Guarding against the Trumps in our midst

If US voters kick Donald Trump out of the White House on Tuesday, it will mark the end of the world’s oldest democracy’s four-year flirtation with populism. But will that guarantee there will never be another Trump? It probably won’t. Trump was not an aberration — his rise to power coincided with a rising tide of populism that, at one stage, threatened to engulf Europe and other parts of the world.

Here at home, long before Trump surprisingly defeated Hillary Clinton to become Barack Obama’s successor, there were already worrying signs of the populism phenomenon being in the ascendancy.

Some even believe that we have already had our first populist president in the form of Jacob Zuma.

Indeed, one can find many similarities between the Trump and Zuma administrations.

But what is most important for us, given the damage that populist leaders tend to inflict on their countries, is whether SA can avoid such an experience in future.

The collapse of the Zuma-Gupta experience some two years ago led many an optimistic South African to believe that we had turned the corner for good.

But there are a number of signs that suggest that SA is fertile ground for a populist political figure to sweep into power in future.

Chief among these is the high level of blind loyalty some of our citizens show to prominent and powerful figures who find themselves in trouble with the law.

SA has long had a reputation that protests and demonstrations are an almost daily occurrence. A few years ago, you’d hardly go a week without seeing or reading about a group protesting about the lack of service delivery in their area, workers picketing over low wages, or another formation demonstrating about one social justice issue or another.

These days, if you see people toyi-toying in the streets, it is more than likely that it would have something to do with some famous figure — usually a politician or a selfproclaimed prophet — who is in trouble with the law. This week we witnessed this phenomenon on the streets of Pretoria, outside a court where the colourful Malawianborn “prophet” Shepherd Bushiri and his wife, Mary, were applying for bail.

Scores of vociferous Bushiri supporters, including an ANC MP with a mistaken belief that Bushiri rather than the electorate had sent him to the National Assembly, held demonstrations demanding that their leader be freed and that criminal charges against him be dropped.

The protesters, just like those we normally see outside our courts backing politicians facing charges of corruption and other serious crimes, did not seem bothered by the fact that the couple are accused of fraud and money-laundering relating to an investment scheme that is valued at R102m. They just wanted “Papa”, as they call Bushiri, released.

Populists thrive on this kind of blind loyalty and, in politics, they are quick to turn it into profitable currency.

As the Hawks close in on politicians and others accused of stealing from the public, we are likely to see the outside of our court buildings being turned into political platforms. The accused will not just be portraying themselves as victims of political vendettas, they will be using them to rally support for political power as the only way to escape the law.

The trick has worked at least once in our recent past. Would it work again? No-one can say with certainty.

But what matters is what the majority of citizens do. Do we get sucked into the “victimhood” narrative of the accused politicians, or do we demand more from those who want to lead the country?

Populists also thrive on drama and controversy.

Perhaps one way of protecting ourselves from them is the insistence on more quality debates on policy issues rather than this fascination we seem to have with political monologues delivered on the steps of courts in front of approving crowds without an opportunity for tough questions to be asked.

If Trump loses, it will be a blow for populism but not its demise. We have seen during his tenure how populism divides a nation and puts the lives of people at risk.

We should do all we can to ensure that this brand of leadership does not become the dominant feature of our body politic. And the first step towards that is to discourage blind loyalty.