislated environment is characteristically supposed to have already embraced its reconciliation of public interest before the human element inherent in people as organs of state assume the appointed or elected roles.
This means those operating as appointed organs of state, and to the extent that they are not representative of any political or otherwise coalition of interests, otherwise also known as political parties, will be expected to make public service and administration choices within a framework of choice architecture that shapes their options, the Constitution.
In a representative democracy, and where the arrangements about the representation are agreeable to society, only those structures with the authority to change arrangements can recalibrate the choice architecture established by law and what ever enjoys supremacy in a sovereign environment.
In South Africa the choice architecture for public service and administration is limited by the Constitution and the rule of law. This means appointed public servants can only be commissioned. Elected officials, who will at all material times be deployed, will, and where the choice architecture framework allows, nudge the system to have a bias towards whence they are deployed. Otherwise where there are grey areas influence of the choice architecture parameters will be defined by interests as the currency of politics.
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