Former president Thabo Mbeki is correct to call for a convention after the May 29 election, otherwise the effort of the 29th will be a queue into the mother of all jamborees. South Africans have not been idling. For instance, the Indlulamithi Scenarios, which provided South Africa 2030 Scenarios, had gone ahead to look at 2035. The 2030 Scenario lived outcomes have been bad, but if the call for a convention is not heeded, the 2030 outcome as lived experience to-date will be a picnic compared with the Vulture Culture now staring us in the face under 2035 scenarios.
Not only have Indlulamithi Scenarios done fantastic work, but volume one of a book that is scheduled to come in three parts, edited by Muxe Nkondo and Reuel Khoza, titled Agency, Freedom and Justice: Citizens in Conversation, provides well-considered deliberations penned by South Africans.
Material that came out of the Zondo commission, including action or inaction by omission or commission, are part of the body of evidence into the discussion, and of course the lack of energy over four years should give South Africans the possibility of raising their gaze beyond the soccer stadiums that were converted into political Olympic venues.
Campaigning has gone into overdrive with just under four days to the election. The political parties are so many and the electorate spoilt for choice. If it were a marketplace, politicians would be up for sale at dirt-cheap prices. The difference is that democracy is precious and therefore expensive yet affordable. It is precious because it discusses matters that matter. It is about eliminating poverty, inequality and unemployment. These three fundamental pathways hold the key to creating what the 18th-century Morena Mohlomi calls intergenerational value as the impact of our toil.
Max Du Preez refers to Mohlomi as the Aristotle of the Free State plains. His philosophy is anchored in peace, productivity and intergenerational value. He thus argues: “A responsible leader pursues peaceful and productive alliances, accommodates stakeholders, and uses new instruments of power to create intergenerational value.”
The electioneering has posters competing for space on lamp posts and on anything that stands. Street names are covered, and the saving grace is the application of navigation systems. The lucky few do not have to squeeze their eyes to go by. The posters have added to the litter of open sewers and potholes. Were these posters and all manner of campaigning during this silly season material to life and livelihoods? Possibly some people, even if they were few, would have been lifted out of poverty. At times one has to ask whether going door-to-door is a necessary venture, when the izimbizo, parliamentary representatives through constituency work, Integrated Development Plans (IDPs), Local Economic Development Plans (LEDs), Provincial Growth and Development Strategies (PGDS), the National Development Plan (NDP) are mechanisms for being deeply rooted in society. Besides, there are mechanisms of feedback from society such as censuses, the annual living conditions surveys, the quarterly labour force surveys, quarterly GDP, the consumer price index and a whole array of statistics that provide insights into the living conditions of society.
With this plethora of state mechanisms to solicit societal needs and render services, it is ludicrous if not silly that for four months every two and half years the competition in town is about filling stadiums and talking “to our people” to vote for “us”. It is a no-brainer that when almost 12-million people are not working and in any one year 500,000 children of school-going age have been vomited out of the school system and as a consequence millions are loitering the streets, surely filling up a stadium with a hundredth or 1% of that population that is forced to idle, needs no effort. So there cannot be pride in a nation that indulges in a barren sport of display of misery. It is simply vulgar and disrespectful.
The informational mechanisms that dutifully engage the nation productively are the IDPs, PGDS and the NDP and constituency work that parliamentarians have to be undertaking on a continuous basis and izimbizo. If South Africa during the four months was at productive work of fixing roads, fixing leaks, caring for the frail and in schools teaching we would have revived the spirit of a caring nation instead of noisy campaign and promising what has been promised several times over in the IDPs, PGDs and NDP without serious science of sound planning and as a consequence sound implementation, for a bad plan or failure to plan cannot by some fiat produce palatable results.
With this movie now in our face and fast fading in our rear mirror post -May 29, the reality of poverty that stands at 55%, unemployment that extends to 42%, an economy that is comatose at 1% for the longest time and declining real incomes for households, the day after the election will not differ as we prepare for the local government elections as part of the national sport. It is this recycling that should compel us to engage the question that Mohlomi articulated on the subject of not leadership, but responsible leadership. We therefore have to ask ourselves what leadership we have experienced in the past 30 years. Mohlomi says: “A responsible leader pursues peaceful and productive alliances, accommodates stakeholders, and uses new instruments of power to create intergenerational value.” Have we been able to create intergenerational value when every second able-bodied person is out of work, when every second person lives in poverty, when only a million are in post-school education instead of 4-million? These are the hard facts that our four-month colourful carnival should confront if the nation has to survive an impending disaster.
The book Agency, Freedom and Justice is a 581-page read of 28 chapters. The foreword is by Albie Sachs, the preface is by Khoza, acknowledgments are by Nkondo, and introduction is by MusheN kondo. It is divided into four parts: policy and law; economy; public management and politics; international relations and diplomacy. It boasts authorship that would match the convention.
Leona Theron discusses gender-based violence and Tembeka Ngcukaitobi digs into land reform, why land restitution has failed and what can be done about it. I title my input as South Africa’s broken policy design: quo vadis? Olaotse Kole and Tshepo Manthwa look into eradicating the legacies of colonialism and apartheid and Tembeka Ngcebetsha-Mooij focuses on disjuncture between olicy and practice. Part two on the economy starts off with Risenga Maluleke, Solly Molayi and Faizel Mohammed on a topic examining South African social and economic landscape through astatistical lens. Part three begins with Khoza on the topic of freedom, social justice and leadership. Eddy Maloka kicks off part four with revisiting Kwame Nkrumah 60 years later.
This represents in a way a tapestry that should seek to consider that a responsible leader pursues peaceful and productive alliances, accommodates stakeholders and uses new instruments of power to create intergenerational value. Filling stadiums and littering lampposts and anything and everything that is erect cannot define our democracy, but the contribution by these authors does and can go a long way to filling empty tummies.
Dr Pali Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa and former president of the African Symposium for Statistical Development (ASSD)
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