ANC notorious for using buzzwords
THE RECENT election of controversial businessman and property mogul Donald Trump as President of the USA has brought to the fore, among other things, the effect and nature of so-called political “buzzwords” and what these buzzwords mean for broader social and political discourse across the globe.
Political buzzwords naturally form part of political communication.
They are context-laden and often emotively driven phrases which seek to act as the defining representation of a particular person or political party.
Most buzzwords, when used effectively, can describe an entire ideology in just one phrase.
However, more often than not, when one begins to unpack these phrases, they turn out to be far from what we first pictured.
Manufactured, populist campaign tools and nothing more.
In fact, buzzwords are at times manipulated in order to completely distort a preconceived notion on one or more particular issues. Just ask Donald Trump. Besides “building a wall”, attacking the media, and his unpalatable intolerance of minority groups, one buzzword central to Trump’s presidential campaign was the term “establishment”.
Put simply, the “establishment” refers to a group of social, economic or political leaders who form a ruling class and hold all the levers of control.
For many Americans, the establishment is the existing political and economic class – the White House, Congress, the Central Bank, lobbyists, and of course corporations and big business.
Because Trump was not a career politician, emerging from outside the elitist political class, he was from the beginning deemed as being inherently “antiestablishment”.
His campaign could neatly brand him as just that: an everyday American fed up with the establishment and the elite, who are failing ordinary people, and who intends changing it.
Unsurprisingly, this message resonated with many Americans, predominantly those who felt left behind by the government and the direction the country was taking.
The establishment failed them and they needed an antiestablishment hero. And we all know what happened next.
But when one actually considers what being antiestablishment means, Trump is anything but.
Everything about him shouts “elitist”.
On top of being the wealthiest president in US history, Trump was born into a wealthy elite family, had every upper-class opportunity handed to him and rubbed shoulders with the rich and the famous throughout his business and entertainment career.
As president, he has surrounded himself with billionaires.
His cabinet picks have a collective wealth of more than a third of American households combined.
Trump and his cabinet are not anti-establishment, rather they are the establishment.
What does all of this have to do with South Africa? Enter Jacob Zuma and his ANC.
The ANC are notorious for using buzzwords for political gain.
Words such as “neoliberalism”, “regime change” and “counterrevolutionaries” are used as defence mechanisms to stave off any criticism or critique.
The phrases are used to extract emotive responses, manufacture fear and mislead South Africans.
But of all the buzzwords in the ANC’s lexicon, the term “radical economic transformation” is the most misleading.
President Zuma brought this into the fray recently, by making several pronouncements on how “radical economic transformation” needs to be speeded up in order to address the injustices of our past and the imbalances in our economy.
On initial appearance, the term strikes a chord in a society in which the economy is so unequal and so many are still left out without employment, capital or title.
Yet radical economic transformation for the ANC means diversifying the elite – the top 1%.
In the real world, radical economic transformation does not start at board membership level.
While this is a vital component of transformation, it necessarily needs to be coupled with rapid economic growth, so that the economy is opened up and access is given to those at the very bottom, who are overwhelmingly black, poor and economically inactive.
While using the buzzword to appear transformative, the ANC’s radical economic transformation exists only to empower the already enriched, and does little for the almost 25 million poor, jobless and dependent South Africans, who are still economic outsiders.
Its “radical economic transformation” is anything but radical.
South Africa is divided into two worlds: those who are part of the economy, and have access to wealth and resources, and those who are not.
An “insider-outsider” economy institutionalised by apartheid.
To merely re-empower the ANC-connected elite is not the silver bullet for this dilemma.
Rather, it serves only to cement our “insider-outsider” economy, while further ostracising poor, unemployed and hopeless South Africans who remain left out.
Saying the ANC is committed to “radical economic transformation” is like calling Donald Trump “anti-establishment”: it is just simply not true.
The choice between the DA and the ANC is not whether transformation is required or not.
Rather, it’s what type of transformation is required: the ANC’s facelift approach, or the DA’s complete overhaul.
Economic transformation which is truly radical would see the economy being opened up to those who have been left out.
It would create an enabling environment for growth by investing in city-led economic growth, particularly focusing on our big metros.
It would facilitate the transfer of capital and title to individuals, making them owners of the economy and of wealth, rather than government.
It would provide direct incentives for job creation as well as making sure that labour laws support job creation.
It would support small businesses as the primary medium of inclusive growth, as well as support redress that truly empowers those previously left out – and not the already enriched and well connected. It is the poor who need help. It is the unemployed, the shack dwellers, the subsistence farmers, the social grant recipients, the single mothers, the child-headed households and the homeless who rely on the government for their survival.
And they have been let down, because the government’s plan has done very little, if anything at all, to ensure they become part of our inclusive economy.
Until the ANC government radically transforms its approach to the economy, any mention of “radical economic transformation” is just an exercise in buzzwords.