The end of post-liberation hegemonic politics is with us. Society is preoccupied with a search for a stable political order. The post-May 2024 convulsions have created a desire for something new in the political landscape. The country yearns for a centre that holds. A leadership that inspires hope beyond the bar set by incumbents.
To move beyond the current stalemate, the country needs men and women loaded with skilful statecraft. What the country needs is a human-constructed intervention. The time for tribe-driven or party-political solutions has passed. Individuals within political parties must break loose and occupy the leadership space.
The eventuality of a South Africa led by a reconfigured government of the day is no longer theoretical. The balance of power that has underpinned political power in South Africa since 1994 has been imbalanced. The ANC is struggling to adapt to the demands of the democratic and constitutional order it has bequeathed to the South Africa it supposedly leads.
Fundamental to the encroaching weakness is the capability and energy to contain or truncate internal anarchy and chaos by those who lead it in structures closest to the voters — its branches. The faltering wills and political career ambitions of those who must lead its rebirth as a new political entity stand in the way of its survival, as it descends from glory to a possible date with oblivion. Those who society expect to stand up and speak out from within are often reluctant to step up to the challenge and shout, “Not in our name.”
The stifled youth imagination within its ranks, the starvation of contemporary political education, and the movement's progress by looking back to its past constitute a march to the gravesite of political movements.
The suppressed conversation within the liberation movement is that its ongoing, though haltable, expiration results from a prolonged deterioration that was left unattended. There are distinct factions or internal coalitions within the movement that refuse to recognise that its old self is never coming back and efforts to resurrect it will be in vain. The stifled youth imagination within its ranks, the starvation of contemporary political education, and the movement's progress by looking back to its past constitute a march to the gravesite of political movements.
Notwithstanding the suffocating conditions in which the liberation movement finds itself, the inconvenient reality of the ANC's almost irreversible decline as a central hegemonic influence in South African politics should not mean that chaos and calamity are inevitable within its ranks. It is how its resilient members and leaders bounce back that matters. In these convulsions, there are ingredients for building a movement that can last another century.
South Africa finds itself in a reactive transformation context due to the ANC's lag inproactively addressing outstanding transformation issues, particularly in the economy and social control. The wreckage of some branches, zonal structures, regions, provinces and arguably nodes of influence within the NEC might be what the movement needs to call the bluff of those who defend the status quo.
Taking political cover through the GNU should be understood as a context created to manage the agreement that South Africa needs rescuing, even if partners to the GNU are supporting it for their distinct though interrelated and interdependent motives. Crudely put, to the ANC, the pursuit of the NDR (national democratic revolution) is at stake, and to the GNU partners, reducing the pace of the NDR is at stake. The GNU as a construct is more concerned with the viability of the democratic and constitutional order than with rescuing an ailing liberation movement; it must do that for its existential motives.
Notwithstanding the desire of its GNU partners to dislodge the liberation movement, the reality is that without the ANC at the centre, South Africa's political cohesion might be a risk the country is not yet ready to handle. The haemorrhaging of the ANC, notably as a consequence of the dysfunctions that occurred when it was the absolute governing party, and acutely, the formation of the MK Party, have upended the balance of power that has been the foundation of the ANC's continued hegemony in South Africa.
The thinly spread energy required for the local government elections would be a consequential test of the liberation movement's organisational prowess and volunteer management system. To communicate a new and different message to voters from the pre-May 2024 message would require 52 high-level, concentrated competence and capability to camp at regional offices. The voter management system is expected to oversee about 4,000 voting districts and wards for it to have a significant impact. What is certain is that in the decentralisation of the voter co-ordination process, political power might find good handlers and not return to the centre.
The inherent power shifts that came with the loss of absolute power to govern alone have triggered a new wave of federal design in South Africa that the movement is not discussing. Ethnonationalism is rising as the prospect of a disintegrating centre becomes real. Party institutions and structures fail to adapt to the disintegration. The local government's results will either embolden or undermine the ultimate drive to remove the ANC from its central position of power. It is a prospect that has attracted international interest. Given poverty, inequality and unemployment, the ensemble can lurch into chaos and ultimately converge into a political catastrophe.
There will therefore be a need for an organisational state of emergency to be declared to recover from the impending precipice. The ANC, for its survival, may have to suspend all elective conferences of its regions and obligate regions to focus on local government elections. This may present an opportunity to pilot a process of leadership selection in local government, as per the previous resolutions of the ANC. Regional elective conferences, if they continue, will be a distraction from the focus of local government elections.
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