Commentary cursed by magical thinking
In the heat of these difficult times, SA’s commentariat occasionally falls into magical thinking, a form of self-deception that insists things can only turn out well.
Take, for instance, the analysis that followed the failed attempt to remove Jacob Zuma as ANC president at the party’s recent national executive committee meeting.
Never mind, it was said, Zuma may remain for now but the ANC has sentenced itself to death; by keeping Zuma it has secured its defeat in the 2019 elections. We will have to wait another two years; after that, we can get on with things.
That is how magical thinking works — it interprets any news as promising. Had the committee removed Zuma, this would have been good. But that the committee did not remove Zuma was also good, for it portended that all would work out in the end.
This idle dreaming is surely a form of torture. If we have learnt anything by now, it is that what will happen next is bound to surprise us. To forecast where we will be two years hence is either an expression of hope or a symptom of delusion.
What are the possibilities? Here is how some of the magical thinkers see it. The ANC elects the uninspiring Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as its president in December. It also elects to its top six a bunch of deplorable politicians famous for the extent of their corruption. Those with honour leave the ANC and urge a protest vote. The South African Communist Party (SACP) severs its ties with the governing party and stands against it.
With its intolerable slate of leaders, the ANC limps into the election and manages just 48% of the vote. A coalition between the DA, the EFF and the SACP forms a government and SA finds it is a different country.
This is a plausible scenario. But others are equally so. One is that Cyril Ramaphosa is on the brink of winning the ANC presidency in December only to find that the conference is derailed, a state of emergency declared and several thousand “veterans” are mobilised to commit violence. Then SA will indeed be another country and rescuing democracy will require blood and tears.
There is another possibility. Among the weapons of incumbency is the unique power to change the subject. If the question on the lips of Zuma’s foes is corruption, he can simply start talking about something else. And with the force of the state behind him, what he says matters.
We have already seen some of this at work. A year ago nobody had heard of “radical economic transformation”. It was not in a single ANC policy document or in any state directive. It was conjured from nothing and is now a defining feature of political discourse.
There is more of that to come. It is conceivable that in the next year, a dramatic new land reform programme will be announced, one that aims to return land to the descendents of all those dispossessed by imperial conquest in the 19th century. Such a prospect is so far-reaching that it will eclipse all else; it will become the question over which the 2019 election is fought.
Who will lose such an election? Only a fool can say with confidence that it will be lost by the ANC. It is not that people are idiots. It is plausible that the entire electorate sees through the ruse and still returns the ANC to power. How so?
Primarily because a political figure who might lead the majority from the Zuma axis has yet to emerge. Ramaphosa is a billionaire made rich by his political connections. He will not be forgiven his personal trajectory; it is the albatross he will never cast off.
The same goes for Julius Malema. Nobody has forgotten that before his reinvention, he was a corrupt provincial politician, pretty much like the ones he now wants to unseat.
As for Mmusi Maimane, he shares so little with the rural and small-town electorate that his presence is like a hologram beamed from a foreign land.
And so, come 2019, much of the electorate may weigh the Zuma camp’s dishonesty against Ramaphosa’s history and Maimane’s glitter and put a curse on all their houses. That is what happens when a country descends into cynicism. Everybody’s politics look equally unpalatable. Zuma’s power to change the subject may thus be enough to secure his former wife the presidency, even if nobody believes a word he says.
Three scenarios: a new governing coalition, a new dictatorship, the same old ANC. There isn’t an instrument to measure which is the most probable.
Emotionally, psychologically and tactically, from every conceivable perspective, it is better to expect the unexpected than to be drugged by magical thinking.
ELECTORATE MAY WEIGH THE ZUMA CAMP’S DISHONESTY AGAINST RAMAPHOSA AND MAIMANE AND PUT A CURSE ON ALL THEIR HOUSES