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What the RSA opposition fails to master.

 South Africa has arrived at a stage where its politics are shaping into two dominant orientations, with rats and mice falling between the uncovered spaces. Two nodes are developing, albeit with ideological overlaps, the intersection of which is an area the economic establishment wishes could be occupied by a pliant minority party with its interests as the context of all political contexts in South Africa. Having succeeded in influencing the Constitution as a broadly interpretable supreme law of the country and ensuring the foundational interpretations are settled in the apex court, what is still outstanding is the control of the executive authority of the Republic. 

Opposition politics has been about managing the impact of RSA's past injustices on how the future turns out to be for those who benefited. A new breed of opposition focuses on the governing party's lenience in dealing with the injustice of the past. The common objective of anti-corruption and state capture created the truly non-racial opposition space. Whereas these look to be in sequence, they are scaffolds of one opposition narrative and complex. Service delivery and the macroeconomic environment featured mostly in party manifestos, but could not mainstream these as the core context. 

 

The lived experience of the majority of voters, which had the consequence of anything or anyone supported by the economic establishment, in particular the white one, represents what cannot be agreed with. Anyone who demonstrates an appetite to fracture templates of dominance better than the governing party stands a chance of being allowed to govern. This context is so strong that non-qualifying candidates become heroes, notwithstanding their being at variance with the rule of law as the overarching founding value of RSA. 

 

How voters are approached during election time has become a science that political parties must master. The psychology and context of a majority excluded from the main political economy theatre dominate this science's elements. Some political party leaders have a sociological resonance with the established authority systems in many households. For. Instance, the conduct of leaders like Zuma is not uncommon; in some quarters, he is a fraction of the worst and better many aspire to become. 

 

The uBaba designation is sociologically deeper than meets the eye. The eldership system that resuscitated the ANC election after it pulled out of retirement and the other 'uBabas', Ntates, and Tatas is also more profound. The depth of impact of supporting anything or anyone that rebels has had such an impact that reconstruction or construction of the future is perpetually dependent on understanding first what to deconstruct. A thesis of what is to be is incomplete unless an antithesis is given airtime. Leaders know more about what it can't be than what it should be. 

 

It is the mastery of this psychology that will come with a breakthrough. With all the contextual discontents defining Rwanda, the current leadership, which operates with a thesis of what they want to be, is the new magic driving development in that country. The attitude of focusing on where society wants to be; defines several competitive nations. Those who continue to win elections are good at problematising the past without dealing with the present. Until the future is seen differently, the past will define voter behaviour and attitude. CUT!!!

 

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