THE DEARTH OF RATIONAL DISCOURSE

This was written on 30 April 2009 (it was only language edited for this 2026 posting)

Did the Jacob Zuma ANC victory either expose an apparent dearth of rational discourse in our democracy or reignite the discourse? Rational debates are by their nature expected to assume a scientifically justifiable objectivity, particularly in the often-muddy political theatre. The importance of academicians as a supposed repository of proven knowledge and previously recorded best practice, as well as the initiation-cum-generation of new knowledge, has been sharpened by the ‘psychological two-thirds’ majority Jacob Zuma ANC victory.

The noticeable rise in the significance of specialists, experts and political analysts during this saga can be attributed to a myriad of reasons. Central to all these is the need to provide an answer to what most political scientists are unable to answer. The seemingly unanswerable question of what makes most of our voting population continue supporting the ANC and, by extension, its president, Jacob Zuma, in the midst of so-called declining living standards and an ideologically fragmented failing state. The situation is further compounded by ‘establishment’ induced and managed reporting that was expected to tilt the support scales in favour of an alternative to the current ANC President and, by extension, the ANC itself.

Except for the ANC-led alliance, which is at this stage a coalition that must not be given the benefit of the doubt to provide the answer, few political formations can get closer to the answer. In this contest to be first, there are also ideas management market forces that have arrogated to themselves a right to shape socio-political discourse towards a set of saliently determined societal norms and values. The contestation for this space has become discernible through the flooding of society with socio-political pronouncements that are making most believing South Africans strangers in their self-created political paradise, ornamented as the most democratic constitution.

In these circumstances, the default position for any information retailing enterprise, especially those with a ‘captive’ audience and following, is to attract and/or cultivate their own theory generators from academia and the think tank community. These specialists not only have tenure, which has historically insulated them from ideological pressure, but also work in a space that rewards challenges to prevailing wisdom, especially when those challenges challenge established agendas. Whilst this is a plausible development in the maturity path of South Africa’s democracy, the collateral will always be the elevation of individuals, publications and strategic think tanks into institutions that shape the parameters of intellectual discourse at the expense of the electorally proven will of the majority.

The situation becomes somewhat dangerous when these individuals organise into concentrations of patterned intellect, deployable to society as expert knowledge and/or correct political analysis. The pattern of thought, if unchecked, creates a clique of broadly agreeing opinion shapers who may, at times, be collectively incorrect or not so astute at picking up the patterns of thought dominating the misunderstood majority. The information gathered from such institutions becomes a dogma that even confuses individuals, given international accolades such as the Nobel Peace Prize, which leads them to refuse to see alternatives to an ‘established pattern’.

The Jacob Zuma-ANC victory has established a pattern, at least for the newspaper-reading and mainstream English electronic media, in which those captured in that community start to depend on this collective of experts. This context of predominance by an approved collective operates in full view of an underperforming context of absentee research institutions, such as the HSRC and academia in general.

The extent to which this has been left unabated is reflected in the public policy development arena of society whereby instead of relying on government officials, mainstream academia and established state research institutions to provide analysis and commentary, news media is increasingly dependent on experts from think tanks, most of which have energetic public relations and media relations offices to promote their experts’ views in the public arena.

To illustrate the above, there has yet to be an ‘allowed’ analysis of what has actually made a supposedly modernised, so-called Obamania-influenced youth galvanise itself around the ANC brand? Is it because this youth, unlike the Mokaba-Gigaba generation, have a practical experience of what it means to be good at Rugby or Cricket in a Model C school and not be selected to represent your country? Is it because this generation knows what it means to go through a ‘so-called’ superior education and still be told that your classmate has exceptional skills to yourself? The deliberate patterning of the discourse to focus on an established paradigm that the Zuma-ANC mandate is a so-called ‘identity’ influenced one, robbing South Africa of the ability to be genuinely reflective of what its recent past represents in relation to its celebrated democracy. The preoccupation with entrenching a proffered orientation as a template for public discourse, in general and the imminent Jacob Zuma presidency in particular, is blinding even the most astute of our analysts, and their considered view on this matter is never filtered through.

Given that the safest general characterisation of the South African political discourse tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to the ANC, it follows that all intellectual remonstrations by academia and related entities will depart from what the ANC says and, therefore, unconsciously problematize the ANC. The ANC continues to be targeted precisely because, in contemporary democracies, the primary tool for the conquest of governmental power is the political party, often little more than an electoral syndicate held together by a strange combination of transitory interest group alliances. Its president will therefore be an embodiment of such problematisations; President Mbeki had his turn, whilst President Mandela’s political choice of operating within a preferred pattern escaped the wrath, at least up to now, notwithstanding him being almost vilified for disturbing the pattern by attending ANC electoral rallies.

If we accept that, in the general scheme of media-dominated public debates, truth does not win on its own merits and that the market for falsehoods is robust, we should accept that academia, as a perceived legitimising antidote, will continuously grow into a contested terrain. Because new ideas are always suspected and usually opposed, the need to create, within society, a concentration of trusted individuals who would present new ideas against a background of already established views is a growing enterprise for the protection of South Africa’s democracy. The emergence of magazines such as ‘The Thinker’, which by the way euphemistically confirms a recently disposed view that some leaders are more ‘intelligent’ than the rest, should be understood in this context.

South Africa should therefore strive to foster all academic orientations, thereby creating a diversity of ideas. The need should always be informed by the fact that academia must go to great lengths to develop indigenous knowledge. The conniving attitude of those who go so far as to encourage their own and/or collaborating analysts to publish open editorials and other visible forms of commentary, all to shape the prevailing climate of ideas, must be counterbalanced. We have to accept that academia also serves as a critical incubator of ideas. Their pole access to multi-generational, apolitical, passionately volunteered ideas positions them to play a midwifery role for any socio-political tendency. In the general web of power, academia, analysts, and think tanks have the potential to shape the direction of power centres, whence all orientations that must spoil the country for choice must be nurtured.

The 2009 ANC mandate has widened the democratic space by forcing the silent into the discourse through the vote. The repudiation of what pundits were predicting by the South African electorate’s emphatic declaration that in the Western Cape, the DA shall rule, but in the Republic, the ANC shall govern, should yield new analysis paradigms and areas that must enrich the new era. If we are going to continue being feted by intellectual menus of the recent past, then we should be worried as a consuming society.