When the concept of “re o rata kaofela”, understood as unquestioning loyalty to or infatuation with a leader or party, dominates politics, the traditional political playbook is disregarded.
A core lesson of democracy in several world elections that have taken place in 2024 is that victorious parties and candidates presented election manifestos, translating into programmatic appeals to material concerns beyond just defending democracy.
The saying that politicians should “always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, live better and in peace, see their lives go forward, and guarantee their children's future” reverberated in voters' minds.
The world saw in the election year a marked rise of “re go rata kaofela” leaders irrespective of their commitment to the endurance of the democratic and constitutional order underpinning the state they will preside over. Freedom, democracy and the rule of law as established planks of liberal democracy have triumphed to the extent that the power of citizen choice could not be stopped, even if the outcome might be a risk to the continuity of freedom.
The maturation of anti-establishment politics has also been visible in the wave of leadership or changes in governing arrangements worldwide.
In South Africa, the “re o rata kaofela” syndrome significantly influenced the election outcome, leading to the ANC's splintering and the MK Party's formation. This marked the institutionalisation of personalities as critical influencers of voter behaviour at the polls. Notably, Cyril Ramaphosa, Jacob Zuma and the late Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi played significant roles in the election outcome, reshaping KwaZulu-Natal as a province and its identity ramifications and votes.
When voters are in a “re o rata kaofela” trance, they forget the infirmities and malfeasance or otherwise of those they support. The track records, criminal or otherwise, of leaders and parties are checked in at the entrance door of the voting station. Equally, the world's 2024 elections have been characterised by societies searching for an alternative narrative of politics, new leaders or political parties instead of the usual culprits.
The maturation of anti-establishment politics has also been visible in the wave of leadership or changes in governing arrangements worldwide. The election outcomes evidence a growing anger at the status quo in many countries, underscoring the urgency and importance of this trend. The frustration is with political systems and leaders perceived as broken and economies that institutionalise rule by the law of the wealthy.
A growing focus is on defining national sovereign spaces as components of regional markets by global governance and multilateral institutions. It's important to stress that politics are increasingly about what leaders and governments bring to the proverbial table around which business interests are discussed. The rise of anti-system politics directly results from the loosening bond between voters and the representatives they elect.
The international agreements these representatives sign and the increasing perception that governing and ruling elites serve themselves and insider interests, fuel the anti-status quo voting patterns that 2024 has experienced.
While social changes can explain general voter behaviour, it's crucial to emphasise that economics is the animating force behind the winds of status quo change. The exuberant permitting of profit-driven market forces in sovereign economies has weakened, if not decimated, the welfarist conscience of the state, with high-income inequalities growing into a global security matter. This economic governance system is already undermining the global trade system.
In South Africa, democracy, as in the arrangements in which “we the people” agreed to govern each other, dictated no absolute power to govern by any political parties and thus forced a coalition condition. Seismic as this political arrangement might look, there is no evidence that the “tactical drifts” by those inside the coalition arrangements, which are embraced by the market, are driven by a similar “drift” in public opinion in general and members of coalescing political parties in particular. Like everywhere else, the political and economic elites in charge of the rejected status quo are too few to fail, but the anti-status quo public is proving too big to fail.
We saw the first wave of “re o rata kaofela” in South Africa when Jacob Zuma percolated its flavour against a managed-to-be-stale Thabo Mbeki flavour. This was followed by an anti-Jacob Zuma, unfairly affecting Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma's “Ramaphosa re o rata kaofela” percolation in 2019. There is now again a “re o rata kaofela” MK Party percolation as a Jacob Zuma proxy wave that changes governing fortunes.
The common thing about the variously named “re o rata kaofela” waves is that none deals with the true animating force behind them, economics and its templates. The templates of economic domination in South Africa have dramatically influenced the anti-status quo politics of the Sadc region. Some Sadc countries might be small enough to fail as national policies, but too big to fail as components of the Sadc region.
The US Trump win, a “re o rata kaofela” candidate, is too big to be ignored by the world. Putin's “re o rata kaofela” was in 2023; Xi Ping and Modi went past theirs. The truth is that they are all against a similar global status quo with varying interests. The magic question in South Africa is who the next leader is that we can all, and in an almost cult-like manner, sing about and tell the world through our votes “re o rata kaofela”, notwithstanding that leader’s known infirmities and malfeasance. As for the rest of the thinking, we must stick to “re rata constitution kaofela”.
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