MAKHUDU SEFARA | Mismanagement of plethora of grievances linked to our identities informed how we voted

The ANC, through what it termed the “national question”, has always known that our multiple, sector-driven grievances needed to be managed to ensure unity without which the rise of race, tribal, gender or geographic parties will be its undoing.

The outcome of this election shows that knowing the right thing is unfortunately not enough to save you from yourself. The rise of the Patriotic Alliance in the May 29 election shows Gayton McKenzie’s unashamed appeal to the coloured voters, putting a spotlight on their grievances, has paid off.

The coloured people felt excluded and so, even if they knew that Gayton McKenzie was a reforming thug, his express focus on helping the coloured people have a voice found resonance in his message.

When McKenzie says, “ons baiza nie,” they see themselves in him. When he says close the border and let foreign nationals out so coloured people too can find work, they can’t but feel seen. He complains that “South Africans are very uncomfortable to talk about coloured issues” and raises names like Ashley Kriel, Neville Alexander to make a point about the undisputed contribution of coloured people to the fight against apartheid. He then asks why they would be good enough to help bring down apartheid, but “coloured people are told they’re not African” enough? When he whips up emotion, the votes go up for him.

This election has also showed us that the Afrikaner right-wing that deserted the DA when it had a black face — Mmusi Maimane — returned under John Steenhuisen, helping the party win the Western Cape outright. It can’t be argued the identity of the leader was irrelevant to those who had found a temporary home in the Freedom Front Plus.

But the most obvious example is the emergence of uMkhonto weSizwe Party, which received an unprecedented 2.3-million votes nationally with almost 1.6-million coming solely from KwaZulu-Natal, the home of its leader Jacob Zuma. The emergence of the MK Party had a few speaking in tongues. ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe was first to describe the MK Party’s early electoral success in tribal terms. “I don't think we should lock ourselves into Zulu tribalism. Tribalism is a backward form of politics, it has its time frame and then disappears. If that is the factor, I am not worried,” said Mantashe.

DA Federal chairperson Helen Zille weighed in, noting: “MK is another example of an ethnic identity vote, a very powerful one. Former president Zuma was the strongest, most senior isiZulu-speaking candidate leading a party in this election, and we’ve seen what the consequences are, and as I say, it’s too early to say with any finality yet.”

Tribal politics don't always make sense. If Zuma is voted for based on his tribal origins, why then did the voters in the province not reward the ANC’s Siboniso Duma similarly at provincial level? Or why did the people of the Free State reject Ace Magashule who, for decades, has been that province’s strongman? And why is Bantu Holomisa, president of the United Democratic Movement, reduced to a shadow of his former self and his Eastern Cape-based party withering into oblivion? What of the Indian vote that had coalesced around Amichand Rajbansi that has not consolidated around his wife who took over the party after his passing?

The truth is identity politics is complex because people have multiple identities. Duma may be isi-Zulu speaking but may also come across as immature and disrespectful to the king of AmaZulu and be punished by voters. Women may also look at him as a male chauvinist pig who never misses an opportunity to disrespect a woman premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube that the ANC elevated in KZN.

Or, perhaps, the ANC’s attempts to ensure governance in relation to the Ingonyama Trust angered King MisiZulu, who threatened to take the party to the International Court of Justice at the same time as Zuma was making the right-sounding noises about kings being the rightful owners of the land. How much damage did any of this do? Who is to tell?

What we know, however, is that the ANC of the late 1990s was deliberate about how the “national question” was managed. It ensured the Indians were appropriately represented in its structures and within government. It did the same with coloured and minority white people within its ranks. It ensured the minorities were reflected within its party and government structures, including cabinet.

MULTIPLE GRIEVANCES

But considerations of inclusivity diminished as the jostling for power intensified in the mid-2000s. Then, many in the ANC saw nothing wrong with Zuma being characterised as 100% Zulu. It worked for the ANC as it fought off one of its splinter groups, the Congress of the People.

More recently, the ANC went to its elective conference in Nasrec in 2022 and emerged with its biggest region, KwaZulu-Natal, which favoured Zweli Mkhize for president, failing to win a single seat in the new Top Seven leadership of the party. Some used this to caricature Duma as naive. It was just desserts for him and his group for thinking KZN could only support an isiZulu speaking leader.

