Leadership vacuum calls for a return to UDF-style activist trenches
Ramaphosa’s failure to lead as SA faces a growing crisis means it is time for ordinary people to step up again and prevent a descent into disaster
● When Chris Hani was assassinated in 1993, Nelson Mandela addressed the nation on television. Mandela was not yet president, but he was undeniably presidential. In a crisis, Mandela was able to give real and effective leadership.
We saw something similar after the massacre at the two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand earlier this year. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was able to give decisive and effective leadership.
Today, SA is in another kind of crisis. There is mass unemployment, rapid economic decline, a systematic collapse into lawlessness, and anti-democratic forces that are actively working to undermine democratic norms. There is also a global crisis with right-wing authoritarianism flourishing and a profound and urgent climate crisis.
In this situation we require inspired, visionary and decisive leadership. However, our president is largely absent from the national debate. When Cyril Ramaphosa does speak, he equivocates, gives us inane clichés or fudges the urgent issues. He seems to suffer from a more or less complete inability to deal with the urgent issues confronting us. He is not even willing to acknowledge the seriousness of the crisis that we face, let alone offer us a credible path out of the crisis.
Ramaphosa’s failures as a leader go beyond his inability to offer leadership. Basic issues are simply not being addressed. Eskom, as well as being a disaster for our economy, is also one of the worst offenders on the planet in terms of global warming.
Yet nothing meaningful is done. Our police often stand by and watch as migrants are attacked, construction companies are shaken down or trucks openly burnt on the highways. Day after day our media report on corruption within the political class and the state that is obviously criminal and yet there are no arrests.
Some observers ascribe Ramaphosa’s failure to lead to his weakness in the ANC and say that he wants to do the right thing but lacks the political authority. Others take the view that Ramaphosa is simply a weak individual, ill-suited for his role as president. Either or both of these positions could be correct.
But whatever the reason for Ramaphosa’s inability to lead, we are in the midst of an escalating social, economic and political crisis and he is not able to give leadership. Many of the forces competing to fill the gap are extremely dangerous. These range from the alliance between the pro-Zuma faction of the ANC and the EFF, to the smaller and at times openly violent formations organising attacks on truck drivers and migrants, and shaking down construction projects.
Increasingly, many in the middle classes are abandoning democratic values and demanding dangerously authoritarian responses to the crisis such as the declaration of a state of emergency or the return of the death penalty. This is a very worrying development. If a charismatic authoritarian figure emerged, promising a law and order crackdown and a cleanup of corruption, many in the middle class would, as has happened in India, Brazil and the US, succumb to the authoritarian temptation.
This leaves us in a very difficult situation. An alternative to Ramaphosa from within the ANC could well come from the pro-Zuma faction, which is openly committed to kleptocratic and anti-democratic forms of politics. Ramaphosa has proven to be wholly inadequate as a president but the grim truth of the matter is that an alternative from within the ANC could be vastly worse. For this reason, demanding the recall of Ramaphosa could very well result in disaster. We may have to just learn to live with a president who is unable to offer leadership in a time of crisis.
This means that we have to accept that we cannot rely on elected authority to lead us out of the crisis. This does not mean that all is lost. There is another alternative. That alternative is that leadership will have to come from within society itself.
This is not an entirely new situation. In the 1980s black leadership was largely in exile, in prison, underground or living with extreme harassment. The formation of the United Democratic Front in 1983 enabled ordinary people to participate in leadership from below, and the UDF was able to give very significant leadership to society.
The UDF was, broadly speaking, a democratic force that was anti-racist and pro-working class. It wasn’t perfect. Its willingness to dissolve itself after the unbanning of the ANC was a major strategic error. But as imperfect as the UDF was, it organised and mobilised millions of people behind a broadly democratic and progressive vision of society.
Achieving organisation and mobilisation on this scale requires real commitment at the level of grassroots community politics. It requires endless meetings, endless discussions and endless work. It is a world apart from the narcissism of “online activism” in which self-promotion usually trumps any commitment to real grassroots work. It is also a world apart from most forms of NGO politics, which are often deeply elitist and generally carried out without any sort of popular mandate or constituency.
But now that we know that leadership will not come from the presidency, it is imperative that it come from society. If society cannot organise itself on a democratic and progressive basis, there is a genuine risk that the growing forces committed to violent and authoritarian forms of politics could gain the upper hand and plunge us into a catastrophic situation.
The kinds of organisations that are openly organising violent attacks on migrants, the trucking industry and the construction industry are already an urgent threat to democratic norms, along with basic safety. There is a real risk that they could grow, cohere and link themselves to electoral politics.
Most activists don’t want to be activists. They would prefer to spend their time with their families, or developing themselves in interesting ways. There is drudgery in real activism. This is why the bulk of the generation that built the UDF retired from activism when the ANC came to power.
But now that we confront a new and severe national crisis, and the ANC is no longer able to give leadership to a progressive vision, there has to be a return to the activist trenches. There is no credible alternative.
Buccus is a senior research associate at the Auwal SocioEconomic Research Institute, research fellow in the school of social sciences at UKZN and academic director of a university study abroad programme on political transformation