Those in power continually redefine barriers to entry
The decision by Roger Jardine’s Change Starts Now to withdraw from the electoral race echoes more of what will come in SA’s political landscape.
The country’s political order has settled on being driven by political parties. Individuals as brands, funded and manufactured legacies, and overrated approvals by the economic establishment will, therefore, struggle to enter politics. Politics as a vocation in SA has a 30-year nonracial experience. This means those inside have by now started to define barriers to entry, and new entrants must have more than just funds to disturb the status quo.
Post-1994, South Africans entered an era of accelerated opportunity. Young people were appointed to positions of responsibility that few adults before them dreamt of occupying. Getting into higher positions of national influence was possible for those with requisite political and social capital, irrespective of experience. Some only had to be political activists on steroids to be considered. This influenced how people rose up the corporate ladder, overturning the tried and tested “rise through the ranks” model of societal leadership ascendance.
This trend was scaled onto the business environment, and the system manufactured instantaneous corporate leaders and millionaires. Justifiably, barriers to entering most public and private sector positions got lowered in the process.
New corporate villages were being created, and many would be appointed into complex positions with certificates of attendance instead of competence. Others would be selected based on their proximity to political power, and some would be appointed because of their monetisable contacts list. The system manufactured more positional leaders than leaders in positions.
In such contexts, political influence and leadership can quickly become commodified. It is a condition that explains why it was and is still easy to capture the state through those elected and appointed. The resolve to calibrate — instead of allowing an organic process — a multiparty system where a majority of minority parties prevail has created a broad-based black political-empowerment process that might face the catastrophic structural failures its economic counterpart went through. Interestingly, the funders of the political empowerment process hail from an ideological complex.
Those in power will continually redefine the barriers to entry. Since its inception, postapartheid SA has worked hard to establish a two-dominant partypolitical system. The 2016 and 2021 municipal elections outcomes made the possibility of ousting the governing ANC real and made the idea of coalition government attractive as a solution to neutralise ANC hegemony and majority party prowess. Motivational speakers accelerated corporate leaders, natural anti-establishment personalities, and people from faith-based communities started aspiring to politics. With funding available, a cocktail of political parties was then set.
Unlike the EFF and MK, whose leaders rode on the back of an infrastructure they led before and were neglected by parties they splintered from, these new political parties were more dependent on how they were branded than known to be fighting for the interest of voters.
It would be more the brand personality of the party and the leaders that would make the magic than what is at stake in an election. The system culled them off because they do not have the depth that the IEC has converted into numbers, and the empowerment process ends with them.
The jury is out about who will ultimately be on the ballot paper as much as it is about who will get the most eligible voters to the voting stations to vote for them.
The lesson is that how we rise to prominence as individuals does not necessarily work in all contexts. Roger Jardine and others like him can be more influential if they stick to what they can command to effect change.