The outcome of the May elections, which ended 30 years of ANC dominance, should be seen as a historic opportunity for South Africans to pause and appraise the country’s performance since 1994 — and ask ourselves what choices we now need to make to turn the country around.
Our new political circumstances impose on us a number of pressing questions.
One is about the political and racial divisions that continue to influence our perceptions of nearly all our national problems.
For many black people old enough to have bought into the promise of freedom three decades ago, such as my security guard acquaintance, any co-operation with the DA is akin to a reversal of the 1994 victory against statutory apartheid and white domination of the country. It is like getting into bed with a mortal enemy.
This is not an entirely spontaneous, self-sustaining sentiment. Quite apart from the sorry lived experience of most black people, the narrative of the blacks against the whites — the DA standing for white interests and being an existential threat to the welfare of black people — has been consistently nurtured for years by some black leaders.
This raises the question of how black people should regard the DA as a participant in the political life of our nation. Is it a legitimate part of our democracy and body politic? Does it not have the right to take an ideological stance some disagree with, given the constitutional rights to freedom of belief and expression?
Perhaps one day social scientists will explain why we as a society purportedly revolted by apartheid proceeded to keep intact many of its features
It may be argued that the DA has brought the bad rep upon itself, mainly through the ill-considered utterances of leaders such as federal council chair Helen Zille, who has seen some good in colonialism and bemoaned the Eastern Cape “refugees” flocking to the Western Cape.
When asked in a radio interview during the recent “flag burning” saga if the DA’s advert risked turning off potential black voters, she responded that “those are people who would not have voted for us anyway”. Or something to that effect. She was essentially telling that constituency to get lost. This is matched in its intemperance probably only by EFF leader Julius Malema’s threat to “cut the throat of whiteness”.
For the DA and its supporters, does the EFF — which calls for land expropriation and nationalisation, and presents itself as a representative of black interests — represent the diversity of opinion that should exist in a healthy democracy, and which liberals should encourage?
Alternatively, does the DA believe the EFF to be a “doomsday” party and a menace to the nation?
And should the same apply to the ANC, which has blown hot and cold on land expropriation, but is committed to affirmative action and BEE? All these positions are eschewed by the DA.
For leaders entering an era of power-sharing and their followers, we have to ask if this mutual demonisation — sustained and encouraged by political leaders across the racial spectrum — enlarges or diminishes the space for rational, solutions-orientated conversations among South Africans.
Does it shift us towards a middle ground where we can begin to better understand our competing, contrasting interests, and therefore find equitable solutions?
The other question arising from the elections is what we have done as a society to end our deep economic inequalities, which drive racial strife. We can never become a truly united nation as long as a minority lives off the fat of the land while the majority lives in conditions barely different from those prevailing under apartheid.
Economically, the unsustainability of our current dispensation should be obvious. How can we expect a small minority of taxpayers to bear the burden of funding the fiscus, not to mention providing support for millions of jobless citizens? How can we have a growing economy while the majority of the working-age population is unemployed?
But ending inequalities is not just an economic imperative. It is also about the state of our soul as a people, about how we manifest our constitutional pledge to “heal the divisions of the past” and build a society based on “social justice”. Our treatment of the poor and the marginalised in our society is a measure of our ubuntu or botho — our sense of fairness and ability to empathise with fellow human beings.
One explanation of why we have failed so spectacularly to close the gulf between rich and poor is that white people — who continue to dominate the economy — have fought a rearguard action to protect their privileged position.
But what about the black well-to-do, many of whom are decision-makers in the economy and the state, and cannot feign ignorance?
Affluent black people have family and friends in the townships, and witness destitute young people — both unemployed and unemployable — turning to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of hopelessness.
Why are their consciences not moved by what they see when they visit a township or village? They seem satisfied to visit these places as tourists, and then quickly retreat to the “better life” of the city and its suburbs — a life promised to all, but still reserved for the privileged few.
