Prince Mashele BNC#8: South Africa has one last political option - and everything depends on it

Political scientist Prince Mashele delivers a provocative take on South Africa’s political past, present, and future. He argues the country has exhausted “white,” “black,” and fragmented coalition politics - and now faces a final choice: true joint governance. With bold, controversial proposals, he outlines a ten-point plan to rebuild institutions, restore accountability, and reignite economic growth before it’s too late..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here.Listen here.Edited transcript of the address.[00:08]Alec Hogg:Our next talk is a treat. It always is a treat. Prince Mashele is a political scientist, an author, and a thinker. I don’t know what Prince is going to do with his life — and maybe he’ll tell us today. I say what more he’s going to do with his life — but he certainly is sharing incredible insights as we go along.What is interesting — and I hope he does touch on it; if he doesn’t in his talk, we will be doing so in our Q&A — is that he has written a biography on Herman Mashaba. Now, it was a biography, it was a book that was mired in quite a lot of controversy, because people who are not mad about Prince, and not mad about Herman, decided this was an opportunity to have a go at them. But if you read it, it’s beautifully written and there are a lot of interesting insights in it.Helen Zille was not complimentary about her opponent in the Joburg mayoral race. It’ll be very interesting to hear, at some point, what Prince has to say about that, but I’ve got a feeling he’s got bigger fish to fry.Let’s welcome him.[01:38]Prince Mashele:Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.I’m testing if you are bots or human beings. Good morning.Oh, are you human? We live in the age of AI, so you have to test first if you’re talking to bots from Russia or you’re talking to real human beings.Thanks, Alec. This is Hymn to Freedom by Oscar Peterson, one of the greatest pianists of all time. It’s my favourite when I want to reflect. I listen to this tune.I’m going to talk about the country I love, South Africa. I’ve been here since Tuesday. My sense is that we have a very complicated relationship with this country. We love it and hate it at the same time. I’m not part of those who hate it, I’m part of those who love it.And I want to talk about the biggest problem facing South Africa, which is politics. The biggest problem facing South Africa is politics.[03:00]And let me start this way.South Africa — that is, modern South Africa — there are only four kinds of politics possible for modern South Africa. Only four. We may or may not be aware of it, but there are only four. Nothing outside the four.We have experimented with two. And we’re done with that. We are busy with the third. We’re not done with it. And there’s only one possible politics left for us.The first is white politics. You can go as far back as 1652 if you want. It ended in 1994. That was white politics. It did a few things in South Africa. One: before white politics touched South Africa, this place was a bush. There was no road, no telephone line, no railway, nothing. It was a bush.By the time white politics was done with South Africa in 1994, this was actually a modern state. The only cardinal sin that white politics committed was to exclude black people from the economic benefits of that project.I’m done with the period from 1652 to 1994. Done.[04:31]The second politics that we experimented with began in 1994. It’s called black politics. It ended in 2024.Black politics did two things. One, extremely bad. Secondly, good. The first, which is extremely bad: it broke the backbone of public infrastructure, and you can see it collapsed the South African state. That’s the first thing that it did. Very bad. Look around, you will see.The good thing that black politics did, for the first time in the history of this country, it attempted very seriously to relax race relations. You may be angry, you may deny it. In terms of race relations, we are actually better compared to any period in history.I’m done with black politics.[05:42]The third politics is what we are experimenting with now. It started in 2016 with local government elections, a few cities beginning to experiment with that. It’s called — and this is my coinage — the politics of fragmentation.How does the politics of fragmentation work? You go to Nelson Mandela Bay, PE, you find in the municipality a number of political parties who are pulling in different directions. Just look around.That politics was inaugurated at national level after the 2024 elections. And those who love euphemisms call that politics the Government of National Unity. Those who don’t like euphemisms, like me, we call it the politics of fragmentation. Those people sitting in the Union Buildings are not pulling in the same direction.I’m done with the politics of fragmentation, the third politics. That’s what we are doing now.