WeeklySA_AdminDEAD-END: SA in a crisis wherein anointed leaders have shown their agenda is ultimately about saving their political skin and remaining in power
By Ido Lekota
In one of the raging multiple debates about the future of South Africa beyond ANC rule – activist and political analyst Tessa Doom used an analogy to capture the existential crisis, our so-called democracy finds itself in.
In the analogy, there is a vehicle which is being driven towards a precipice while the owners of the vehicle are standing on the side of the road – now and then letting out gasps of exasperation and stomping their feet in frustration at the driver’s self-serving antics of driving the vehicle towards the precipice.
In the said analogy, the ANC is the driver and the vehicle is South Africa which after 1994 has been on a voyage to becoming a democratic, non-racial egalitarian society – in which all its people have the right and the responsibility to live a fulfilled life. The owners of the vehicle are the South African public – which put the ANC in the driver’s seat, but has now decided to get off the vehicle and stand by the side of the road, shouting: “Wrong way!”
According to the analogy, history also confirms that the driver does have the required qualifications to drive the vehicle – however, he has along the route acquired some disagreeable tendencies, including self-serving (I did not join the struggle to become poor), avariciousness and self-conceit (the ANC is the sole leader in this voyage towards a non-racial and democratic society and, if it loses power, the country is doomed to fail.)
Further following Doom’s analogy, that what the owners of the vehicle are facing is the reality that – despite the persistent display of his disagreeable tendencies – the driver remains the messiah who will lead them to the promised land.
For those who believe this – the precipice is, therefore, a mere mirage. Unfortunately, it is the said tendency that saw the ANC not being punished at the ballot box for any government misstep for over 24 years (with the 2019 local government seen as the watershed mark) – a situation many South Africans now believe contributed to the party’s disagreeable tendencies including, as author Ralph Mathekga avers, changing their slogan of “A better life for all” to “Might Makes Rights.”
For the likes of Dooms, the said situation has not only compounded a crisis in which the driver undermines the wishes and desires of those who have put him or her in the driving seat, but also created a “debate crisis.”
They aptly describe this “crisis’’ as one in which the public is falsely led to believe that the factions within the ANC are about differences of ideas on how to build a democratic and egalitarian South Africa.
As Dooms avers, it is important to understand that the factions within the ANC are in fact “groupings of self-interest, instead, and not about people coalescing around an idea that is beyond self-interest.”
That we have a debate crisis in this country can also be seen by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s handling of the Phala Phala matter – wherein he does not see it fit to go to a constitutional platform through which he can account to the people whom he is supposed to be governing on their behalf.
CRISIS
Typical of the disagreeable tendencies acquired as the elected driver of the vehicle that is supposed to take the country on the democratic journey – Ramaphosa and his party members closed rank and voted against accounting to the nation.
As a way forward it is important that as “the owners of the vehicle”, we resolve the identified “debate crisis” and start, for example, confronting the current situation wherein we vote for those whom we believe will represent our interests – only to find that we indeed get to vote but they get the democracy.
We need to debate why and where the route to democracy we embarked upon in 1994 has taken a detour landing us in the current crisis. A crisis wherein those whom we have anointed as our leaders are now showing us that their agenda is about saving their political careers and remaining in power.
They are not about leading to the destination whose route was chartered by the likes of Nelson Mandela, Steven Bantu Biko, Robert Sobukwe and many other luminaries in the struggle for humanity – in a world where the majority continue to be dehumanised.
To do so – as the owners of the vehicle – we need to get on board and work with drivers whom we see and also see themselves not only as leaders but as servant leaders. These are leaders who see their position as a calling. They are ethical leaders who have empathy, awareness and commitment to building a South African nation in which all citizens have the right and opportunity to express their talents and live fulfilled lives.
In the words of author Songezo Zibi, South Africa “is a ship listing and tilting through stormy waters.”
POINTING FINGERS
According to Zibi, the majority of us are on board the ship doing three things: looking for and pointing fingers at who is to blame for the situation – meanwhile the situation is getting worse; we then start drifting apart and getting attracted to sentiment and ideas proposing throwing one section of the population overboard and leaving them to fend for themselves in the ocean; we wait to be rescued by a new crew arriving by helicopter, seize the ship, clean it up, fix it and take us to nirvana.
As Zibi points out, the reality is no such miracles hardly happen. Instead, the only way to save ourselves from the disaster is for us to work hard to ensure the ship stays afloat and eventually make it to the shore. This calls for unity. In our case as citizens of an aspiring democratic South Africa – Zibi proposes a multi-class alliance based on the socio-democratic principles of freedom, equality, justice (social and economic) moral leadership and social solidarity.
As Zibi avers, justice is about creating an opportunity to recognise the injustices of our past and making both individual and institutional choices, not only for redress, but to also ensure that future generations no longer experience the outcomes of those injustices.
Social solidarity, on the other hand, is an antithesis to self-absorption and self-conceit that we currently see displayed by our so-called leaders, resulting in their desensitisation to the suffering of those whose interests they are supposed to serve. Someone imbued with social solidarity can transcend the comfort of one’s socioeconomic comfort and join the fight against the inequality that mars the quality of life of the less fortunate.
In a socio-economically highly unequal society like ours, the concept of social solidarity puts a huge responsibility on the shoulders of the owners of the vehicle and passengers in Dooms and Zibi’s analogies respectively.
The main task of the multi-class alliance is to defend the dream that ordinary South Africans had in 1994 of a democratic society that was compassionate and caring. A society committed to ensuring that those who were previously socially, economically and politically excluded can now have a real sense of self-worth and know that they do matter.
It is to fight and aspire for a society in which decision-making is subject to the controlling influence of all members of society as political equals. A society based on the key principles of popular control and political equality.
A society in which the main mediating values through which people seek to give effect to the mentioned principles are not only endorsed by the constitution, but also made to prevail. The most important of these values are participation, representation, accountability, responsiveness and social solidarity.
In this regard, the depth of the democracy that the multi-class alliance should aspire and fight for will be measured by the level of effectiveness of the identified mediating values anchored by the respect for, among others: a participatory culture, driven by the right to participate; agencies for participation and the building of capacities and provision of resources to participate.
For all these aspirations to be achieved such an alliance must be driven by the understanding that democracy is beyond having a free and fair election. It is also about determining the quality of those we elect as our representatives in those free and fair elections.
Above all, those becoming part of the multi-class alliance must be driven by the understanding that the democracy they seek to defend is based on its ability to secure the majority of citizens the basic economic and social rights on which minimum decent human life depends.
Looking at the country’s history in the past 29 years, if those in charge of directing the country towards a new democratic society have failed to deliver better outcomes than, for example, the previous authoritarian apartheid government, members of the multi-class alliance have no reason to support them.
