The NDR-GNU paradox is the new battle.

This was published in the Sunday Times of 21 August 2024 under the headline: The NDR-GNU PARADOX IS THE NEW BATTLE. 

Does the NDR still have one centre, or is it still being pursued? Have we moved into a world with one NDR objective being pursued by multiple processes (of struggle) in different membership forms by 'revolutionaries'? The tensions which characterised the NDR were contained by the lived experience of apartheid and the unifying objective of getting rid of its relics. However, the long-term cause of today's political estrangement in RSA was the CODESA settlement or accord. In that case, the short-term catalyst is the period between the announcement of Zuma's leadership of the MK Party and the May 2024 election outcome: a no absolute majority power context. 

Over the past few months, the struggle for political dominance in South Africa has intensified to unprecedented levels. The lines of political conflict have shifted, and the traditional opposition role in RSA politics has transformed. The core principles of the former liberation movement have been repackaged into digestible ideological positions for emerging anti or pro-establishment movements. However, in terms of political power, a group of moderates and proponents of the global liberal order, whether consciously or not, now hold the reins. 

The National Democratic Revolution, a process of struggle that aims to transfer (political, economic, and social control) power to the people, arguably the basis of policy in the ANC, might be a stranded ideological framework as a process. The GNU, despite the ANC leading it, has to date been paraded as the will of the people and arguably emblematic of 'power' being transferred to the 'proverbial' people. With regard to the NDR's objectives to build a non-racial, non-sexist, united, democratic, and prosperous RSA, responsibility and accountability to ensure they are achieved have been bequeathed to the constitutional and democratic order. That it is constitutional to pursue these objectives liquidates any claim by any political party that it alone can deliver on the NDR's promised objectives.

The GNU's paradox comprises the ANC, which pursues the transfer of power to the people, and the DA, whose posture is to regulate, if not truncate, how that power, if any, should be transferred. Managing this paradox can only be a genius of the ANC's historical strategy and tactics prowess, which might not be convincing to sections of its membership. To date, the ANC-in-the-GNU still has to prove that it can pursue two contradictory goals simultaneously: to transfer power whilst being part of the system which sustains it where it is. To do that, it might have to invoke the alliance-building prowess bequeathed to it by the OR Tambo-led' mission in exile', which navigated either the West or East Cold War divide with a West and East collaboration posture, which liquidated the apartheid system into a permanent crime against humanity. Notwithstanding though, a possibility exists that Luthuli House could be forced to choose between risking the edifice of the NDR to transfer power and appeasing global liberal establishment aggression in ways that could ultimately lead to much graver threats to the sustainability of the reigning constitutional order and stability of its consequent democratic order. 

The supremacy of the RSA Constitution subjugates all objectives at variance with what the NDR set as a pathway for post-apartheid RSA. Any coalition or alliance, democratic or progressive, established to pursue the preamble of the RSA constitution, its founding values, and the Bill of Rights will be legal and legitimate. The battle, therefore, has been reduced since 1996 to the point where hegemony prevails over the supremacy of the NDR objectives chiselled into the RSA Constitution.

The process of transferring power to 'the people' is the new platform of contestation. It has created a new official opposition complex and centre, with the ANC as the new establishment and system being a force to be antagonised. The fact that those who oppose it use leftist rhetoric and nomenclature should not mislead thinkers and analysts to abrogate the new complex, the title of the new left. South Africa still has to mature its left into a distinct, organised, ideological construct; the 'two-stage theory, which anchored the tripartite alliance, diffused the capacity of the left to develop independent of the dominant tendencies which engulfed the alliance. The triumph of the liberal centre within the ANC is traceable to this reality.

 

The settling-in of the ANC as the centre of RSA's establishment, including the latest GNU partnership arrangements, has made it the system that any revolution against the state will have it as a force to be antagonised. Only its capability to deliver the liberation promises chiselled into the 1996 Constitution will sustain it at the centre of power, irrespective of having no absolute power threshold. The NDR as a process to transfer power character of the ANC has yet to be theorised into the new form it has assumed as leader of the GNU, and thus the system or establishment.

The gathering of anti-establishment or system forces as the new opposition should be understood in the context of the political power-grabbing opportunities it presents. The latest opposition centre or complex might be ahead of the ANC in defining the current phase of the NDR, which they now claim as theirs. Similarly, the new in-establishment partners of the ANC might be hard at work acquiring or merging with the ANC's Liberal substrate of members to guarantee the liberation movement brand behind the pursuit of the legitimacy crisis global liberal order.

 

Given that revolutions are explosions produced by forces that use widespread suffering and discontent, and after gathering strength for an onslaught on a reigning order, the RSA reality might be the best breeding field for a bread-and-butter issues-inspired revolution. The resentment of the establishment could easily be appended to the impact of poverty, inequality, and joblessness now attributed, rightly or wrongly, to the establishment-approved GNU. The legitimacy deficit represented by more than 50% poor voter participation is social or political capital for a bread-and-butter revolution. 

The resignation of EFF Deputy President Floyd Shivambu and the announcement that he will be joining the MK Party, which makes him the latest acquisition of the outside-of-establishment forces, should be seen in the context of such consolidations. This convergence of the RET and expropriation without compensation complexes will be in the choir sheet to characterise the new political choruses and how society is organised to win the ultimate prize of politics: government. The mistake of labelling it the left is already gaining traction at the expense of its nationalist, in certain contexts, ethno-nationalist grievance advancing character. With the ''ational''in the A-N-C having suffered the crisis of acceptance within the ANC, whence it being a ‘'ational question’' the ''ational''is now also available for the new opposition complex to reinvent or maximise voter support.

 

The declaration by inside-the-ANC leaders that "we of the congress youth league know that though the form may be different, the content is the same: as long as you move to ...advance economic freedom in our life, you are one of us" is a sure sign that the drift away from pursuing the NDR as a process of struggle is a grievance within high echelons of political leadership. As a component of the establishment, it is gradually becoming unimaginable how the ANC could successfully transfer power as envisaged in the NDR as a process of struggle beyond the franchise. The content of what it now stands for and will fund through state resources is regulated by the extent to which it is legal and within the dictates the supreme law of the land has set. 

The democratic alliance consummated in terms of the GNU statement of intent and its exclusion of would-be claimants in the struggle to transfer power have created a new official opposition complex. Floyd Shivambo, an astute anti-establishment activist, ''decision to abandon the Julius Malema ship, notwithstanding the unconfirmed report of tensions that were developing between him and Malema, will be a shoe-fit into an otherwise systems and management-challenged MK Party-led opposition complex. The unfortunate collateral is that he leaves a significant leadership and ideation gap in the EFF, which might signal the beginning of its demise. In the MK Party, Floyd Shivambu might lead the reinvention of the stranded NDR as a process to transfer power; on the surface, the appetite appears to be greater therein.

The truth is that the ANC and the DA as coalition options are opposites but interdependent; the democratic order might need them to stay alive or stable. Embracing stability and revolution, predictability and chaos, heritage and renewal, fundamentals and craziness is a mark of outstanding institutional leadership. Under the circumstances, albeit it could have been better, the GNU, as a paradox, has bought RSA time to reimagine its political future again. The supposedly incomplete transfer of power to the ''proverbial people and the completeness of the liberation struggle' the people see in the constitution is paradoxical, whence RSA politics have not settled on the ''how do we deliver services to those that voted us into power by political parties. CUT!!!