Perhaps one day social scientists will explain why we as a society purportedly revolted by apartheid proceeded to keep intact many of its features, such as an impoverished majority and racially separate living spaces.
As was the case under apartheid, the rural areas remain largely underdeveloped wastelands. This leads many of their inhabitants to flee to the cities, where they then live in the hovels that make up the nation’s ubiquitous shacklands.
Today, the only difference is that those who leave the rural villages are driven by hunger and fear of premature death rather than a hut tax that forces them to go and work on the gold mines under the migrant labour system. The urban poor are able to stay in the cities, even if they are unemployed, only because there are no longer any influx-control laws that render them liable to being imprisoned and deported to their “homelands”.
On reflection, a more convincing argument for our failure to meaningfully end inequality and poverty, especially among the black majority, is that since 1994 there has never been a genuine commitment to change things for the better.
Instead of working hard to end inequality and poverty, we’ve offered the poor and the unemployed a basket of social grants — a collective Panado to relieve the pain, but never efficacious medication to cure the disease.
Similarly, BEE and affirmative action were meant, not to level the economic playing field for all black people, but merely to give a small number of them access to a life of privilege — while leaving life much the same for the rest.
So which way should we turn at the crossroads to which we have collectively come as a country?
Ordinarily, we would, as we have naively done since 1994, look to the leaders just elected and blindly place our trust in them to know what’s in the best interests of the country and its people, and what to do.
But all we have seen so far is politicians haggling over positions and not agreeing to any meaningful national agenda.
What will they do now? Will they continue to be leaders who appeal to their supporters’ basest instincts and exploit them for the short-term benefit of retaining power or winning the next elections? Many of those whose stock-in-trade is fearmongering have spent every day of their lives driving a wedge between South Africans.
Some have sought to convince their supporters, as well as the rest of the country, that South Africa’s national and economic problems are so intractable they can be solved only by separatism — along racial, class, regional and even tribal lines. They have also maintained it is futile to try to find solutions that address the needs and aspirations of all South Africans in one united country.
But to continue to uphold our untenable status quo is something too ghastly to contemplate, to quote an unlamented political leader from the past.
Instead of laying the foundation for a better future, we would be choosing to condemn our children to a tomorrow of resentment and suspicion, to a future where black people are perpetually aggrieved and their white counterparts always the villains of the piece.
We have to realise that our much-vaunted GNU is actually built on a potent fault line — the absence of any sense of a unifying common national interest. It is also presided over by leaders who have built their careers by exploiting social divisions. It is a rift that may cause the whole edifice to collapse sooner than we think, contrary to my security guard interlocutor’s fears.
To their credit, the drafters of the GNU statement of intent took care to include in it a “basic minimum programme of priorities” the new government is expected to focus on.
But the priorities — nine of them in all — are more like a shopping list of nice things to have, ranging from economic growth and building “a more just society” to beefing up state capacity. Others include strengthening law enforcement agencies, promoting nation-building, and formulating foreign policy.
But the signatories must surely have heard the saying “if you prioritise everything, you prioritise nothing”! The new government must avoid the cardinal mistake of previous ones — trying to do everything but failing to excel at anything.
For the GNU to endure, its members will need to establish a commonality of purpose that promotes nation-building and ends economic inequality and injustice.
Members of the GNU should start by acknowledging the common, equal citizenship of all South Africans, irrespective of their race or political persuasion, as well as the legitimacy of their concerns. They should also agree to refrain from using incendiary and divisive language, which has only worsened distrust in our society.
They should agree to act with urgency to eliminate economic inequalities, as well as frankly acknowledge that measures taken over the last 30 years have failed to meaningfully change the living conditions of the majority of South Africans. In that regard, the effectiveness of BEE and affirmative action should be reviewed.
Of course, a plan with timelines and deliverables must underpin what is agreed.
The members of the GNU must show leadership, engage in visionary and innovative thinking, and have the courage to lead their followers on a new path towards a brighter tomorrow. If they do not do this, the whole nation will remain a prisoner of its past.
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