END OF THE LIBERATION ERA NEARS
November poll offers the chance for opposition parties to lure new voters and start building a real democracy in SA
Part of the reason liberation movements in many parts of the world have stayed in power long past their sell-by dates is the myth of stability. For about 30 years after being freed from the shackles of oppression, many societies cannot quite see a future without the organised formation that spearheaded their liberation.
The liberation ethos trumps all. Even if the liberators cannot boil an egg, the fact that they “liberated us” maintains a stranglehold on how the immediate aftermath of the liberation process is handled. For many of the newly liberated, it is a case of rather the liberator who is feeding at the trough than the former oppressor. Even the untainted newbie who would do a better job at governance is shunned.
In SA, a polyglot society where the former oppressor holds the same passport as the oppressed, where the one cannot wish the other away, where we have to live together and daily confront — whether in the planning of our cities or the modes of transport we use — the sins and the depredations of apartheid, the ANC has for 30 years been seen as the guarantor of stability.
In the past the ANC could promise the white minority peace, prosperity and the freedom to finally live unshackled from the guilt of being the oppressor, while at the same time it could promise the poor, formerly oppressed black masses that things would change for the better. It was a balancing act the ANC has managed to maintain for nearly 30 years.
Those days are gone.
The July riots were a game-changer. When the ANC’s internal battles gushed out violently into society, when some of its leading lights nodded and winked and instigated the rioting and looting, who was the guarantor of peace and stability and continuity? It was not the ANC. It was not there. Even the state it runs was absent.
I am haunted by a tweet from July, when editor and journalist Ferial Haffajee monitored the looting of a shopping mall in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) over an entire day. Live on television, the mall was eaten away as if by ants. The state machinery was nowhere to be found. Instead, many of the ANC’s leaders in KZN were sitting on their hands and making weird noises about how the jailing of Jacob Zuma for contempt of court was unjustified.
In those crucial days, the power shift that has been apparent in our society was speeded up. The citizenry organised itself, often badly and with terrible consequences as we saw in places such as Phoenix, and stood up against the looters — who were, of course, largely ANC supporters.
The ANC’s unique selling point for 30 years was that it could promise to deliver prosperity for the poor while maintaining stability and growth for the wealthy. It can no longer make such a statement without drawing a laugh or a whimper of despair from many South Africans.
On social media the insults and barbs fly between the various factions and strands of the ANC. It is not one party, but at least two. It is not the glorious organisation that brought a broken nation together. It is a shadow of its former self.
If South Africans stick with this divided ANC in the local elections on November 1 and in the 2024 national elections, a disaster awaits. The ANC’s internal warring and the damaging effects it has had on society will have been rewarded. The looting and the decay will have been rewarded. The ANC will continue with its ways.
A glorious opportunity has opened up for those who wish to step up and build SA as it enters real democracy. The opposition parties, big and small, have a real chance to lure new voters to their side. The vote is no longer binary. It is no longer about just black or white, or stability and implosion. It is about SA and its real prospects. The ANC’s vision is tired. Its leaders’ words are meaningless.
This election is for the DA, the EFF, ActionSA, Mmusi Maimane and others to lose.
The balancing act the ANC has managed to maintain for nearly 30 years is gone