SONGEZO ZIBI | This country needs another round of political reforms

The persistent questions in my mind as I prepared for the Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation’s Drakensberg Inclusive Growth Forum were: leadership renewal for what? What do we understand about it?

I want to give my understanding of what has gone wrong, set out the terrain we are likely to walk in the next three to four years and share my thoughts on what needs to be done.

My view is that the post-1994 consensus has broken down in many ways and for different reasons. By this I mean a consensus of the elite who, after the dawn of our democracy, ended up in parliament, government and business — across race, class and interest groups.

The strong sense of national purpose we shared in the first 10 years of democracy began to disintegrate just as the economy was growing consistently fast (+4%), unemployment was coming down (21%) and institutions of accountability were still budding. Over time, law enforcement capacity was destroyed, parliament taught through sheer political bullying to toe the executive line. Then we saw a focused and persistent effort to remove from executive roles those deemed problematic.

The outcome has been a weakening and delegitimisation of political institutions and actors, especially the two arms of the state and the government executive in all three spheres of our system. Such weakening is the reason year after year the auditor-general sounds a shrill alarm.

What we now understand to be civil society, at least in its prominent form, are professional non-profit organisations that often are not rooted in community activism but in special-interest causes and litigation. The litigation becomes necessary when you have an unresponsive, venal political elite and the institutions they oversee. We used to have a community-rooted civil society, but the crème de la crème went off to parliament, legislatures and municipalities.

Trade unions suffered pretty much the same fate. In addition to becoming ministers and parliamentarians who later duck and dive from their own former members, they have also discovered the benefits of worker pension funds that run into billions. Their members have realised there is no logic in assuming their former colleagues will look after their interests, not just as workers but as hardworking families and communities that need integrated solutions. And so Cosatu members in the Western Cape vote DA.

In business, the era of founder CEOs is long gone. We now have large companies run by hired managers who answer to boards and fund managers who are more than a decade younger than me and mainly worry about their bonus structures. They have no sense of national purpose whatsoever.

And so ordinary South Africans are not naive. They know a scam when they see one — and so more than 25-million of them don’t vote. Instead, those desperate enough resort to violence to attract the attention of elites. These are not only growing in number but scale — and will continue to. I won’t dwell on July last year because we should all know it was just the beginning.

We do not persist with a 1994 consensus when a new one is clearly needed.

Disillusionment is dangerous for two reasons.

First, we will have another version of the July 2021 riots. They will be bigger, more widespread and harder to put down. That is what you get when so many are unemployed and the part of the government closest to them — municipalities — has collapsed.

Second, we have a higher likelihood of a coalition government in 2024. Its composition will cause dislocations at provincial and local government as existing coalitions are re-examined and rearranged.

So far, as weakened as it is, the ANC is still the anchor of much of that deal-making because it runs national government. All of us here, in some form or another, look to and reach out to its government for direction because it is in power.

Who will you call after the 2024 elections? Or do we hope a solution will emerge somehow? If that’s the approach, are any of us worthy of the strategic positions we hold in different spheres of SA society?

Part 3

In closing, I want to suggest five things we must do to achieve long-term renewal.

First, we need to honestly introspect and prepare to get into nose-breaking arguments with one another about the entire 1994 edifice we nurse in ICU. I think it is time to let it go and build a new one. In its place will be a collection of parties that may or may not include the ANC — and where direction is difficult to determine.

Second, this country needs another round of political reforms. In this respect it is not just the electoral system we need to change, and not in a dishonest and unconstitutional way like the current bill. Instead, we must deliberately shift more power to ordinary people so their representatives do not position themselves as leaders but as servants or they will get fired.

We need to re-examine the extent of executive power relative to parliament. We are where we are partly because the executive can do what it pleases and bully parliament into submission. That is how we broke SOEs and other agencies but continue to talk about a developmental state.

Third, we need to engage seriously with the question of what a new pact looks like — one that consciously includes the people we assume do not belong in conversations like this. We cannot continue to talk about people without them in the room and expect decisions to be legitimate.

Fourth, we must pursue over-arching state reform and prepare to purge the rogue elements who are in unelected positions but are otherwise a direct consequence of the political decay. They continue to make bad decisions premised on bad assumptions and driven by bad faith.

Institutions matter. Good institutions matter even more — we must be careful to not persist with broken systems and institutions for the sake of peace. We have no time to waste.

Finally, we must get the abstract right so the practical can pivot without losing its sense of purpose. We need to determine our true social and moral contract. The exchange of favours and interests that characterises our existing modes of engagement will not move the needle.

It becomes the basis on which we pursue our different interests without pulling in opposite directions. It does not mean we will not disagree, but we will do so arguing about execution, not principle. Such is not achieved by happenstance but is an intellectual and moral task we leave to no-one in particular. That is dereliction of national duty.

Our constitution and the toil and blood of our founding fathers and mothers demand we do so, or else we should get out of the way.

* Songezo Zibi is chair of The Rivonia Circle and former editor of Business Day. This was his address to the Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation’s Drakensberg Inclusive Growth Forum