South Africa is entering an age of post-liberation rhetoric and politics, a bewildering new phase that necessitates adaptive leadership. A political party's unique value proposition will determine the patterns of voter-attraction strategies, ushering in a future of hope and inspiration. The age of post-liberation rhetoric politics is a phase in which political discourse and strategies shift from the liberation narrative to contemporary issues.
It is a time of unprecedented risk for history, dogma and nostalgia-dependent political parties and individuals. Political parties that represent victoriousness associated with managing a revolution that results in a new democratic order will not find relevance unless it is about maintaining the new order. The mindset of a democracy that is always in transition, with entrenched ways of thinking that resist change, will suffocate the new appetite for policy frameworks that move society from referencing its past more than what the future should look like. This represents a future of opportunities to influence and lead society for the agile and adaptive.
If this is discomforting and disorientating, consider the current South African political context which is inside a vortex of contestations. In the decade that started in 2019, the world has been shedding many political ideologies together with formations that represent a past that is stubbornly refusing to ditch 20th-century ideological divides as the basis of politics. Survivors will have recalibrated or reconfigured their systems to adapt, thus avoiding being reduced to relics of a new present in the place of once-celebrated heroes of a past era.
The sovereign individuals who understand the new context will be the new 'revolutionaries' outside the traditional conception of 'a revolutionary' in a collective struggle.
Experts, strategic think-tanks, issue-based civil society bodies, multilateral international order-redefining agencies and multinational business interests defending organisations will significantly influence politics. Clever politicians and political parties will forge strategic alliances with thoughts that advance society, not ideologies that constrain movement forward. The thirst for retribution and vengeance will be intermittent as a currency of political mobilisation, and thought leadership will virtually be in continuous demand by those who control the levers of development, also called investors.
As the state’s active agent, the government will be shrunk to allow the concretisation of the network government model, a system that relies on public-private partnerships and significant accounting authorities. The influence of AI and the introduction of non-human state capabilities will shrink the size of the global public service, exerting compatibility-induced pressure on countries that are late starters in technology and modernisation. The old rules and traditions of politics and public administration will not apply, save for the frameworks safeguarding logic.
In the world of politics, activists, most of whom require a whole generation to ring the bells of change, will have to answer the how-to-cope questions this era spawns every nanosecond they are not responding to. The most tried and tested method of dealing with ructions of this magnitude is to adopt a philosophy that equates change with unlearning for either relearning or outright virgin learning. The sovereign individuals who understand the new context will be the new 'revolutionaries' outside the traditional conception of 'a revolutionary' in a collective struggle.
Politics has become a career. There will be careerism in political parties. Leaders of political parties will ‘serve’ based on ‘what-is-in-it-for-me’ as they pursue the noble and altruistic intentions of serving society. Those who ultimately enter politics will be expected to have already blended their interests, intellect, needs of society, and ideas to enhance their value propositions to canvass support. This act will also determine ideological orientation, where necessary. The moral obligations of leadership will become widely diffused into the interests of politicians, political parties and other nefariously defined establishments: oligarchs and kleptocrats.
Politicians will become trustees of their interests. The standardisation of what constitutes malfeasance will match the emerging context of politics. Variances to the budget, irregular expenditure and many other thresholds will be introduced to stabilise the context of malfeasance with the interests of the powerful; rules will be adjusted. While all are equal before the law, the new context will justify why some should be more equal than others. As the sophistication of the system matures, so will the ordered anarchy.
Today's paradoxes are expected to be normal in the unfolding political climate. In this era, to say that politics is a means to other ends and not an end will not be a semantic quibble but a profound moral point to be regularised. If we assume as a society that how we defined right and wrong in the past and how it was acceptable will continue to be sufficient, the time to reset for new forms of rights and wrongs is already here.
As the ethics of the tribes, society, nations and global community change, so will those of individuals in the system. Consider how racism, slavery, homophobia, xenophobia, genocide, imperialism, colonialism, war and several other concepts defined ethical orientations that have given them multiple and contextual meanings. The new political era demands us to be less judgmental of our past, even of our follies a few years ago. The ultimate ethical-existential challenge is the latest political context and the changes that come with it. Nothing else will matter in politics if we do not change our thoughts and actions.
Dr Lucky FM Mathebula is a public policy analyst and the founder of The Thinc Foundation, a think-tank based in Tshwane.
For opinion and analysis consideration, email Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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