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Decoding the May 29 election outcome lessons.

The puzzling question about South Africa's construction of a government of national unity is: if the DA evolved into an opposition juggernaut it has become through competition for political hegemony with the ANC, will it ever be able to cooperate with it? With a 22% minority vote, the DA's hegemonic majority mindset has been boosted by the failure of the ANC to muster a 50% plus one majority to dictate the pace and cadence of RSA's constitutional democracy. The 2024 election outcome has upended the template of one single-party dominance and introduced a majority of minorities system the Constitution might have prepared for since its inception. 

The resilience of our constitutional democracy, demonstrated by the ability of political parties to adapt and recover in the face of change, is a reassuring factor. Despite 40% of eligible voters abstaining, the 2024 election outcome, while not a perfect reflection of societal preferences, is a testament to the system's robustness. The need for voter literacy and understanding of their power in shaping governance is a detail that needs to be internalized, but the system's resilience is a source of confidence. 


The leadership demands of managing a post-liberation constitutional democracy are complex and urgent. Leaders must demonstrate resilience in the face of threats to the liberation promise rather than becoming fragile. The loss of the ANC's absolute majority after six terms of office represents a significant shift, pushing the liberation project system to a tipping point. The need for resilient leadership in this new context is paramount. 


The eroded legitimacy to govern RSA with a persistently proven correct assertion that the ANC is a coterie of corrupt individuals has turned off its immunity to losing power entirely in the next election. Given the series approach to dealing with challenges and facing the scaling and swarming tactics of the opposition complex, the ANC will be facing its next traditionally divisive and nostalgia-dependent five-yearly elective 56th conference in 2027, not having recovered from the bruises that came with the 2024 May 29 election outcomes. As a network of cadres, understanding their tasks of protecting the liberation gains and promises, ANC members have failed to connect to a centre that organises them as a response system to the threats of totally losing political power in subsequent elections, especially municipal elections. 


The ANC’s reaction to a GNU to the abrupt change in the political power dynamics displays a character of it being approached more as crutches to stay in power, even if it means getting into bed with an arch-hegemonic rival, the DA. Alternatively, and if the entire ecosystem of RSA political power is considered, the GNU response might also result from a tight feedback mechanism to neutralise oncoming critical political power loss thresholds in subsequent elections. Either way, a continued see-through of political power dynamics creates opportunities to leverage the institutional prowess of being at the helm of the executive authority of the Republic. 


The dynamic of the MK Party, which has positioned itself as the true and pure ANC, has compromised how the ANC can expand the diversity of the social and political capital connections it already has. The bandwidth of liberation struggle history, especially the monopoly of being the party that delivered South Africa from the clutches of apartheid and colonialism, has been reduced, if not limited, by the entry of the MK Party, and this makes it weaker and narrower. The broad church has been disintegrating into distinct formations since 1999, and there has not been a scientific response. The ideological shell the ANC has now or is gradually turning out to be, might be the reason it has been able to courageously flirt with liberal policies, which have emboldened the DA to see a new sweetheart in them going forward.


With multiple executive authority nodes organised as a network of decentralised and almost self-governing parts of one South Africa, the opposition complex has been working on the idea of minority rights and a federal system for as long it has agreed to enter into a political settlement with the one-man-one-vote majority system. History records this idea to have already surfaced in the 1970s when the then PFP, an ancestor-in-law of the DA, facilitated consultations with ‘alternative black leaders to the ANC’. The KZN provincial government of national unity, anchored by the IFP as its legitimation substrate, can dust off the minutes of the KwaZulu Natal Indaba and deliver to the people of KZN; the MK Party would be what the ANC was then.


Strategic centres of influence operating through a federal council system have kept the ideological centre the DA is advancing as a coordinating mechanism, not the centralised control context for all contexts. As leadership flowers appeared, they were allowed to blossom. Leaders in the federal council system do not dispense with hierarchies; they recognise and respect their power, which made the opposition complex grow away from the centre without ditching the hegemonic mandate. 


The capacity of the DA to adapt and work with the ANC is higher than that of the ANC. At first provocation of a possible coalition arrangement, the DA went on an aggressive merger and acquisition of the ANC hegemony model without becoming its crutches not to collapse in the next election. The DA entered the GNU relationship, understanding fully that its resilience as an opposition-cum-potential government-in-waiting isn’t just found in systems it admires but sometimes in systems, it loathes. The ANC brand might be a legitimising path it needs. The character and form of bargaining for cabinet positions by the DA, given the liquidated moral high ground of the ANC and the disinvestment gun on its head, was more of a communication strategy to start the next election campaign. The DA announced that if it does not get what it requested, it cannot be held accountable if the slide continues. 


Being caught between a rock and a hard place might be an understatement to characterise where the ANC is. It is interesting how these events are choreographed with the strength or weakness of the rand. The US bill in South Africa has found humps directly related to how we constitute the GNU. In this circumstance, the ANC had to muscle and push back. Notwithstanding ANCness commanding a split two-thirds majority in Parliament, the ANC continued on a trajectory of a 40% outcome.  CUT!!

 

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