Despite its current challenges, the ANC still holds
the potential to lead society. Like a New Year dessert for comrades, this
hopeful message encourages us to consider the party's future. There is a prevailing
belief that the ANC, in its current state, cannot reclaim its position as the
undisputed Leader of Society beyond its political party identity. While it's
true that 40% of South African voters in the last election indicated that the
ANC's brand should fall below a 50% threshold to govern, the overall influence
of the ANC as a societal leader, which commands more than 50% voter support, is
argued to be the 66% of the ANC votes combined with the parties that split from
the ANC. The concentration of non-voters suggests more structural non-voting
and abstention than voter apathy in its strictest sense, underscoring the
impact of citizen engagement on the ANC's leadership.
This rendition submits that structural non-voting, a
phenomenon where eligible voters choose not to participate in the democratic
process, is a type of voting that occurs when there is a mismatch between citizens'
awareness of voter power, the eligibility of available voters, and the number
of voters that voted in a democracy, given the depth of dysfunction and insufficient
service delivery by any measure. It can be caused by several factors, including
nostalgic loyalty to political parties for reasons other than past performance,
shifts in society's interests in politics, decline of society's belief in the
capability of government to make a difference in their lives, and a structured narrative
to miseducate society about the role and importance of the state in changing
their lives. Structural non-voting can last long and significantly contribute
to a country's overall voter abstention and apathy rate.
The political
party or ideology loyalty trap, common in most post-liberation or post-colonial
democracies, is the predominant motive behind structural non-voting. Voter
apathy, which has grown into a focus in assessing the legitimacy of legislatures
to claim representative authority of citizens, occurs in advanced democracies as
it does in failed democracies. Along the continuum, the reasons for apathy are different,
ranging from higher and functional living standards as a reason for no interest
in politics to lower dysfunctional living standards that have discouraged
voters from believing in the power of their votes, a context that breeds
structural non-voting. On a scale of 0-9, where zero represents apathy due to lower
dysfunctional living standards and nine represents higher and functional
standards, South Africa is a minus-five country, notwithstanding the
speculative character of this submission, given the paucity of data.
The build-up of the 2024 result, which started in
2016, 2019, and 2021, respectively, in the urban nodes of South Africa,
confirmed that the ANC as a political party was losing grip of formal state
power, notwithstanding the social and political capital it continues to command
as a (leader of the) liberation movement. This should not be surprising;
society has, for a third of the period the ANC was a governing party, subjected
to a relentless focus on the conduct of the person of its immediate past
president and a cohort of individuals in leadership positions as a reputation
benchmark for the entirety of the ANC. The resultant political atmosphere was
pervaded to narrate that South Africa was at risk of becoming a failed state if
the ANC continued to have absolute power to govern.
Despite its sterling performances from 1994 and well
into the first term of its immediate past president (IPP), the outlook of the
dominant media-academic-complexes in control of the national narrative
persisted in reports on the conduct of persons with catastrophist vocabularies
that unfairly discounted the cumulative successes of the ANC to date, and in
scale. Sealed from the reputation of costly personal conduct, the policy
trajectory of the IPP will be judged by history as the most deliberate, at
whatever cost, to pursue the implementation of economic transformation policies
of the ANC. Evidence of decisions taken during the IPP term, notwithstanding
the malfeasance and patronage tendencies that soiled the context, is that they
were needle-moving about the true power of SOEs and state procurement as
commanding heights of the economy. The momentum to establish a state bank and
recalibrate the financial services sector to ease debt-granting requirements to
support industrialisation programs was in favour of policy prescripts of the
ANC as a liberation movement.
The welfarist dimension of RSA as a developmental
state, a concept that emphasises the state's responsibility to provide for the
welfare of its citizens, was the basis of the Nelson Mandela launched
Reconstruction and Development Programme and the programmatic fiscal and
monetary policy discipline of the Thabo Mbeki term found expression during the
IPP term. Studies will still have to be conducted, though, whether the policy
engineering during Thabo Mbeki's presidency was the template upon which the
successes during Jacob Zuma's presidency were anchored, or was it merely a
function of the decisive character of JZ, negative or positive, that was at
play. During Zuma's term, the vocabulary of a crisis, fragile, and failing
state became associated with the ANC as a governing party. The precision of
separating the constitutional order the ANC bequeathed its monumental policy
documents into from the institution of the ANC was so clinical that it morphed,
perceptually, into an anti-the-constitution political party despite it being
the only political party with a conference resolution to adopt the 1996
Constitution.
