Beyond Tintswalo demands the better of us.

Published in The Sunday Times 07 July 2024, captioned "The sprouts of reactionary nationalism."

When Tintswalo turns sixty and thinks of the moment that marked the historic point of departure of our democratic order, the 2024 National Elections will loom large. The moment when the liberation movement and its allies faced the prospect of losing political power because those it governed on their behalf had lost trust in its ability to deliver the liberation promise in the Constitution they negotiated. The rise of the proportional representation system to regulate absolute majority power has seen South Africa entering a phase of coalition government as a way of building national unity and social cohesion. Only in 1994 has RSA been endowed with a firmament of cooperation and leadership, despite being thinly spread, to consolidate the legal social justice gains and the economic justice deficits into a program South Africans can work on together. 

 

Despite the near-collapse of the constitutional order and the ongoing legitimacy crisis, it has shown remarkable resilience. Even as a significant body of influential individuals within the governing ANC has given up on it, the constitutional order has not faltered. The declaration by one of the influential political parties, post-2024, that the constitution is the source of several dysfunctions in society made it a target of review in the event of a two-thirds majority vote. Constitutionalism is poised for a protracted tension with a resolute new leader in the opposition benches. This has fractured the consensus threaded on a liberal order pursuing constitutional democracy. South Africa will instead be defined by struggles of fighting the constitutional order, hegemonic struggles on which order suits the country, unstable coalition government transitions at subnational jurisdictions, and sprouts of reactionary ethnic nationalisms. 

 

However, what is inevitable is that RSA will always be a rules-based democracy. The Constitution is the Supreme Law and drives constitutional and democratic order. The rule of law reigns, providing a sense of security and stability. To the extent that our rules are equal and fair, it is a Liberal Democracy. Her rules and their regularity define the order that it is. Under these circumstances, we should compose various permutations of coalition arrangements that embrace and sustain the country's chosen order. The resultant tensions that we have as a society, and without our permission, have foregrounded the realities of our power relations to levels where those who wanted the abuse of historical advantage and those who sought to abuse the advantage of majoritarianism are both exposed by the search for social and economic justice that the Liberal Order we chose is about. We are better because we could differ.

 

As a Liberal Democracy, we should be jealous of our ability to recreate national unity through institutions the Constitution has created when there are threats of disunity. We should appreciate our institutional capability to establish and shape rules and norms that are friendly to the open society we have become, the rule of law, and human rights. For  Tintswalo, 2024 should be the beginning of an era when the scaffolds for liberal democracy set by the electoral outcome were less about the triumphant march to a liberal order than about pragmatic, cooperative solutions to the national dangers arising from interdependence. The generational mission of Tintswaloes should be how they bring economic justice and freedom into the centre of the unfolding Liberal Democracy issues in their lifetime. It cannot be a liberal democracy unless the templates of economic dominance created by colonialism and apartheid are fractured. 

 

The true impact of apartheid on the majority of South Africans and the wasted opportunity to reverse the skills gaps over the past thirty years of democratic governance will characterise the race and class rivalries which might threaten the democratic and constitutional order. The tidal wave of science, technology, and industrialism 'is pushing and pulling societies into increasingly complex and interconnected ecosystems in South Africa; the fate of their past might enslave a class and race-defined reality in the Tintswalo generation. Liberal Democracy is thus threatened by what many don't have rather than what the few believe can always do for the many. 

It cannot be correct only to valorise the democratic order that it embraces self-determination, individual rights, economic security, and the rule of law—the very cornerstones of our order, and not berate the templates of economic domination that choke GDP per capita growth in a minerals and resources endowed economy like South Africa. The institutions of economic governance require recalibrating to be consistent with the open society pursuing political environments the constitutional order has created. Maybe the time to think of 'human economic rights' has arrived in South Africa and the world. What should be unique about the new economic rights system is its capacity to be an additional self-correction mechanism for the 'market' and 'capitalism' when profit blurs the rise of greed and the absence of conscience. 

As the parenting community of Tintswalo is plotting a National Dialogue, it is the better of Tintswalo that the future expects. For example, when the democratic order was threaded, a basic structure of the Constitution was agreed upon upfront before a Constituent Assembly could get into the business of drafting or negotiating; basic structure principles for the economy will need to undergird the National Dialogue. This should emerge as a framework with practice codes that create predictability for economic investment. The state, private sector, and society troika should be defined in terms of the political, investment, and social capital value they all bring to RSA incorporated. As Tintswaloes are giving birth to the next generation, what the dialogue achieves should be a different story. CUT!!!