MAKHUDU SEFARA | SA needs radical transformation but not from RET

There is so much we should and could do to help deepen our democracy or resolve our economic challenges which we don’t, simply because of the labels we attach to people and groups. 

We sometimes believe, wrongly, that the ANC divisions are peripheral and should be treated as such when, in fact, they impede what ought to be the country’s progress. 

This week, for example, Carl Niehaus, that expelled cantankerous former member of the ANC, announces there will be a march to the Union Buildings to demand, among other things, that president Cyril Ramaphosa step down over his Phala Phala farm scandal. 

Ordinarily, when a president is on the ropes (well, don’t ask me how anyone on the ropes manages to fall asleep at a funeral of 21 youngsters), a march to the Union Buildings becomes a thing that gathers traction quickly in society. But because the person organising it is Niehaus, many would not want to be seen supporting him — because, well, it’s him. 

He represents chaos and mayhem. He is a stooge of former president Jacob Zuma. He is also politically aligned to a faction of the ANC called the Radical Economic Transformation, (RET) which, as we know, is a collection of highly discredited individuals who have been working, without much success, to remove Ramaphosa since his election in December 2017. If you want their names, just read the Zondo report into state capture.

Now, the RET is an interesting phenomenon: they present themselves as the embodiment of a radical agenda aimed at helping our country deal with mass poverty, homelessness, inequality and so forth. When one looks at the agenda — separate from the characters behind the agenda — it is easy to want to support it. 

There is absolutely no justification for the ANC, having been at the helm for 28 years, to be lording over so much hopelessness. Our unemployment is at its highest. So is our inequality. Infrastructure is falling apart despite Ramaphosa reportedly focusing his administration on it. Our townships, the dormitories created by apartheid to keep black people away from areas of economic activity, are falling apart. Vandalism is at its height. Even simple things such as robots are targeted by small-town crooks who know police have no way of catching them. 

Is it correct to subject so many South Africans to lives of indignity without jobs, food and shelter simply because the ANC is divided?

In Soweto, the train rail line, the means of commuting put in place by the apartheid regime for the poor in Tshiawelo, is no longer running — quite apart from many other things not functioning in that part of the township. The people of Soweto, who used to vote for the ANC in their hopes for jobs and a better life for all, are now despondent and hardly pitch for polls. The hopelessness is not just in townships across our country. It is in villages, towns and suburbs alike. Our economy is failing. Though premature this might be, some have started calling our country a failed state. 

In this context, a radical agenda to transform our economy and make it inclusive for many who have been waiting for the fruits of liberation ought to be appealing. But it’s not. The simple fact of the RET faction being the people who they are, has meant that this radical agenda to transform the economy can’t even be entertained. Yet, a correct diagnosis of where we are as a country must be that the political freedom attained in 1994 has helped our country to a point, but that what is required is economic liberation. 

What is unfortunate for SA is that we can’t even have a conversation about economic transformation that radically changes the fortunes of many in townships, villages and suburbs wallowing in hopelessness because such a discourse could be perceived as furthering an RET agenda. 

This, of course, in the same way that a march to the Union Buildings demanding that Ramaphosa must step down, can’t succeed even if it’s a good idea because Niehaus is an objectionable fellow. The reformists in the ANC would not want Niehaus to succeed, even if they secretly agreed with him on any programme.

The point, in the end, is that, is it correct to subject so many South Africans to lives of indignity without jobs, food and shelter simply because the ANC is divided? What this division robs us of, for example, is how best to use the country’s mineral endowments to uplift the poor majority. 

The RET types will say let’s nationalise the mines. The Ramaphosa types will say, but the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act states that the minerals beneath the earth are owned by the state, which receives taxes from those with licences to operate the mines. What we need, in fact, is a discourse on whether we could still extract much more value for the ordinary children who, in spite of their own country’s wealth, still attend classes under trees in 2022, or families that still use the dignity-gnawing bucket toilet system? Is it enough to simply tax the mines? Would any other thing then make the mines unviable? Should the state own shares in these mines so that when people such as Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman takes home R300m, the state gets something more than what it receives? 

This debate can’t be had fully because we can’t move past the two extremes of nationalising the mines or simply taxing them. The result is a nation teetering on the brink of what it means to be a failed state, residents resigned from involvement in activist politics which benefits the incumbent president who sleeps at funerals and other events and making some believe he is, in fact, sleeping on the job.

As a nation, we are enthralled by the ANC faction fights. Some are bored to death by these unseemly battles. And the poorest of the poor, to use the ANC’s language, are sadly sitting on the sidelines of economic activity as their best years go by. Our democracy is poor for this.