Before the 16 December 2024 announcement by Jacob Zuma, it seemed
as if the vision of having a South Africa governed by a funded consensus was on
track. There was an implicit understanding that a coalition of the ANC and the
DA would be the political silver bullet to the unfolding service delivery and
ideological woes inflicting the democratic order. The opposition complex
was already working on a moonshot pact whose intention was to “unite all the
forces that stand opposed to the ANC and the EFF”. There were also moves to
consolidate stranded members of the ANC from the UDF generation through Roger
Jardine’s Change Starts Now party.
As this cocktail of
coalition government is packaged, the left 'looking' and 'believing' coalition
was recovering from a liberal order endorsed by Ramaphosa’s presidency. The
ANC, in particular, is fighting a rigorous, sophisticated, and highly funded
hostile takeover by a global liberal order. The liberation struggle parties and
their splinters have been packaged into a camp targeted not to have complete
control of state power.
With
the emerging conception of democracy by South Africa's political party funders
being a government of the majority of minorities, the single-party majority
rule system has been under pressure. Opposition complex, friendly civil society
movements, and strategic policy think tanks aligned with the global liberal
order have been re-interpreting the Constitution and its human rights system to
favour the status quo through litigation and legal precedence setting. The
courts and the academic media complex have been the platforms for executing the
lawfare strategy.
In
this strategy, the EFF was seen as the spoiler because of its opposition party
status and airtime advantage in any national discourse. The nine cardinal
pillars of the EFF, most of which are the suppressed and airbrushed resolutions
of the Malema-as-President ANCYL, remain instructive to a generation of youth
he led both within and outside the dominant ANC. The "mosquito taken out
of the tent" grew into an elephant outside the tent. Then, 16
December came, and the MK Party threw the preparations for the 2024 liberal and
majority of minorities political system into turmoil. This upended the vision
of a South Africa that was starting to believe the status quo is a function of
the three decades of ANC governing party status and not related to the more
than century-old templates of domination. Notwithstanding the MK Party's reliance on the
"wenzeni-u-Zuma" slogan, it has started raising fundamental
ideological and economic questions. These are templates of domination fracturing questions few political
parties dare to ask.
With
South Africa still battling the legacy of its tormenting apartheid past, the
emergence of the MK party is a part indicator that the country has a political
explosion potential. The response on the person of Jacob Zuma instead
of addressing the issues the MK Party is raising has generated an interest in
why matters of the country are reduced to personalities. The liberation promise
of the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggles is replacing corruption and
state capture as central issues in the upcoming elections. There is a growing
assertiveness to confront the issue of economic freedom in our lifetime as an
antidote to a potential mass insurrection should a liberal coalition have a
breakthrough after the elections. The impending show of force at Moses Mabhida
Stadium by the EFF, the ANC, and the IFP will be an indication of strength in
the wake of the latent growing strength of the new 'adult' in the block.
While
numerical strength will be necessary for the upcoming elections, the
insurrection igniting character of the issues the party manifestos will raise will
be required for voters. Solving the economic transformation discontents of the
country is essential to create the stability of the democratic order. There
should also be a readiness to bargain with those facing the prospect of
incarceration as a result of corruption and state capture. The political party
funding complex should abandon the idea of an ANC-DA coalition; its visible
outputs are persecution instead of prosecution of African executives without
any similar action on non-African transgressions of more significant
proportions.
No
matter what the liberal order does, if it is not part of the economic
transformation package, ferocious resistance will exist. The freedom in our
lifetime generation, which is silent but in the ascendancy in almost all
political parties, including white youth demanding freedom from the yoke of
apartheid ancestry, is growing in hostility to the status quo defending
shenanigans of the CODESA Accord defenders and political mercenaries. Organised
Black Business is about to scream that it can't breathe, given the erosion of
its market base and inability to mobilise funding from a hostile financial services
sector. The cognitive elites of African origin are consolidating into new
narratives and redefining the ideation agenda to respond to the liberation
promise.
Despite these matters being political, the realities of inflation, rising interest rates, the middle-class debt bulge, the growing unemployment of qualified black people (including medical doctors in a worse health outcome phase of the country), and the rising number of Sherrif attachments and bank repossessions to the middle class are so loud that any manifesto that does not address itself to these will be a betrayal. Unless the various parties understand that this election is about whose plight matters, we might be in for a better coordinated July 2021. CUT!!!
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