Does the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) still have one centre, or is it still being pursued? Have we moved into a world with one NDR objective being pursued by multiple processes (of struggle) in different membership forms by "revolutionaries"?
The tensions which characterised the NDR were contained by the lived experience of apartheid and the unifying objective of getting rid of its relics. But suppose the long-term cause of today's political estrangement in South Africa was the Codesa settlement or accord. In that case, the short-term catalyst is the period between the announcement of Zuma's leadership of the MK Party and the May 2024 election outcome: a no absolute majority power context.
Over the past few months the struggle for political dominance in South Africa has intensified to unprecedented levels. The lines of political conflict have shifted, and the traditional opposition role in South Africa politics has transformed. The core principles of the former liberation movement have been repackaged into digestible ideological positions for emerging anti or pro-establishment movements.
A new battle within the NDR ideological complex has begun. However, in terms of political power, a group of moderates and proponents of the global liberal order, whether consciously or not, now hold the reins.
The NDR, a process of struggle that aims to transfer (political, economic and social control) power to the people, arguably the basis of policy in the ANC, might be a stranded ideological framework as a process. The GNU, despite the ANC leading it, has to date been paraded as the will of the people and arguably emblematic of "power" being transferred to the proverbial "people".
With regard to the NDR’s objectives to build a non-racial, non-sexist, united, democratic and prosperous South Africa, responsibility and accountability to ensure they are achieved have been bequeathed to the constitutional and democratic order. That it is constitutional to pursue these objectives liquidates any claim by any political party that it alone can deliver on the NDR’s promised objectives.
The GNU's paradox comprises the ANC, which pursues the transfer of power to the people, and the DA, whose posture is to regulate, if not truncate, how that power, if any, should be transferred. Managing this paradox can only be a genius of the ANC’s historical strategy and tactics prowess, which might not be convincing to sections of its membership.
To date, the ANC-in-the-GNU still has to prove that it can pursue two contradictory goals simultaneously: to transfer power while being part of the system which sustains it. To do that, it might have to invoke the alliance-building prowess bequeathed to it by the OR Tambo-led "mission in exile", which navigated either the West or East Cold War divide with a West and East collaboration posture, which liquidated the apartheid system into a permanent crime against humanity.
However, a possibility exists that Luthuli House could be forced to choose between risking the edifice of the NDR to transfer power and appeasing global liberal establishment aggression in ways that could ultimately lead to much graver threats to the sustainability of the reigning constitutional order and stability of its consequent democratic order.
The supremacy of the constitution subjugates all objectives at variance with what the NDR set as a pathway for post-apartheid SA. Any coalition or alliance, democratic or progressive, established to pursue the preamble of the SA constitution, its founding values and the Bill of Rights will be legal and legitimate. The battle therefore has been reduced since 1996 to the point where hegemony prevails over the supremacy of the NDR objectives chiselled into the constitution.
The process of transferring power to "the people" is the new platform of contestation. It has created a new official opposition complex and centre, with the ANC as the new establishment and system being a force to be antagonised.
The resignation of EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu and the announcement that he will be joining the MK Party, which makes him the latest acquisition of the outside-of-establishment forces, should be seen in the context of such consolidations.
The fact that those who oppose it use leftist rhetoric and nomenclature should not mislead thinkers and analysts to abrogate the new complex, the title of "the new left". South Africa still has to mature its left into a distinct, organised, ideological construct. The two-stage theory, which anchored the tripartite alliance, defused the capacity of the left to develop independent of the dominant tendencies which engulfed the alliance. The triumph of the liberal centre within the ANC is traceable to this reality.
The settling-in of the ANC as the centre of SA's establishment, including the latest GNU partnership arrangements, has made it the system to be antagonised by any revolution against the state. Only its capability to deliver the liberation promises chiselled into the 1996 constitution will sustain it at the centre of power, irrespective of having no absolute power threshold. The NDR as a process to transfer power character of the ANC has not been theorised into the new form it has assumed as leader of the GNU, and thus the system or establishment.
The gathering of anti-establishment or system forces as the new opposition should be understood in the context of the political power-grabbing opportunities it presents. The latest opposition centre or complex might be ahead of the ANC in defining the current phase of the NDR, which they now claim as theirs. Similarly, the new in-establishment partners of the ANC might be hard at work in acquiring or merging with the ANC’s liberal substrate of members to guarantee the liberation movement brand behind the pursuit of the legitimacy crisis global liberal order.
Given that revolutions are explosions produced by forces that use popular suffering and discontent, and after gathering strength for an onslaught on a reigning order, the RSA reality might be the best breeding field for a bread-and-butter issues-inspired revolution. The resentment of the establishment could easily be appended to the impact of poverty, inequality and joblessness — now attributed, rightly or wrongly, to the establishment-approved GNU. The legitimacy deficit represented by more than 50% poor voter participation is social or political capital for a bread-and-butter revolution.
The resignation of EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu and the announcement that he will be joining the MK Party, which makes him the latest acquisition of the outside-of-establishment forces, should be seen in the context of such consolidations. This convergence of the radical economic transformation (RET) and expropriation without compensation complexes will be in the choir sheet to characterise the new political choruses and how society is organised to win the ultimate prize of politics: government.
The mistake of labelling it the left is already gaining traction at the expense of its nationalist, in certain contexts, ethno-nationalist grievance advancing character. With the "national" in the ANC having suffered the crisis of acceptance, hence it being a "national question", the national is now also available for the new opposition complex to maximise.
The declaration by inside-the-ANC leaders that “we of the congress youth league know that though the form may be different, the content is the same: as long as you move to ... advance economic freedom in our life, you are one of us” is a sure sign that the drift away from pursuing the NDR as a process of struggle is a grievance within the high echelons of political leadership.
As a component of the establishment, it is gradually becoming unimaginable how the ANC could successfully transfer power as envisaged in the NDR as a process of struggle beyond the franchise. The content of what it now stands for and will fund through state resources is regulated by the extent to which it is legal and within the dictates the supreme law of the land has set.
The DA, consummated in terms of the GNU statement of intent and its exclusion of would-be claimants in the struggle to transfer power, have created a new official opposition complex. Floyd Shivambu, an astute anti-establishment activist, will be a shoo-in in an otherwise systems and management-challenged MK Party-led opposition complex. The unfortunate collateral is that he leaves a significant leadership and ideation gap in the EFF, which might signal the beginning of its demise.
In the MK Party, Shivambu might lead the reinvention of the stranded NDR as a process to transfer power. On the surface, the appetite appears to be greater therein.
The truth is that the ANC and the DA as coalition options are opposites but interdependent. The democratic order might need them to stay alive or stable. Embracing stability and revolution, predictability and chaos, heritage and renewal, fundamentals and craziness, is a mark of outstanding institutional leadership. Under the circumstances, albeit it could have been better, the GNU, as a paradox, has bought SA time to reimagine its political future again.
The supposedly incomplete transfer of power to "the people" and the completeness of the liberation struggle "other people" see in the constitution is paradoxical, hence South African politics have not settled on the "how do we deliver services to those that voted us into power?" by political parties.
• Dr FM Lucky Mathebula is a public policy analyst and the founder of The Thinc Foundation, a think tank based in Tshwane. He is a TUT research and innovation associate.
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