Society seldom reflects on any other recession but the economic recession. Described as a significant, widespread, and prolonged downturn in (economic) activity, it is deep, pervasive, and lasting. A recession lasts for sustained periods, and recovery never translates into former peaks as new growth trajectories will always begin at the cycle's trough or low base. To recover from a recession, you need a positive growth rate that will use the recession-determined base to calculate new growth.
The
struggle for the South Africa we have today has always been about the
justification of political authority based on the participation and engagement
of citizens in decision-making processes. Simply put, the people's will. The ANC and its institutions'
efficacy in engaging stakeholders and incorporating diverse societal
perspectives defines the legitimacy ecosystem undergirding its historic and
hegemonic influence over society. In negotiating a constitutional
democratic system, the ANC, with its significant historical role, ensured it
anchors the operation of the state on its freely elected representatives to
create a National Democratic Society. They argued that political power was
transferred to the proverbial 'we the people' through this.
The
Constitution of RSA, 1996, is a testament to the significant
peaks of political activity and lived experience in South Africa. The ANC played a pivotal role in its creation, providing a better base for
political stability, growth, and development. Beyond the political legitimacy
the ANC established as an alternative to apartheid South Africa, the 1996
Constitution emerged as the nexus of the normative legitimacy of the democratic
order. It defines the right of all politically arrived-at arrangements and
institutions to have the authority to govern "we the people". This underscores
the ANC's enduring influence on the political landscape.
The
legitimacy of political parties and coalitions to govern us perpetually depends
on our lived experience of their hegemony. To the extent of a significant,
widespread, and marked downturn in their political activity, a political
recession will be experienced at determined intervals. The recessionary cycle
occurs every trough, creating a new cycle that will inevitably lead to a new
base to improve from, but not at the initial peak. For instance, the ANC's
2016, 2019, and 2021 electoral performances reflect a political activity
downturn that preceded the 2024 May elections, confirming the gradually
established new trough from which to recover. Suppose the established
performance trend for political recovery from election results disaster is
pegged at less than 10% growth; in that case, the expected performance in the
next election is pegged at 4%, which would still not result in an absolute
majority to govern. This assumes that other parties do not grow within the trend and target the same voters who cast their ballots.
Even with the social and political capital amassed by a predominating hegemony over society, its trustworthiness, integrity-neutrality, and standing will be crucial in disengaging itself from the recessionary political downturn. Inconveniently, for the recessionary context in which the ANC finds itself, it would require what it has lost to navigate a new or alternative recovery path. It will require political power, (new or refined) purpose, and (renewed or recalibrated) institutional relationships. In its diagnosis of what it requires in systemic terms, the ANC has identified the need to pay attention to the cognitive deficits within its core membership base and, hence, a decision to invest in the knowledgeability of members about the ANC.
Secondly,
it is angling on the normative aspects of being a member of the ANC. While this
aspect is not clearly defined, the workings of the overall member integrity
management system provide cues of the normative expectations to avoid putting
the organisation into disrepute. Couched in dogma and doctrine parlance, the
eye of the needle document, which would benefit from being translated into a
programmatic intervention, is currently the most authoritative document with
sufficient guardrails for the organisation to breathe as it swims out of the
recession.
Thirdly,
the ANC has identified the regulative aspects of being ANC. Like any recession,
the need to know and stick to both the play and rule books creates consistency
in navigating the recession exit process. The ANC's commitment to
pursuing a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, united, and prosperous South
Africa as an overall rule and playbook context stands out as the substrate of
any regulatory context. To operate outside the laws that govern the entirety of
'we the people' will create a duality in which the arbitrary prerogative whims
of what is not legally codified becomes 'law'.
Similarly,
hegemony recessions are identified after they are over. In the political party
or coalition leadership complex, a hegemony recession is variously experienced
and reacted to. As it would occur in an economic recession where industry
sectors would face obliteration as new ones emerge as the new opportunity to
ride the next wave of growth, in hegemony recession contexts, there will be
political parties that lose power, absolute or otherwise, to govern; the will
bleed members and supporters; they will have a realignment of internal party
coalitions and factions; and the emergence of new hegemony alternatives to
their in recession state. At its worst, a hegemony recession fractures the
ideological grounding of political parties and coalitions. However, the ANC's
resilience and leadership function can make the difference between life and
death.
Like
in an economic recession, investors and stakeholders in and of the
hegemony assume a return on investment or relationship survival
tendencies, which are an always fragile ensemble of disintegrations from the
hegemony as a trusted ideational glue. These include funders, fragile
supporters and voters, emboldened adversaries and opposition political parties,
and sovereign hostile geopolitical adversaries. The vulnerability of hegemony
was seen in how the Soviet Union disintegrated into several Central European
nation-states, which rewrote Europe and Asia's geopolitical and geostrategic
calculus. About the ANC, the hegemony recession, in its current and unmanaged
form, is defining new geostrategic arrangements with ascendant hegemonies. The
redefined opposition complexes have created new adversaries on the best way to
be ANC, thus risking the ANC to take a system management posture that estranges
it from its traditional support base. CUT
THE
NEXT RENDITION WILL DEAL WITH WHAT IT WOULD TAKE TO RECOVER HEGEMONY
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