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Loose thoughts on democratic South Africa in four-phase disharmony

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Ismail Lagardien is a writer, columnist and political economist with extensive exposure and experience in global political economic affairs. He was educated at the London School of Economics, and holds a PhD in International Political Economy.

The Zuma presidency brought into our homes names like Brian Molefe, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, Dudu Myeni, while squandering the moral authority as a power resource that had been built up by Mandela and Mbeki. Ramaphosa has tried his best, but his best has not been good enough. In the meantime, the RET/EFF are salivating.

I’ve made a few notes, a brief outline, of a book that I want to write. Just incidentally, I have had to once again set aside the book on a cricket umpire that I promised to write; it’s almost impossible to find a publisher interested in a project like that… Anyway, the notes I made were for a book that dealt with what I identified as four “phases” of the democratic area in skeletal structure of sorts, to which I intend to add flesh as one way to make sense of the post-apartheid era while we approach the 30th year of democracy in the country. 

Nonetheless, the four phases I identified (and that are not secured from criticism, comment or suggestions) are: The Mandela/Mbeki era; the Zuma era; the Ramaphosa era, and an era of crude populism with an attendant drift towards situation-specific ethno-nationalism and an early 21st century fascism. 

There are, of course, overlaps, continuities, tendencies and contingency mechanisms that endure from one phase to the next. These are the underlabouring forces that should provide a more complete, by no means final or exhaustive, explanation of democratic era. The phases are loosely dated, and they provide only a simple (though not simplistic) overview of the eras. The actual book, should I get to it, would be much more nuanced.

The First Phase (1994-2007)

In 1994, the incoming government inherited a state that over the previous decade was on the edge. By the mid-1980s, the finance minister of the last white Cabinet, Barend du Plessis was forthright in his statement at the time that the country was on the verge of collapse. Over the next decade, this imminent collapse would be worsened by extra-parliamentary and global pressures, and by the early 1990s by a range of actors and agents that conspired to cause a civil war. 

The main protagonists in the late eighties and early nineties were the South African Defence Force; the South African Police; the clandestine forces of the state’s security establishment; the Inkatha Freedom Party; the “military wings” of the ANC, Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) and the Pan-African Congress (PAC); the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB); the militaries of satrapies like Ciskei, Transkei and Bophuthatstwana, while the ANC and National Party were desperately trying to outdo one another in ersatz formal politics.  

Under these conditions, the ANC made compromises to reach a settlement – if only to prevent further carnage. So while the immediate motive was to stop the violence, they also needed to secure the country’s finances, stabilise the economy and start to address social needs. The incoming government inherited a Treasury that was virtually defunct, and there was little positive to say about “the economy”. Politically, the country verged on complete social collapse. 

Until the end of Thabo Mbeki’s presidency, the country spent heavily on social issues; it’s difficult to see how this could have been described as “internal structural adjustment”. The first stage of a structural adjustment programme is to cut down on social spending. Never mind. The main criticisms of the time were ideological, summed up by Patrick Bond’s contention of an “elite transition”, a mischievous phrase, the “1997 class project”, the diabolical Aids denialism and the spectre of a certain Jacob Zuma that hung over the country… 

The Second Phase (2007-2018)

By the time the Jacob Zuma wrecking ball started to swing, the state coffers were full, and very many, though not all, social targets were met. During the preceding phase, people had gained access to utilities like water and electricity, better access to healthcare and education. The Zuma wrecking ball caused a recurrent dégringolade that lasted almost a decade. All the political economic gains, and the institution-building (like SARS) of the preceding phase, became part of a feeding trough.

The country’s leadership went from being a fairly cosmopolitan and urbane government, with increasing levels of tolerance and trust and approaching being functionally integrated into the global political economy, to being distinctly tribalist, marked by a period of rapaciousness, cronyism, corruption, maladministration and what we have come to understand as “State Capture”. 

If my notes are correct, the Mbeki government had led South Africa into the G20 group of countries, which focused mainly on global governance, international financial stability, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development. Put another way, while Mandela and Mbeki had built a moral authority (as a power resource) in the world, Zuma – helped significantly by the likes of Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and her deputy, Marius Fransman, who was once fingered in a sex scandal (later exonerated) – squandered all the goodwill.

It was during this second phase, also, when we were introduced, in a manner of speaking, to people like Brian Molefe, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, Dudu Myeni, the Gupta family, and when they (arguably) influenced a range of rapscallions like the former top executive of African Bank, Tami Sukoto, who would tell the poor to get fucked. We learned about attempts to bribe the former finance minister, Mcebisi Jonas, and about the now-infamous Saxonwold Shebeen. During this second phase the country and what was left of “the economy” and state institutions, were in a state of marasmus (pardon the use of a biochemistry/ medical concept) to describe “the state” and “the economy”. 

While we should not ignore global political economic forces like the rise in inequality around the world, the volatility of markets; financial, currency and banking crises, the Zuma presidency did little to restore confidence in the state during democratic era.

The Third Phase (2018- )

On 14 February 2018 Jacob Zuma gave the country a Valentine’s Day gift and left office. Enter Cyril Ramaphosa and a fresh wind of mild optimism swept through the country. Most people who did not have their noses in the feeding trough were relieved. This was the era of “Thuma Mina”, of rolling back all the wrongs committed by Zuma and his appointees (people like Hlaudi “Baba Loves Him” Motsoeneng), freshening up the National Prosecuting Authority, appointing new ministers to try to rescue what could be rescued (like Tito Mboweni to Treasury).

