The leader of society role of the ANC is now reduced to a 42% influence over the most active agency of the state, the government. The decline of the ANC's political power in the aftermath of the 2024 National and Provincial Elections and the concomitant rise of the opposition complex, in its multiple variations, have eroded the ANC's capability to build a National Democratic Society. The execution or completion of the National Democratic Revolution, as a programmatic intervention of the ANC to bring a better life for all, is interrupted. The opportunity to have ANC hegemony presiding over the RSA state is no longer based on an absolute majority; it is now referred to as a component of a negotiated majority at best and the opposition at worst.
Growing
service delivery dysfunctions, a collapsing public infrastructure, rising
unemployment, compromised integrity of political leadership, and poor
maintenance of gained political power have brought the governing party status
of the ANC to an end. Despite it being a liberation movement, the ANC has, in
the past thirty years, accelerated itself to be the 'system' all 'anti-system
activism' could be mobilised against. Its member integrity management
challenges, disengagement with its members within the cognitive elite, and
embracing the commodification of voting conference delegates who determined its
highest leadership levels have decimated its bonds with its core
constituency.
The
mistreatment or disregard of the ANC's past heroes, most of whom were built or
created by it, has established a divide within the liberation movement.
Competitive regional interests, some of which are ethnic, geographic, and
tribal, are increasingly becoming responsible for slowing social cohesion. The
resultant governing order and national vision that will emerge from these
developments are challenging to predict. South Africa's future, imagined
through its leadership, will proceed according to new interpretations of the
liberation promise in the Constitution.
The
sheer number of political parties that contested the 2024 elections indicates
the rise or existence of a consolidated anti-ANC or reigning establishment
constituency. Instead of engaging with the discontents of this constituency,
sometimes led by influential members of society who are its members, the ANC
dismissed them as counterrevolutionaries, racism-inspired opponents,
self-indulgent individuals, and contracted agents of geopolitical or economic
interests. With the RSA economy continuing to propel a few to be the wealthiest
and the majority of the population economically fragile, everything about
government becomes easy to classify as a system to fight against. The
antagonism between the equity promise of democracy and capitalism's commitment
to unequal riches has made political parties see themselves as either people-centred
democracy or interests-driven democracy.
For
a while, especially in the second fifteen years of post-apartheid South Africa,
corruption and its adjunct state capture have been foregrounded as the
animating force behind the social discontent that was engulfing several aspects
of being South African. The brute truth is that the rise of movements like
economic freedom in our lifetime, radical economic transformation, no-fee essential
services demanding organisation and social justice demanding civil society
formations are the animating force behind seeing the ANC as the establishment
or system to be against. Interestingly, nine years of the second fifteen years
of democracy had the executive authority of the Republic vesting in Zuma as
Head of State. Ramaphosa was the second in charge of the same executive
authority for four of the nine years. In person-year terms, we have had
thirteen person-years put into the nine years of the executive authority of the
Republic.
Wasted
or otherwise, the thirteen person-years that ended when Jacob Zuma was recalled
and the aftermath were the most unstable and tumultuous in the history of the
ANC. The pinnacle of this phase of ANC instability has been the formation of
COPE, EFF, and MK Party, as well as the deregistration of NUMSA as part of
COSATU and the formation of SAFTU as a new trade union federation. The
anti-corruption and state capture drive, which culminated in several
commissions of inquiry and Public Protector reports, had Jacob Zuma as the
dominant subject and footnote. As a result, the person of Zuma grew into a
political enigma representing dimensions of ANCness few could keep in the air
as they worked on the renewal of the ANC.
Because
he was made the face of corruption without being found guilty, he was given
those prosecuted without a guilty verdict as a constituency. Because he was
'sentenced' to imprisonment without the benefit of a trial and appeal, he
inherited a constituency of those who suffered at the hands of the criminal
justice system in similar circumstances. Because he was made the face of Zulu
Nationalism and tribalism, he inherited the constituency that believed in what
he was manufactured to be. The many persons the system defined him to become
became social and political capital he banked for effective use when he needed
them in their asset character.
Barely
taken seriously, especially after recall and subsequent sentencing to a jail
term, when he launched his second coming into politics by announcing his
relationship with MK Party, Zuma became a self-invited or gate-crushing
proverbial gorilla on a dinner table South Africaness was being served. His
re-entry blew apart the economic establishment consensus that would have
consolidated the neoliberal agenda and created Parliament as a bastion of
government by a majority of minorities, with the country's natural majority
being marginalised from state institutional power. This Zuma did by invoking
land as a national grievance, re-centering the institutions of traditional
leadership, mainstreaming the independent African Churches, positioning as a
non-west and pro-east nodal person in geopolitical terms, and problematising
the incumbent ANC President as the reason for the crisis of leadership inside
the ANC.
His
insistence that he was on a mission to rescue the ANC from itself, and hence
the use of the ANC's heritage assets and rituals, was a stroke of political
genius. He knew that the steady drifts of in-ANC established factions or
orientations toward pro-market, neo-liberal, and West-looking positions were
not driven by an equally matching shift in ANC membership or public opinion. He
understood that his claim of continued membership of a non-Ramaphosa-led ANC
was not only too big an asset to let go but would create intrigue within the
ANC that his discontent would be sufficient to start a fierce succession battle
he, alone, could regulate. Thabo Mbeki seems to have seen this move.
The
rise of the MK Party, and if seen outside the ANC, also the demise of the ANC,
is best explained as the second rejection of a section of the in-ANC
establishment and its failure to live up to the liberation commitments the ANC
have made to the people of South Africa. History has either positioned this
election to truncate the march to the total emancipation of Africa with South
Africa as the strategic political nodal point or the MK Party as the magnet
around which an actual patriotic front could be established to give proper
content and context to the national dialogue President Mbeki is so correct
about its need.
What
happened is that the MK Party's entry into the political landscape might have
unmasked the narrative we were all buying about coalition governments'
desirability without interrogating what people are coalescing about. We know
that comprehensive human emancipation is a precious achievement, requiring a context-sensitive
architecture. The ANC has, for the most part, been such an architectural
building. The extent to which it can still be trusted is what the emerging
power configurations of this election will help us understand. CUT!!!
Katika
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