[07:21]There is only one politics remaining. And I decided I’m going to focus 15 minutes of my time on this last one, because if we don’t do that politics, we are doomed.It’s what I call a joint politics of blacks and whites in South Africa.Ladies and gentlemen, we have never done that politics since the beginning of time in South Africa. We may fool ourselves, we have never experimented with that kind of politics. It’s a difficult politics. We have not seen it and we don’t trust each other.After the Anglo-Boer War, the Afrikaners and the English — and you know that history very well — they had butchered each other, and they came to the conclusion that this is self-destruction, it’s not sustainable. Let’s go to a town called Vereeniging and strike a deal that we shall do joint politics as former enemies. And they did from 1910.And the English understood in that deal that the Afrikaners are the majority. The leader of the state will always be an Afrikaner. Just look carefully from 1910. Even though, in mining and commerce, the English were still in charge, the leader is Afrikaner.So what I’m talking about, this historic deal has actually been done in South Africa, but only by whites.[09:06]Since 1994, the blacks were so arrogant, giving the middle finger to the whites, thinking that they can do it alone. Now, the component that is arrogant among blacks now, it’s only political criminals. The majority of blacks have now shifted. They want blacks and whites to do politics together.The only problem is that those who must lead the politics on the part of blacks and whites don’t trust each other, and they are resisting doing it.What does this politics look like? And I have distilled this thing very carefully, down to detail. I’m now going to present to you — call it the mad Prince Mashele 10-point plan: how to fix a republic.Point number one: assemble an inclusive, ethical, competent, and highly educated team of blacks and whites. The first thing you do — we have them in our society. I’ve actually prepared a list. We have them in our society. They are not in government. Government is a theatre of scoundrels.So we must get those people to go into the political theatre. And it’s going to be a fight, and elbow out the scoundrels. Let the proper human beings of our country take over.[11:01]Point number two: jail political criminals and restore law and order. And you must be methodless about it.Beginning with the guy you used to love who has disappointed you very badly: Cyril Ramaphosa must be arrested for Phala Phala. If any one of you was found with dollars in your sofa — the ones he has not denied — you would be in prison. Why is he not in prison?And clean up the police and the whole criminal justice system, by the way. I have a plan. We can talk about the details.Point number three: flush out deployed cadres from government and professionalise the public service.You get in there — Helen [Zille] said it’s difficult to fire these people. It’s not. It is very easy. The highest level administratively is the DG. The second is the DDG. The third is chief director. The fourth is director. The three, you get in there. These people have committed one crime or another. You suspend them with immediate effect, without pay.You know where they will run? They will run to the Labour Court. The Labour Court will say, hey, it’s a labour dispute. Have you tried the CCMA? That’s the first point. You starve the CCMA of money. You clog the system. You appoint acting heads in these positions. You implement. By the time these cases are finalised after four years, you are busy campaigning for the next election.It can be done.[13:00]Fourth, reposition public schools and higher education institutions for the delivery of quality education, with an emphasis on mathematics, science and technology.I have been fortunate like you. I’ve travelled. I’ve read world history. I am not aware of a country that was poor that turned itself around without maths, science and technology being at the centre of that project. Look at East Asia.My role model in East Asia is Singapore: a competent state standing side by side with a thriving and competitive private sector. And there has to be strong leadership pushing that agenda.Fifth, make public clinics and hospitals work again. Sounds like Trump. Make public clinics and hospitals work again. You don’t need an NHI. You do not need an NHI. If you are sick and you are in Khayelitsha township in the Western Cape, why must you be taken far away? You need to go to a clinic five minutes, 10 minutes away. You are sick. You will die if you are going far.Let your clinic, wherever you are, work. If you live in a suburb, your clinic and your hospital in the suburb must work. If you live in the township, your clinic must be clean. There must be a specialist. There must be a nurse. And it must work. Forget about the NHI.Chris Hani Baragwanath in Johannesburg is the biggest hospital in Africa. It was built by the apartheid government. Why did they build the biggest hospital in Soweto? Because Soweto is the biggest township in South Africa. So the people of Soweto, when they are sick, must never be taken to something — they must be taken to Chris Hani. But I want to have that back. Simple and straightforward, not complicated.