The public is, for the most part, not aware of how difficult it is to fire a public servant, and replacing political appointees, Cabinet ministers or Members of Parliament has the potential to fill the ranks of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). To be sure, a feignant ANC backbencher has every chance of becoming an EFF frontbencher…

Ramaphosa said all the right things, and got most things right. He promised, at least not in word, to lift the carpets and sweep out what had been concealed for a decade. If we should not ignore the global political economic forces that jiggled and jangled Zuma’s shopping trolley, we should probably acknowledge the global pandemic that started in 2020. It was an event which no government in the world was adequately prepared for, and Ramaphosa “listened to scientists”, followed common sense and (until now) avoided the mass burials in countries like India and the deaths in the United States.  

He also began a more deliberative “cleaning out” of the ANC – at the risk of losing support – which placed the movement’s secretary general on “special leave” or “suspended” (it’s hard to keep up). Arguably the biggest (positive) development of the Ramaphosa phase was the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector including Organs of State, commonly known as the Zondo Commission, named after Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, although technically it started in the Zuma era. While Molefe and Motsoeneng became household names during the second phase, the country was now introduced to names like Angelo Agrizzi and Bosasa!

Like a train crash in slow motion, the third phase approached a disaster. First, nothing prepared Ramaphosa for the toxic rise and widespread appeal of the Radical Economic Transformation (RET) faction and the EFF. Maybe he did, but underestimated them. Though many people saw them coming. Second was his fixation with keeping the ANC together, apparently at the expense of keeping the country together, moving state and society, and expanding the political economy.

There was also a miscalculation of the political “long game” Ramaphosa would play, and the (even) longer and more difficult legal processes required to bring the miscreants identified in the Zondo Commission, to face justice. What became known as Ramaphoria, turned into omnishambles. Back at Luthuli House, the rot in the ANC ran too deep for Ramaphosa. People close to him apparently got sticky fingers (like his son Andile, and his spokesperson Khusela Diko). It became clear, as the Afrikaans saying goes, “as jy met die semels meng gaan die varke jou opvreet” – which translates into something like “if you mix with the feeding bran the pigs will devour you”.

Ramaphosa faced the harsh blowback of having got Zuma out of office, and then former Zuma-appointee, Arthur Fraser, dropped a bomb, and laid charges against the president for allegedly storing millions of foreign currency (in cash) in his home. Suddenly, and at the level of perception, it seems that there really are no good people left in the ANC, and Ramaphosa has his back against the wall. The third phase now seems like it may come to a messy end, and play out the way the second phase did with a president accused of criminal acts, of fraud and perhaps more disastrously, of money laundering. 

The Fourth Phase (2013- )

This fourth phase really runs pari passu with the second and third phases. Julius Malema, the leader of the EFF, who was about 10 years old in the early 1990s when the country was on the verge of a civil war, cannot be expected to have any memory of what was necessary to stabilise the country during the first phase. Nonetheless, Malema has emerged as the face of radicalism, and the driving force of an apparently rapacious political movement that has all the signs of the organic fascists of the inter-war years – mutatis mutandis.

Since Zuma’s departure, there has been a silent sharing of solidarity with the RET faction and the EFF, which has the potential of becoming a greater threat to the country than the violence and social collapse that was so rampant in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is not unfair to say that people like Malema, Floyd Shivambu, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi or Vuyani Pambo have no active memories of the horrors of the late 1980s and early 1990s. They represent a generation that believes they did not sign off on the Constitution so it does not apply to them.

Malema has turned a noble endeavour – correcting landlessness of indigenous Africans – to a veritable programme of hatred, rapine and revenge against whites in general, and white landowners in particular. He has taken this further, by scapegoating non-Africans, notably people of Asian heritage. Should Ramaphosa fall on his sword during the latter stages of this phase (as in the next year or so), we may see the RET-EFF usurp power through various means of coercion and consent, and inflict an almost biblical punishment on non-Africans.

While this phase is essentially one of uncertainty, in the sense that we are not quite sure what is going to happen next (notwithstanding the fact that its growth and spread has been steady for almost a decade) there is every possibility that phase three may come to an abrupt end when Ramaphosa leaves office. 

These, then, are the very early, and very truncated thoughts I have written down and which, obviously, requires a lot of thought, research, listening and learning. For now, I have other fish to fry. DM

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Comments - Please in order to comment.

  • jimpowell says:

    Ramaphosa should leave office just before the elections

  • Dennis Bailey says:

    DM: Not sure what the point is of publishing these musings. What do they add to the public discourse on recent events except to indulge another critic of the status quo?

  • Roy Haines says:

    Excellent article but very scary! The ANC seems hell-bent on self destruction but what we will end up with in the aftermath is even more scary…..

    • Kanu Sukha says:

      Scary indeed … just look at India where another ‘congress’ lost its way after almost 70 years … and look what has re-placed it now !! “ethno-nationalism” and “21st century fascism” is very much the order of the day … but it still ‘qualifies’ as a democracy !

  • Bennie Morani says:

    The author appears to have forgotten that this all started with the Arms Deal. Jacob Zuma’s court antics should be a constant reminder.

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