Bottoming up might not catch up with runaway discontent.

 A new political majority might be in the making in South Africa. Eventually, the character of the majority rule we envisaged will inevitably not last longer and might face a tragic end. The runaway discontent of the last three decades' political majority is now an existential risk to the anti-apartheid struggle slogan of black majority rule. 

The experiment of surrendering the souls of sworn adversaries, the ANC and DA, for national unity signifies that new political majorities are about to emerge. Viewed through the historical prism of 2016, 2019, 2021, and finally, 2024, this confirms that even the least expected-to-end order tends to expire in a prolonged deterioration. They do not just happen. 

 

History, ideology, dogma, and nostalgia are giving way to the interests of politicians as individuals, their political parties, and economic establishments. The era of post-liberation euphoria politics is over. Any efforts to stem the tide must recognise that power will never return to its original form or character in politics. It accumulates new interests, networks, and objectives while it has left the domain of those that held it.

 

With the ANC recovering from the May 2024 loss of absolute power to govern, observers wonder whether the liberation movement has reached its liberator pinnacle. There is an ongoing interrogation of whether the GNU is a form of acceptance that a new order has arrived and whether mature choices from RRSA's leadership are required to move on. 

 

In designing political power-sharing mechanisms and managing the transition to the inevitability of a post-2029 RSA—potentially the liberation movement's total loss of political power—the GNU ensures that the irreversible decline of power does not result in chaos. At worst, any ultimate change of political power must not be tantamount to the collapse of the constitutional order and its social and economic justice consensus.

 

As a society, we must all accept that the wreckage of corruption and state capture, the mismanagement of state and party roles, and the trumping of the normative state at the altar of rule-by-party prerogatives created a condition in which no party has absolute power to govern. History does not forgive errors of this magnitude. 

 

The influence of post-May 2024 opposition political parties is 60% and growing. Technically, this means, although denied, that the ANC's hold on state power is anchored by the DA's 21.7% of the national votes. The DA's growth trend and the general willingness of those supporting it to continue supporting it make it an influential substrate of any future coalition arrangement. 

 

Consequently, the democratic order is marching to an era where absolute power to govern is a function of coalition arrangements. The growing political regional rigidities and ethnonational or identity politics will spur new politics of federalism. The default state of RSA democracy will, for most of its future history, be a government of, by, and for the people through a majority of minority parties or constituencies.

 

Notwithstanding the GNU, or 40% showing at the polls being presented as a neo-victory, what has contributed to a post-May 2024 RSA has not significantly changed. Confessions of being "accused number one in the dock on corruption and weak branches" point to the arc of decline bending towards a catastrophic collapse. The succession battles on the periphery of the liberation movement's renewal are usurping the energies required to push back the potential inevitabilities of 2026 and 2029.

 

The announcement by the SACP that it will be fielding its local government candidates is the last straw on the proverbial camelback. It follows hard on the heels of a disintegrating trade union movement that saw COSATU losing the influential NUMSA. The civic movement organised under SANCO is pressured by evidence of poor service delivery to endorse alternative post-May 2024 new opposition complexes. The crisis of the political left and the reality of poverty and unemployment as manifestations of inequality is fast becoming a cocktail for a new social revolution, if not a tragic end of the reigning order. 

 

Unlike in other post-colonial democracies, the loss of political power in RSA will end with a whimper rather than a bang. The process of exiting the chambers of state power will not be evident to the political elite until it has advanced considerably. The legality of the transition and the guardrails the democratic order has entrenched in the Constitution have thus far made accepting regime change easy.

 

The nostalgia for becoming the 14th President of the oldest liberation movement blurs its capability to see the collapsing institutional power that has held it to date. The brute truth is that the exiting 13th President of the ANC serves at the pleasure of its institutional leadership power and less on its organisational prowess, which has woefully collapsed if the claim that branches are its basic units is genuine. 

The inconvenient truth about the GNU is that it is the beginning of a process to displace whatever holds the centre in RSA with the new, and many have not figured out who or what it is. Those opposed to the ANC and still working with it are merely trying to coexist with whatever still holds its power rather than rushing the inevitable takeover of political power. 

Hegemonic prudence and elegance dictate the avoidance of a drastic takeover of political power; the backlash might be opportune for maverick leaders. Changes and remonstrations in the SADC region and the drastic loss of control in local government provide a trailer for society to have the requisite acceptance spirit in the likelihood of a new regime taking over the management of the constitutional order. CUT!!!