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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