Al-Qalam 
[Photo credit - Bloomberg]
By Imraan Buccus
As the severity of our political, economic and social crisis sets in the question on the minds of all those who have not completely given up on South Africa is “what is to be done?
Of course, all the opinion polls show that the ANC will drop well below 50% in the next election, perhaps even as low as 40%, but as the example of the municipalities in places like Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, Tshwane, eThekwini and Gqeberha have shown coalition government is deeply unstable in South Africa. Moreover it risks promoting charlatans with minimal popular support into positions of real power.
We first saw this with the fiasco of Mongameli Bobani’s period as mayor in Gqeberha. We have now seen the beginnings of a similar fiasco in Johannesburg where a deal between the ANC and the EFF has, of all people, seen Kenney Kunene take control of the city’s transport systems. The situation in Johannesburg is, to be frank, farcical, and dangerous. Our largest city and financial capital simply can’t be taken seriously with a clown like Kunene in such a position.
In eThekwini we have also seen the toxic results of an agreement between the ANC and EFF. The new working agreement between the ANC and EFF in KZN could see the IFP lose power in over ten municipalities. This will almost certainly lead to further disruption and dysfunction. The politics of the IFP is reprehensibly conservative but they do show more discipline than the EFF when it comes to working together in coalition arrangements.
Coalition politics is not inherently unstable in global terms. In a country like Germany, it generates stable working alliances. But here, as in India or Italy, it is inherently unstable. This means that there is no prospect of long-term planning. This is a disaster in a context in which there is already such dysfunction in providing and maintaining even the most basic of municipal services.
Moreover, the ascent of people and parties with minimal support generates deep cynicism about democracy. This cynicism will be compounded by the elevation of corrupt people and parties to positions of power, a development that can only continue the destructive forms of kleptocratic politics that exploded under Jacob Zuma.
The framers of the new political system developed after apartheid imagined that local government would be the key site of both democratic participation and service delivery. Both aspirations lie in tatters across much of the country, and there is a real risk that as people turn away from compromised and failing democratic systems some could come under the spell of right-wing demagogues, most likely xenophobes.
The EFF
We need a clear way out of this morass. But the immediate prospects are not encouraging since for the ANC an alliance with the EFF offers the easiest way to hold on to power. Of course, this is not cast in stone and there are some senior leaders in the party who would like to keep a clear distance from the EFF. Indeed, some are strenuously arguing, albeit off the record, that while an alliance with the EFF may make short term sense in terms of gaining or securing control of municipalities it is likely to seriously damage the ANC’s standing when it comes to the next national election.
Moreover, Julius Malema is a political opportunist par excellence and has a long history of changing positions and allegiances at the drop of a hat. We don’t know what he will do next, or how long he will stick to it. But we do know that he is hungry for power, and control over budgets. In view of the EFF’s affinities to the so-called RET faction in the ANC, and its looting of VBS bank, there can be no naivete about the character of this hunger for power.
We also know that the ANC has the same hunger. In fact, the ANC of today is a project overwhelmingly held together by this hunger – it largely exists as a patronage machine and would probably largely fall apart without access to patronage.
Considering this the political logic of an alliance between the ANC and the EFF is clear for elected ANC officials wishing to remain in power. However, it will not be attractive to most ANC members, many of whom loathe Malema and the EFF. This could set the ANC’s national leadership on a collision course with its local leaders, generating more turmoil in the party.
Although Cyril Ramaphosa remains more popular than the ANC itself, he is, by any measure, a failed president. As we all now know he is weak, unable to act decisively and unable to exert his authority – even against his enemies. But he is not Jacob Zuma. He has not set himself up at the don at the head of a political mafia. There is a difference between failing to deal with a political mafia and being the head of the political mafia. A rebellion against Ramaphosa from the party’s local structures, a rebellion motivated by the desire to remain in office in alliance with the EFF, would be a disaster for the country.
Another period of rank corruption would plunge us into a deep crisis that he could take a generation to escape. Even if the EFF are just brought into the cabinet after the next national election and are not offered the deputy presidency we will still be well on the road to an escalating crisis.
What is to be done?
But there is no easy answer to the question “what is to be done?”. It is simply not possible to ask people to vote for the ANC to avoid the even worse scenario of a wounded ANC allied with an avaricious EFF. The ANC has destroyed its reputation among most South Africans and is so deeply loathed that a tactical vote for the least bad of the realistically attainable options is just impossible to stomach.
But, at the same time, there is no credible party on the ballot that can represent national aspirations, and no party that could win a decisive victory against the ANC. At the moment it seems highly unlikely that a new and credible force will emerge to offer a credible alternative in time for next year’s elections.
The DA has grown into a small ethnic party with a regional power base. Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA has largely dropped out of the media, and media attention is a requirement for electoral success for populist parties. The failure of Cosatu and the SACP to break with the ANC has made it impossible to build left unity and so we have no real prospect of a left party on the immediate horizon.
The crushingly depressing consequence of all this is that it seems almost certain that we are simply going to have to live with an unstable and corrupt government, including opportunists of the worst kind and entirely lacking in any credible social and economic vision.
We are all going to have to buckle up for a very rough ride in the next couple of years. The only way to claw back some hope is to build a credible party with a viable prospect of winning more than 50% of the votes when the next election comes round. The only way to get there is for as many South Africans as is possible to enter the political terrain, search for credible leaders, avoid petty egos and rivalries, draw a clear line against the corrupt and against opportunists of all kinds, and work to build viable political parties, ideally one on the liberal side of the spectrum and another on the left.
Most South Africans are decent people who want the best for the country. We now need to start building new electoral projects that can give hope to the decent and often silent majority. The road ahead will not be easy but if ordinary people don’t rise to the challenge our decline will only worsen.
*Dr Buccus is editor of Al-Qalam.