But all things considered, it wasn’t about his failure — it was about how the ANC has failed to pay attention to the management of multiple grievances linked to people’s racial, tribal and geographical identities. It dropped the ball on the national question.

But before that, at the peak of the July riots in KwaZulu-Natal, some spewed anti-Venda venom against Ramaphosa following the arrest of Zuma. When Ramaphosa appeared before the South African Human Rights Commission investigating the causes of the violence, he reflected on the hate. He was labelled “the Venda man” who must “go back to Venda”.

He said: “That is why being showed conversations saying things like 'iVenda alime kancane thina bantu bangempela sisalungisa izindaba zethu,' (The Venda must wait a bit while us real people fix our issues) and 'Thina angeke sibuswe nge Venda' (We won't be ruled by a Venda), went beyond being personally hurtful.”

Is the vote, then, an expression of a deeply held view, even though not overtly expressed by others, that they can’t be led by ‘iVenda?’ The founders of the ANC knew the dangers of these backward beliefs and knew how divisive they could be. They may not have known these would lead to the ANC losing power, not because the country’s second-biggest party has made any notable gains, but because the ANC allowed itself to be led — for almost two terms — by a 100% Zulu-boy who is now using those tribal appeals, like others, to amass votes away from the ANC.

When the ANC characterised ours as “Colonialism of a Special Type”, putting a spotlight on contradictions brought about by disparate interests given the sharing of land and resources by the colonisers and the colonised, it acknowledged there will always be a tension between how we see ourselves and how the “resolution of the national grievance arising from colonial relations” impacts on how we vote.

The national question is not merely about dealing with the country’s painful racial history, but ensuring that one’s place in society is not defined by their race or tribal origins. But a failure to achieve improvement in social conditions, more specifically job creation through improvement of the economic performance, has led to many sub-grievances about being excluded.

White people feel their culture, their schools and language are disappearing. Coloured people feel excluded from opportunities. The amaZulu, through MK Party, feel the ANC of Ramaphosa, ‘iVenda’, excluded them in the Top Seven at Nasrec. Meanwhile the Africans, broadly defined, feel if all these are excluded still.Who is gaining? Democracy has surely not delivered material benefits to them too. It’s a melting pot of grievances the ANC has failed to manage. Where people perceive imbalance and dominance, grievances arise.

That said, the corollary isn’t always true. It doesn’t follow that Ramaphosa and the ANC are victims of tribalism and they didn’t contribute to their downfall.

NATION FORMATION

In the end, the truth is not all coloured people will vote for McKenzie and not all isiZulu-speaking people think Zuma is the best thing since sliced bread. In the context of a multiracial and multicultural society, there will always be people with a plethora of grievances against the dominant force in society. To form one nation without integrating the economy and other intangible benefits of democracy to benefit every racial, gender, geographic area is an exercise in futility.

When the ANC didn’t perform, it wasn’t just the poor who were disadvantaged — the party was self-sabotaging.

But the issues of multiple, race, gender, tribal based grievances are incapable of resolution in the short term.

What is required is an effort to build the nation envisaged in our constitution, a nation that acknowledges and seeks to “heal the divisions of the past” and to “improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person”. Each time the ANC showed us a laissez faire attitude to service delivery and did not fight corruption with the necessary zeal, it was sabotaging this process of nation-building. But what it did not see was that by sabotaging all of us, it was also failing itself. It was creating room for a McKenzie to rise, room for a discredited Zuma and the tribalists unhappy to be led by “iVenda” to rise, and room for the right-wing elements of the Western Cape to consolidate within the DA.

The hard truth is that in the South Africa of today, we still have many people who are driven by their identities, however complex and layered, to vote according to race, tribe, language and class. We may correctly say it’s backward and self-sabotaging, but this doesn’t make it any less present and, at election times, even more virulent.

This is why it doesn’t matter how many times our leaders speak of unity or pretend they lead the most diverse teams, the benefits of unity must manifest in resource allocations to Juju Valley, Westbury and Bishopscourt. When this doesn’t happen, people retreat to those who look and sound like them. And then we are horrified by the election outcomes.