The choices we make should be about our national essence.

 The ANC, its leaders, and alliance partners must accept that there is more to its existential threat than just the new post-May 2024 opposition complex. Some bigger political bullies seek dominion over RSA's economy and its theory of change. It might be spending time believing that its sufficient consensus coalition partner is an ally and hoping its national unity value proposition would encourage it to become more democratic. Meanwhile, influential sections of GNU’s establishment leadership have remained unwavering in their view that the ANC is an enemy of the status quo and should be vanquished. 

The RSA posture and journey of reconciliation and national unity has been veering between hope and disappointment since 1984. The ANC liberation complex views itself as the sole representative of Black, and Africans in particular, aspirations. The pre-May 2024 opposition complex views itself as the representative of economic and social gains of the pre-1994 era. Manifesting themselves in various ways, these viewpoints of self, stemming from or developing in response to how each imagines a South Africa envisaged by its founding template, the 1996 Constitution, have been the source of tensions and risks to the democratic order. 

 

The edifice of being ANC has been to establish a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, united, and prosperous South Africa. "We, the people", are its permanent motive forces. Dubbed a National Democratic Revolution (NDR), this establishment process was conditional to the transfer of power, which is political, economic, and social control. Where this power lies or should come from was the basis of the social antagonisms that characterised the political co-existence of the pre-May 2024 liberation movement-led governing and its opposition complexes. 

A National Democratic Society, the outcome of the NDR, arguably chiselled in as the liberation promise in the 1996 Constitution, assuming the liberation movement did not fail its 'our people' at CODESA and the Constituent Assembly, is inarguably what the ANC should be about going forward. Otherwise, it grows into a program-deficient coterie of rhetoric-chasing activists busy liquidating its leader of society's accumulated social and political capital. 

There’s probably no relationship in South Africa that has more frustrated the 1996 Constitution's ideal of a non-racial, democratic, united, and prosperous South Africa over the last three decades than that of RSA's race relations, with tribalism and xenophobia following hard on its heels. However, the Ramaphosa-led NEC’s decision to establish a concessional GNU after losing absolute power to govern in May 2024 is configuring a new context of national reconciliation to rescue the crisis-fragile-failing race relations. The introduction of economic justice and economic reconciliation as the basis of the new national unity trajectory, expected to culminate in a National Dialogue and potentially endorsed by the electorate in 2029, is the urgent hope that might liquidate the disappointments of our otherwise stable democratic order. 

With about 60% of the 40% unemployed South Africans being youth in simmering angry isolation waiting for leadership, reports of how the last three decades have deepened the inequality gap and leadership of society can only be rescued by an honest conversation or dialogue on templates defining RSA. Given that it has been enormously challenging to penetrate the RSA economic establishment about the ANC-as-governing party version of economic transformation, unfortunate frisky-to-extreme cold tensions, if not war, between the pre-May 2024 political and economic establishment developed. Euphemistically referred to as a trust deficit, this tension or war manifested itself in party funding flows that defined the true political emotions of the economic establishment. However, the potential of the National Dialogue to bridge these gaps and bring about positive change is a beacon of hope for the future. 

 

As much as the world lauds the RSA constitutional order as a global benchmark, its continued social and political acceptance is not assured if the political economy order is not given attention. There is no way poor people, who are the majority of South Africans, are going to celebrate a constitutional order that spawns living standards anchored on social grants and no decent job opportunities. As it almost happened, the Constitution will become an unfortunate target of social problems that have the economy as the source.

 

Politically inconvenient as it may sound, across the board, there is, for now, no better friend or worse enemy of South Africa's political economy than its private sector. It is the dominant substrate of what is called the RSA economy. The sheer size of its liquidity, fixed asset investments, and multiplier contributions to the economy is unmatched, underscoring the need for collaboration between the private sector and the political establishment. This is a relationship aspect of the post-1994 democratic order that can inarguably be blamed for the economic growth challenges. The depth of discontent and grievances has been worrying for a while despite its bottoming up since the advent of the GNU.

 

It is a private sector that mastered the art of resilience when the anti-apartheid economic sanctions gave it a training opportunity. It is now learning, again and again, that private sector resilience to political bullying works, mastering the toolkit of economic statecraft and survival in a dynamic global free trade economic environment. By and large, the economic woes in RSA manifest how the governing party has not pushed back or yielded to private sector demands of space and discretion to be efficient and effective. The dictum that -the less discretion the state has on the economy and its markets, the greater the efficiency of the private sector, and the greater the involvement of the private sector in the economic public policy domain of the state, the more effective the private sector will be in driving national interests- is concretising. 

 

Suppose there is a new war that South Africa, as a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, united, and prosperous society, must fight. In that case, it is that of fighting the inequality its economic template still perpetuates. The essence of this war lies in the frictions RSA is oftentimes quick to relegate to politics when they are economic. As long as there is no friction between business, the market, and the political environment, it is a sure sign that the economy has inequality as its objective.  

 

It is until the economic establishment turns its back on the political economy environment that created it and the dominant political establishment turns it back on the commandist economic models, which failed several Eastern European countries. As a country, we must develop an aversion to policies with unknown outcomes and a love of abandoning paths that have not worked. We must make choices about our economic trajectory to preserve our national essence and become competitive.