ANC, DA, media fail to grasp value of dissent

President Cyril Ramaphosa has made the idea of unity one of his calling cards.

The DA, currently the antithesis of unity and, to a large degree, where the ANC was a few years ago, is increasingly forced to evoke the concept. But is all as it is cut out to be?

The first thing to understand, particularly about the ANC, is that it is a highly authoritarian party, at least historically. “Discipline” is hardwired into it in the Leninist sense. True, it hasn’t counted for much over the past five years, as the party has splintered into a thousand fragments and members turn on each other publicly. But the aspiration is an authoritarian one, epitomised by the Thabo Mbeki years, where dissent was crushed and the leadership ruled with an iron fist.

Second, it is important to understand the SA environment more generally: we are a deferential people, who typically abase ourselves before the idea of a benevolent leader as the one true hope, whatever our travails. We yearn for a virtuous and caring father figure to fix everything, and to whom we can outsource both morality and responsibility. How desperately we all want another Nelson Mandela to restore pride and faith in the idea of leadership. That said, and bearing in mind those two provisos, unity – at least as far as the ANC is concerned – is not necessarily the panacea we think it is.

“Unity” kept any meaningful internal check on Mbeki at bay, on issues such as HIV/Aids and Zimbabwe, and the consequences were profound. And it is no more disturbing when Ramaphosa uses it with reference to SA as a whole. Why on earth should the whole country unite behind him or the ANC?

The opposite is needed – better contesting ideas, greater political competition, more demand for accountability – not some sycophantic falling in line with a party that does not know if it is Sunday or Monday. But even in the small free-thinking space outside the ANC’s almost universal hold on the SA mind, the idea is misunderstood.

The DA, which has increasingly adopted the ANC’s values – nebulous ideas such as “collective accountability” – is beginning to confuse the idea of unity with discipline. There seems to be a belief that all its problems stem from a lack of discipline. There is some truth to that, particularly how its public representatives behave on social media, but much of that could be solved by another, different value: maturity.

Unity, in the best sense of the word, does not negate “factionalism” or division. Truth is, an internal difference of opinion, conveyed calmly and rationally, is a very healthy thing.

External to internal party politics, the value of an opposition is that it provides a counterbalance to the governing party.

This generates choice and accountability. Competition, both politically and intellectually, drives excellence: for the best ideas to triumph, they must withstand critical review. The same applies internally, to any particular political party.

The dangers of any grouping that blindly expects all comers to subscribe to one train of thought are well documented. Disagreement is painted as betrayal and, soon enough, outlawed. Finally, a complete autocracy emerges.

In the best sense of the word, the value of unity flows from an understanding of what your bottom line is; it is how you achieve it that is open for debate. The problem in SA is that neither the ANC nor the DA know what their bottom lines are. And so everything is on the table. In that context, the word is abused. Either party will arrive at an abhorrent decision, and then call for unity. For the ANC it is born of a majoritarian and authoritarian streak; for the DA it flows from an increasing appetite for the same.

One must accept democratic outcomes, but one needn’t agree with them. How you do that, however, has everything to do with maturity and nothing to do with unity.

You can, in ANC and DA fashion, spread poison, and manipulate and denigrate both processes and your enemies. Or you can use party mechanisms fairly to mobilise and to win arguments and power.

Here, the media is just as responsible as those two parties are for helping destroy meaningful and mature internal disagreement.

So obsessed is it with personality politics, it cannot or will not disaggregate healthy internal disagreement from malicious and divisive factionalism. Any disagreement is painted as evidence of conspiratorial factionalism. And so the media harvests what it sows: because what is the point of being openly in disagreement, in a mature manner, when you will inevitably be painted as immersed in subterfuge?

It fuels authoritarian behaviour on the part of political leaders who, dreading the way any disagreement will inevitably be described in the press, act to intensify “discipline” and the consequences for any contrary view that makes its way into the public domain.

That, too, augments secrecy inside a party and encourages subterfuge. They inculcate the lesson the media is teaching them, and leak against their opponents, framing them as subversive and disloyal.

It’s a vicious circle, created by incoherent and authoritarian political parties and a fourth estate consumed by personality politics and sensationalism – all legitimated by a myopic understanding of what unity means in a democratic society.

“The battle of ideas” is an unfortunate phrase. It implies more than triumph of one argument over another: enemies and allies. It’s all a bit extreme for internal party politics.

But then again, maybe it’s not. Do our political parties deserve the benefit of the doubt? Both the ANC and the DA are now so fragile they don’t even want to debate important ideas (such as BEE in the DA, or the wage bill in the alliance).

And you would be hard pressed to find 20 politicians across both parties you could describe as mature. Even those who are mature, reasonable and well-meaning are quickly tainted as divisive and part of some extreme racial or ideological cabal. The actual ideas they espouse are rarely considered on their own merits.

This idea of unity is just another poorly defined, vague nothing that people evoke when times are tough – no different from transformation, diversity, even democracy itself. We latch onto them for emotional comfort. Ours is a national conversation of clichés and platitudes, devoid of substance or meaning.

But, my word, do we feel strongly about them all!

‘Unity’ is another poorly defined, vague nothing people evoke in tough times