A stranger from Mars looking at South Africa today could wrongly conclude that our democratic system is coming apart at the seams.
This is because the public discourse is overcrowded by high decibels of incomprehensible noise about the ANC’s great betrayal of the people’s aspirations and has been hogged by self-styled “left” and “progressive” political parties whose daily sport of choice is to threaten the existence of our constitutional democracy.
Yet the formation of the government of national unity (GNU), the source of the manufactured anti-ANC frenzy, demonstrates the resilience of our democracy and the affirmation of the ANC’s historical agenda of democratic revolution and self-determination.
The political dynamics in South Africa today are similar to the revolutionary dynamics of France in 1789, where forming alliances and reaching consensus among diverse factions was critical to establishing a stable government. South Africa's coalition government formation echoes revolutionary France's efforts to develop a new order through collaboration and compromise. However, this new political era presents challenges, particularly for parties not aligned with the ruling GNU.
Karl Marx's analysis of political dynamics in mid-19th century France serves as an essential framework for understanding the current political confusion among South African parties outside the GNU. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx observed how political factions lacking a coherent ideology or strategy frequently fell into a cycle of infighting and opportunism, paving the way for reactionary forces to exploit the chaos.
The French Revolution also gave birth to the well-known left-wing and right-wing ideologies rooted in the National Assembly's seating arrangement. In South Africa, the 2024 elections have also highlighted ideological divides, with coalition partners representing various political beliefs. However, the self-styled left-wing parties in our National Assembly, as Lenin observed, are “guided by their [self-proclaimed ideological positions] ... and not by the actual place they occupy in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie”. They lack a coherent ideology or strategy, frequently falling into a cycle of infighting and opportunism.
Marx's warning about history repeating itself “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce” is especially relevant here, as these parties risk becoming irrelevant by relying on outdated strategies in a rapidly changing political environment. The process of coalition-building necessitates that these disparate entities find common ground, just as revolutionary factions in France did to avoid chaos and civil war.
The ANC’s approach to leading the current environment has been guided by its long-held traditions and values. While the ANC's past and history is a storehouse of its values and traditions, which get transmitted through its leaders and thinkers, as exemplified by the highly recommended South African Democracy Education Trust series, some of the recent developments around how its past is being mined have become a destructive force. Destructive in a sense that the history is either misunderstood or deliberately falsified for expediency. While misunderstanding can be cured by political education, the falsification has become a threat to the very existence of the ANC.
To add to the injury, a haughty attempt has been made to impose a fictitious factional division within the ANC into the so-called Ramaphosa and anti-GNU factions. What has become clear is that because this false dichotomy neither resembles the reality within the ANC nor the wishes of the broad masses of the liberation movement, this unfortunate development is a product of a poverty of ideas on how to renew the ANC and anxiety arising out of the inability to accept and understand the consequences of the electoral setback suffered by the ANC in the May elections. I say this because the weak argument that says the ANC has sold out is made with such pomposity you would think the ANC went into the GNU negotiations from a position of strength, with the outright majority to form a government.
The attempt to falsify history that has been brought to a sharp relief by the formation of the MK Party is a deliberate counter-revolutionary effort that recently reached its maturity
As part of their arsenal, our detractors conjure up alternative coalition permutations, which are presented as the most revolutionary alternative to the GNU. In reality, the very so-called revolutionary partners are dead set on destroying the ANC and, by extension, the national democratic revolution. In fact, these so-called progressive partners are at the forefront of historical falsification, which, if not combated, has the potential to erase, in our history, the role of the ANC in the struggle for the liberation of South Africa. Thus only those who agree with the stated objectives of these “progressive partners” can characterise going into a coalition with these self-styled leftist parties as a progressive approach.
Having admitted that renewal has become a necessary condition for the survival of the ANC and the national democratic revolution and that the recent electoral outcome threatens the existence of the ANC and the national democratic revolution, one would expect our progressive detractors to expend most of their energy in the effort to accelerate the renewal of the ANC. Instead, more energy has been devoted to precipitating divisions and false ideological struggles within the broad liberation movement, which can only culminate in the defeat of the national democratic revolution. More worryingly, with the increased right-wing attacks on the ANC, the ANC finds itself on the defensive, fending off the complicity of opposites.
I must emphasise that the attempt to falsify history that has been brought to a sharp relief by the formation of the MK Party is a deliberate counter-revolutionary effort that recently reached its maturity. This effort is premised upon the belief that falsified history will destroy the traditions of the ANC and, in a not-so-distant future, destroy its authority, thus displacing it as a people’s movement.
The consequences of this eventuality are too ghastly to contemplate. This fate is not unavoidable; the ANC has the ability to move beyond reactionary politics and create a unified, forward-thinking platform that addresses the country's pressing issues. A unified and renewed ANC can play an essential role in shaping the country's future by learning from history and adapting to the new realities of coalition governance. This will ensure that the governance revolution leads to a more robust and resilient democracy rather than confusion and fragmentation.
One does not have to believe in the indestructibility of regressive forces to internalise the fact that any revolutionary undertaking requires eternal vigilance. For our part as ANC cadres, now that we have recognised that, wittingly and unwittingly, we have allowed our movement to be lulled into regressive tendencies, let us make haste to ensure that renewal happens without hindrance.
• Kubayi is minister of human settlements and a member of the ANC's NEC and NWC
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