Has the MK Party scuppered the GNU as a RET deterrence?

This has been published in TimesLive 27 November 2024

Establishing the Government of National Unity (GNU) has been lauded as the best way to govern South Africa. It is the culmination of a decades-old sought-after political alternative to apartheid by the liberal centre: the protection of minority rights without undermining majority party influence and governance. Parties with majority influence and support in the country have become candidates for hegemonic or ideological mergers and acquisitions. Radical Economic Transformation (RET) is a significant factor in this political landscape, as it represents a call for economic freedom and a challenge to the status quo. 

 

Because of its political brand equity and the ease of acquiring its membership, the African National Congress (ANC) has made it one of the capturable political movements of our time. The ANC, with its history of struggle against apartheid, its overall legitimacy to govern, and the moral force of its restitution and retribution programs, has a significant influence on South African politics. However, this influence also makes it vulnerable to maverick and radical breeds of politicians. 

It would be expected that not all of what the ANC stands for enjoys the support of all South Africans. It still stands out as a global moral leader against apartheid and any form of human stereotyping. The economic status quo of South Africa cannot easily coexist with what defines its past, present, and future. 

Not since the call for economic freedom in our lifetime by a generation of the ANCYL, which morphed this call into Radical Economic Transformation, has the ANC's approach to this aspect of transformation been a tremor to the economic Establishment. However, after the in-ANC Establishment responded relatively moderately, the state capital tension moved from confrontation. 

An economic transformation stalemate condition was foregrounded. Strategic and influential RSA think tanks were provoked into developing a non-racial elite consensus that would actively reshape the political and social balance of power. The Cyril Ramaphosa anti-corruption and state capture, which represented a dimension of the reshaping strategy, threatened the RET's ability to project political power and significantly diminished its ability to deter Ramaphosa's anti-corruption and state capture interventions. While the RET advocates, most of whom were liquidated by a guilty-by-association to a well-branded and communicated anti-corruption and state capture posture, were weakened, the socio-economic reality of RSA made this a short-term victory. 

In the long term, the radical economic transformation appeal, especially outside the purview of moderates in the ANC, would be an asset for any individual or organisation wanting to start a social revolution or a political party with RET as its animating force and motive. What has seemed to be a greater risk to the status quo is when the ANC becomes that organisation. The democratic and liberal alliance, mainly consisting of RSA's advanced elites and 'multiparty' establishments, started working on a process to restrain the potential of the ANC leading a theory-less RET program and instead mastermind a process to stabilise the balance of political and social capital power. 

 

With declining electoral fortunes since the 2014 national elections and subsequent unseating from power in major urban centres of RSA, the possibility of no absolute power to govern at the national level spurred the Establishment to think of deterrence to truncate a social revolution. 

It would ultimately come to the Establishment's ability to alter the economic freedom's cost-benefit calculus in our Lifetime-RET complex to prevent an undesirable capital status quo. The brute truth is that deterrence is not the end of a matter but a measure to prevent an adversary from crossing a specific line. The instability-stability paradox that played itself in municipal coalition governments was pivoted as a somewhat panacea to dealing with corruption and state capture as appendages of an absolute power to govern context. Two conditions to get a less than 50% performance by any political party were modelled: voter apathy and an increase in contesting political parties. 

The post-2021 local government elections and the political instability that comes with it ignited a need for dialogue about the possibility of this repeating itself in 2024. While governance stability was the friendlier agenda item, the emerging elephant in the room was what would happen if the EFF entered into a coalition with the ANC. The planning context flipped quickly into this mode and a coalition between the ANC and DA. The GNU concept and the need for a national dialogue became the most viable deterrents against an ANC-EFF coalition government. 

The grand plan to shape decisions on how to act once the 2024 elections have happened was to be scuppered by the unapologetic and somewhat military intelligence-style resurgence of Jacob Zuma, the person and the MK Party as the institutional locus for an alternative to the ANC. With the third largest party status, a reservoir of ANC heritage, significant proven support in KZN, and growing discontent about service delivery, the GNU arrangement might catalyse a social revolution. The exodus of political mobilisation talent from the ANC and EFF, the consolidation of Independent African churches behind the Zuma-MK Party complex, and RSA socioeconomic challenges are decisively redefining the deterrence dynamic that the fragile GNU is arguably all about. The unconfirmed reports of in-ANC sleepers point to a brittle GNU coalition arrangement. CUT!!!