The reputation
costs of corruption and state capture allegations against the ANC's immediate
past president and secretary general have had the most discount rate value on
the ANC's more than century-old accumulated social and political capital and
brand equity. These allegations have significantly tarnished the ANC's
reputation and eroded the public's trust. No amount of spin doctoring will
close the gap; it is a loss and, therefore, a wasted opportunity for some generations
to pay the price if the 2024 election results are insufficient. The revelations
at the Zondo Commission, and other investigation reports before it, are
evidence, valid or otherwise, that will stick on brand ANC until it does well
to society that it can be absolved of the 'guilty verdicts' in the vocabulary
of the 2021 and 2024 electoral outcomes.
However, leading society is a task beyond electoral
victory. Being in control of state power is a strategic and resource-endowed
enabler that leads society. At its zenith, leading society is about protecting
the interests of citizens, improving the quality of life of all
citizens, and freeing each person's potential, thereby creating a better world.
Because citizens are the constituents of any democratic order and thus a motive
force of public policy, being a citizen or citizen is a collective process
always searching for being led. The polarisation of the established order and
other crises of public infrastructure decay, unemployment, poverty, inequality,
and state capability tests the current democratic and constitutional order or
system. Leading society, a process that links concepts, individuals, and their
desired world, ought to be goal-oriented, operate over distributed networks
instead of conventional hierarchies, and be inherently participatory.
A context that organically feeds the insatiable
participation appetite of citizens or society with public platforms or forums
to air and manage their fears and convert them into rational action indicates a
presence of leadership in society. To reclaim the space of being a society
leader, the ANC needs someone with the gumption of Oliver Tambo to push this
through. Our predominant breeds, appropriate and talented for one purpose or
the other, have demonstrated a commitment to their task as being about the ANC.
They may have less considered what if being an ANC leader is not about the ANC
but the society it should be leading. Some see themselves as a private enclave
in society into which society has contracted out the leadership role and have
thus abrogated themselves the responsibility to produce results that are
separated from those demanding these results; "we the people".
The trend of nationally organised election outcomes,
acutely since the 2016 local government elections, suggests that various
tipping elements could reach their critical point within the next decade, with
the cumulative effect that the ANC might be out of power.
Political scientists have pointed to the dangers of
leadership, which is nostalgic about having led the liberation struggle as the
standard measure of the ANC's success for a long time. Yet, it has nothing to
do with societal well-being. The rhetoric of nineteenth and twentieth-century
theorists and leaders whose lives are in the classics sections of libraries
are, in the main, still defining excellence. Becoming the leader of society in
this current phase of RSA development requires the ANC to redefine success. It
is probably a political science and performance management first that a
political party loses 17% of the votes nationally and various other percentages
in provinces and regions. There is no consequence for those who lead. The
impression created is that loss is a success. Leading society is about knowing
your general progress indicators about where you are going.
From now on, the political onslaught on the ANC will
not be gradual; the opposition complex, old and new, does not do gradual regime
or political power change; they smell the blood of being in charge. Some know
the trappings of the power they are contesting. The commitment to remove the
ANC as leader of society has intensified following recent election results that
it is doable. So, to lead society again, the ANC should forget what its renewalists
say about not tackling the proper matters arising from the 1994 political
settlement head-on.
The truth about RSA is the opposite of the
dominant narrative of renewal. The era of relying on the liberation
movement's accumulated political capital to keep the opposition threat at bay
is woefully over. For the past thirty years, liberator capital assured the ANC that it would have the absolute majority of votes to
govern. But today, acutely after May 2024, this assurance appears increasingly
fragile.
The opposition complex is a wild and resourceful beast
given to fits of rage. The nature, form, content, and character of the RSA
Constitution are saving the ANC, across the board, from the wrath of those
wanting to reverse its gains. Had it not been for the chiselling of the
liberation promise into the Constitution, a coalition-defined reversal with a
simple majority would have made the constitutional order fragile.
The ANC's continuity as the leader of society's problem is multi-fold, the two foremost being (a) the opposition's growing capability to challenge its political hegemony and (b) the broad-church posture which has made it vulnerable to any dominant ideological orientation able to sway it. The opposition now includes those it has relied on for the strengths it requires to continue liquidating the moral authority of any government that is not based on the people's will. To the new opposition, the latest rhetoric is that the ANC has the authority and legitimacy to implement the liberation promises of the Constitution. On the other hand, its broad-church flexibility is open enough to enter 'tactical' or 'strategic' alliances with anyone that fits its 'interests' when a decision must be made.
IT
IS HOLIDAY TO BE CONTINUED BY THE LEADER OF SOCIETY BRIGADES. WHAT NEXT
BAKITHI. LET US ENGAGE
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