SIPHUMAPHI NA SI NJE: WHERE DO WE ORIGINATE HOW WE ARE?

At the launch of the ANC  in 1912, the unity of African Tribes and the exclusion of Africans defined and determined the political history of what became the Republic of South Africa. The ultimate prize of establishing a Native Congress was to guarantee enfranchisement and representation in the emerging architecture of political power. The seeds of a political system where democracy for those who vote guarantees their equality, with the undergirding economic system not guaranteeing equal opportunities, were planted then. The paradigm of freedom for the native congress became inclusion in the system, and once inside, recalibrated its templates of all dominance. The extent to which this foundational reality has been abandoned is yet to be seen as inclusion, which happened in 1994. 

 

The ANC is now part of the system, if not the system itself; it is included. It is also the true animating force behind the policy trajectory South Africa has been following for the past thirty years. It moved the most exuberantly down whatever economic path South Africa finds itself in, either through conscious effort facilitated by the constitutional order it adopted in 1996 or sheer loyalty to its foundational character in 1912, and subsequent redefinitions as its monumental policy documents such as Imvo za Bantu, the 1949 Program of Action, the Freedom Charter, the Morogoro Resolutions, the Kabwe Ideations, the Harare Declaration, and its various Conference resolutions. 

 

With the system being 114 years old, it is now entrenched if the 1910 Union Constitution is taken as the inaugural legalisation of arrangements with which South Africans agreed, all-inclusive or otherwise, to govern themselves. Its optimisation over the 114 years was, in the main, the discontent of its legitimacy or authority to exist based on the will of those it governed. It mutated from being a colonial construct with profound mercantilist value extraction characteristics to a racial oligarchy which excluded 'non-whites'- to a non-racial inclusive construct whose authority culminated in the 27th April declared a 'freedom day'. The system is at present compliant with the 1955 declaration that ‘no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people’, as it operates through ‘freely elected representatives’.

 

The transitions from excluding those then called non-white to non-racial inclusion have focused on optimising the system rather than bringing about fundamental structural changes on the templates of dominance accompanying the system. The persistence of referring to the post-1994 era as a democratic breakthrough on the one hand and 'Freedom Day' celebrations on the other suggests unresolved ideological questions remain. This has turned the registration and alteration of interests within the system into a contested arena for political coalitions and other social formations. The system's survival will continue to be determined not just by its legal standing, enshrined in the country's supreme law, but also by its ability to address the pressing societal issues. 

 

If there is any rise of discontent about the system, it would be the direct consequence of loosening the bond between the governed and the representatives they elect. The increasing perception that political parties serve a narrow elite of career politicians and insider interests has generally been the source of system delegitimisation unless an ideological contest exists in how the state and the democratic order should be. In a society with a preponderance of people in a generation that believe they are all leaders, the risk of mavericks exploiting fissures in the system grows commensurate with how the system ignores the majority of those it should make their lives better.

 

As post-liberation governing parties get sucked into the working of systems and their subtle and overt ideological biases, the elitist advantages and trappings of assumed power might be a constraint to fracture the templates of dominance if they advantage the new elites. This conundrum has pitted ideologically congruent leaders of liberation movements against each other, often at the expense of service delivery exigencies that come with post-liberation reconstruction and development. 

 

The mushrooming of political discontent in South Africa, as manifested by creating political parties and splits, indicates a loosening bond between the liberation-promised voters and those they borrowed the public power to deliver. The reality is that service delivery as a measure of political system legitimacy, especially where the issues of disenfranchisement are resolved, has become critical in a more uncertain and economic shock-prone system. Yet the legitimacy of political elites is in retreat for various reasons, with ethicalness at the top of the pack.

 

In the search for legitimate and ethical leadership, political systems are witnessing the fragmentation of decision centres, unprincipled and sheer oppositional coalition arrangements, growing trust deficits between the state and its critical social partners, rivalrous relations amongst political parties that are polarising society and impacting on social cohesion- conditions that have begun to reverse the nation-building gains RSA started in 1994. 

In his inaugural speech as an elected president of the country in 2019, President Ramaphosa spoke of a social compact. If there is a problem in South Africa that he accurately diagnosed and never took deliberate steps to deal with, it is necessary for a social compact. The governing party is undergoing a very turbulent renewal process. The nation cannot wait for that process. Still, through the vehicle of the state and within the lawful framework set in the Constitution, the President, whomever he will be after 29 May, can redefine a new trajectory for South Africa.