When the ANC announced the statement of intent as the basis for its coalition with the DA, it signified a shift in the major political landscape in South Africa. This was a significant move by the ANC, acknowledging that its 40% support indicates a change in political power dynamics.
With a history of 113 years advocating for the majority and 30 years of wielding state power, the prospect of losing power called for drastic measures. Reeling from the scars of voter feedback, the ANC opted, among other state power-keeping choices, for the national unity façade as the basis for entering into coalition arrangements.
Notable in the choices was its flirting with the arch-adversary and leader of the generic opposition complex to its hegemony, the DA. Save for the ideological differences, other options would have meant a coalition with its new opposition complex, birthed from parties that split from within the ANC, and more acutely the EFF and MK Party.
The key question is what we should derive from the wider strategy or endgame of the ANC’s well-known main adversary and significant GNU partner.
Despite its chronic flaws, the ANC continues to command the largest share of the social and political capital in the anti-apartheid struggle. It remains the highest hegemonic equity holder in South Africa’s post-apartheid political settlement. Within this context, it still occupies the highest and undeniably uncontested moral high ground.
The cumulative effects of apartheid, global racism, the complex demography of poverty and the stark black and white divide in South Africa have shaped politics along racial lines. While other societies have managed to establish nations, South Africa remains trapped in a nation-state without a true nation.
Leading society in its quest to develop a nation has been chiefly a preoccupation of the ANC, save for when the sins of governing party incumbency crept into its disastrous loss of hegemonic dominance of South Africa politics.
Though the ANC believes it has secured state power through establishing a GNU coalition, the harsh truth is that it provides the necessary optics to maintain social and economic dominance.
Thus political dominance over South Africa has decisively shifted from a single-party system with the ANC at the apex to a fully developed multiparty coalition-based democracy. Control of state power is inarguably diffused, albeit there are denialists of this reality. Achieving absolute power to govern, a 50-plus-one threshold, would make the political entity with the most significant social and political capital a candidate for ideological merger and acquisition.
The global strategy of regime change by removing individuals or political parties has proved ineffective in fully achieving hegemonic objectives. The approach of altering regimes in post-colonial conflict countries, which is closely linked to maintaining the status quo or safeguarding the spoils of colonial conquest, has undergone various revisions after failing in other democracies.
In South Africa, the ideological constructs of the opposition are almost always centred on upholding established social and economic dominance patterns.
Consequently, any sophisticated political project concerning South Africa will always make sense if it acquires or merges with the ANC’s social and political capital and moral high ground to speak authoritatively on the injustices of the past.
South Africa, despite having determinants of its political economy, is a product of the colonial and apartheid political economy construct. Its politics are deeply economic and cannot afford the collapse of a party with such a large, mismanaged social and political capital.
Though the ANC believes it has secured state power through establishing a GNU coalition, the harsh truth is that it provides the necessary optics to maintain social and economic dominance. What remains to be seen in the political project, now that the SACP has voluntarily begun a step-aside process, is the ANC’s formalisation of its adoption of liberal to neoliberal ideology as the foundation of its programme of action.
Otherwise, a complex acquisition or merger of the ANC with neoliberal or liberal forces is under way. This includes those countries labelled as Left but are profoundly Right, with efficient single-party dominance.
While in power, none of the ANC’s past leaders has operated outside the ideological framework of its constitutional order. This order is rule-based and predominantly Western in nature. The process of acquisition and merger, unapologetically aimed at preserving the ANC’s historical social and political capital, requires a specific percentage threshold for business to continue as usual. It reflects, in character, the tested or experimented 26% threshold of Black Economic Empowerment transposed into South African politics.
The main reason for political coalitions is to boost the growth of the dominant party, which gains higher confidence in delivering votes or power. Coalitions aim to reduce costs and, in this case, help the opposition-posturing DA compete more effectively in weakening the ANC.
Coalition government is not an exact science, and the political outcomes remain unpredictable. Only those who enter with a solid plan can take the steps necessary to increase their chances of fulfilling promises made to those they represent.
In the current South African coalition arrangements, the risks of losing political power are real, and mistakes can be costly for both the party with the confidence in supply votes and the majority party as the target of hegemonic takeover.
The ongoing hegemonic merger or acquisition of the ANC with national unity as a vague bottom-line is already endangering its ability to persuade voters of what it clearly stands for. The GNU’s outcome is never predetermined amid corruption, state capture and widespread government dysfunction.
The South African political business model relies on social and political capital that most black voters can contribute. The ANC is undeniably the target that every political party with a stronger plan seeks to acquire, merge with or scavenge in a ruthless manner. Only leaders with higher-order thinking can rescue the ANC from being acquired.
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