The dilemma of remaining a liberation movement when others compete as political parties.

Since the 1994 democratic breakthrough, the ANC has been living a life of a political party contesting for state power, at almost any cost and that of a liberation movement working to transform South Africa and build a more equal society. It lived as the governing party for most of the first thirty years of post-apartheid South Africa. The sins and benefits of incumbency loomed large, and could not leave its form and character untouched. For as long as it stayed in power, the need to renew itself into a political party etched in its historical character could not be urgent. 

 

There has primarily been an expectation that it would eventually have to fully assume a political party character, as its liberation movement role shifts to encompass the whole of the Republic of South Africa. Its objectives as a liberation movement, most of which are now lawful expectations of society from any government of the day, define the success or otherwise of any RSA governing party in all spheres of government. Any politician in the RSA now must campaign on what has historically been the ANC's domain. Some rightwing organisations have become proponents of racial equality, whatever they mean.

 

The art and science of understanding how the RSA constitutional order has integrated the objectives of the ANC's liberation movement may lie between its continued role as a leader in society and its impending demise. It is a shift already shaping what comes next for the ANC. This shift competes with liberation struggle nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past struggles for freedom, and a resurgent veteranism, a renewed emphasis on the role of veterans in the party. Consequently, the ANC's capability to redirect and shape it into a strategic asset with which it could become a modern political party without surrendering its liberation movement strengths and character is compromised. 

 

The dilemma of shedding the overreach of its liberation movement rhetoric, nomenclature in some instances, hegemony, and rituals without surrendering the accumulated social and political capital that goes with it might be fundamental to defining the ANC as a beyond liberation struggle construct. As some of its antiquated legacy is chipped away from its heritage by those describing themselves as the better part of what the ANC is, it should take cover in the normative appeal of the constitutional order as the embodiment of the liberation promise. It must embrace the constitutional order as a terrain of struggle.

 

The South African social cohesion posture, a key determinant of its changing political landscape and vote farming, has, by default, a nationhood that can be stronger when our diverse strengths are combined to address any threat to our sovereignty. This makes the non-racial and non-sexist character of the ANC an asset to be cultivated to hold society together. Save for denialism, RSA still relies on how the ANC leverages its accumulated (latent or active) social and political capital to maintain the fragile democratic order together. 

 

How the ANC redefines its motives for the social and political power it commands will move the RSA into a different orbit. Its liberation movement character might have outlived its purpose. The time has come to declare the 1996 Constitution a significant victory in the liberation struggle and acknowledge that the state's capability is what hinders the liberation promise. As the governing party, the ANC leveraged its executive authority to lay down several templates that the RSA is now bound to execute, whether or not it remains the governing party. 

 

Notwithstanding the liberatory character of the constitutional order, staying a liberation movement is the ANC’s strategic guardrail for attaining a National Democratic Society. As envisioned by the ANC, this society is a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, united, and prosperous South Africa. It is a society based on social and economic justice, human dignity, and the pursuit of equality. The extent to which South Africans interpret these similarly should determine the liberation movement character of the ANC. 

 

The constitutional order has empowered adversaries (from several other interpretations) of the promise of liberation. Only those with the means, notably through litigation, were or can take full advantage of the freedoms the constitutional order guarantees, including innovations that undermine the very order. The grey areas between racism and diversity, cultural rights and discrimination, language rights and exclusion from access, and economic exclusion and property rights have found nifty interpretations to keep the separate development status quo. 

 

The post-1994 order created access to global markets, networks, and institutions for all South Africans. These could easily be used to undermine and lately bully the basis of what we stand for as a society. As the threading of a national democratic society continues, the assumption should not be that it is an ideal we all want. Freedom and liberation, left unchecked, are separate catalysts for development, where sections of society can mobilise away from social cohesion.

 

The science that was invested in the grand design of apartheid, a system of institutionalised racial segregation and discrimination that was in place in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s, especially its social engineering aspects, has made racism, segregation, separatism, ethnonationalism, and purist politics a pathological phenomenon in South Africa. The passion to justify diversity in the same vigour as humanity would invest in non-humans is a scary dimension of the real threats to non-racialism. A context that procures a new form of liberation character for society, both for the perpetrator and the victim.