[15:20]Six, cut out red tape and make it easy to do business in South Africa, and mobilise both domestic and international investors to invest in this country. If you sort out some of the things that I’ve already spoken about, investors will come. Investors will come. They went to Singapore. It was a developmental backwater. In fact, there was no country called Singapore before Lee Kuan Yew started that.They sorted out the fundamentals. They have no natural resources and absolutely nothing. It’s such a small state there. But investors went.So first thing you do: you hold up this piece of paper. It’s called expropriation without compensation. You tear it up. The people who came up with this piece of law, by the way, they have not even implemented it. The only purpose it serves is to scare away investors. That’s the only purpose.Tell me what has been expropriated on the basis of this law. Absolutely nothing. Even if they wanted to expropriate, by the way, so don’t be scared. They are grossly incompetent.[16:37]Seven: replace BEE with a redress programme that focuses on two areas. One, the provision of quality education for black children, and two, the economic empowerment of workers.So instead of a few fat cats who are politically connected making money from the equity you give them in the name of BEE, why can’t you redirect that to your employees? So you say, here is a category of employees. If you belong to this category, you will benefit from this scheme. If you are above, sorry, you won’t. This is what it would do. No colour attached to it, but we know.The majority of low-paid employees in South Africa are black. You would empower people who are involved in the creation of wealth in that company. Number two, if there is a white worker who belongs to that category, why are you excluding that white worker? Because there’s no difference between the white worker and a black colleague. In any case, they will do the same job. You’ve sorted out the issue.Education — and maths and science, I emphasise. If we do not focus on maths and science in black schools, townships and rural areas, we are doomed. Whatever Helen tells you, it’s not going to happen. So a redress programme to focus on that. And the details we can talk about.Left with three minutes.[18:22]Seventh, rebuild public infrastructure. It’s the easiest. It’s the easiest. A road — I’m sure there are engineers here. I was in Lichtenburg two weeks ago. It’s true, it’s broken, but it’s the easiest to fix. I can tell you, any engineer can design a plan. In six months to a year, you can rebuild those roads. It’s not complicated. It’s the easiest to do. Rebuild public infrastructure.Eighth, restore the integrity of South African citizenship, secure our borders, and stem the inflow of illegal foreigners. If you do not do that, we will never solve our problems.There are people who have bought our citizenship — I dare say millions — from a corrupt Home Affairs system. You’ve got to investigate that, flush them out. If you are in South Africa legally, you are welcome. If you are in South Africa illegally, we deport you mercilessly.[19:25]Now, 10 — which is the last bit. I’m left with one minute. I’m a good time manager.Restore — carry out a substantive moral regeneration in society. I am black. I have a house in Bushbuckridge, in a black community. My mother lives there. I also have a house in Boksburg. By the way, I live in Hout Bay full-time, and I’m not about to emigrate to the Western Cape. So don’t count me. So don’t worry. I’m happy in Hout Bay.And me, and those who love this country, will fight and fix this country. This country must be fixed holistically. You can’t have one bubble called Hermanus working and the rest is where real shit hits the fan. Let me tell you guys, you will not be protected here.But anyway, my community, the black community in the townships and in the rural areas, are broken. Alcoholism, drugs — there’s a drug called nyaope — the youth are in trouble. We have to sort out that stuff. That’s what I call moral regeneration.[20:35]As I conclude — I’m left with 42 seconds — the ANC is the embodiment of black politics. We have done that. We can never go back to that nonsense. We have seen what it does.The DA is an embodiment of white politics. I’m going to be very bold and tell you what you don’t want to hear. It’s an embodiment of white politics. We cannot — we have done white politics. We cannot go back there.The only option is a new project that we have not experimented with. I know you say, “Oh, we have tried with this and that.” I can tell you: the plan that I have developed, you haven’t seen it.Thank you.

Prince Mashele BNC#8: South Africa has one last political option - and everything depends on it

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