Dirk Hartford: South Africa’s only National Dialogue - How to end ANC rule before collapse

Key topics:President Ramaphosa's call for a national dialogue reflects deep cognitive dissonance, as the ANC has worsened the very crises it now claims to address.The ANC's fragmentation has spawned equally corrupt spin-offs (EFF, MK, SACP), none of which offer real solutions—only further instability and plunder.South Africa's business community must abandon silence, mobilise resources, and take bold, coordinated action—echoing the 1980s UDF/Cosatu strategy—to accelerate the ANC's removal and avert state failure..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 at 5:30am 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.By Dirk Hartford.The only national dialogue South Africans need to be having now is how to remove the ANC from power before we become a completely failed state characterised by permanent disintegration, growing social antagonism, corruption and criminality.To see President Ramaphosa outline the key issues he believes the national dialogue should “dig deep” on in his opening address on Friday is to see someone suffering from severe cognitive dissonance - to be kind to him.The very issues he cites are the very issues his party has palpably failed to address and made considerably worse over the past 30 years. Haikona man. Ramaphosa and the ANC must go from power one way or another.The centrifugal forces tearing the ANC apart bit by bit are not sufficient for this. So far they have left us with the likes of Malema’s EFF, Zuma’s MK, Shivambu’s Afrika Mayibuye and soon an “independant” SACP which will hopefully bury the ANC alliance for good.All of these forces are infected with the same cancerous, essentially criminal, culture that the ANC in exile brought into the country. And cancer can’t be cured.None has any prospect of much success beyond their current standing at the ballot box. With the possible exception of Zuma’s essentially Zulu party, MK. Word on the ground has it that the perennial trickster has completely disembowelled Ramaphosa’s ANC in Mpumalanga and KZN.Behind the race baiting, land rattling and expropriation exhorting they have in common, all are concerned primarily with getting their hands on the cookie jar and extending the ANC’s extraction project.Even if, in the increasingly unlikely scenario, they were able to gather all their forces together with what’s left from Ramaphosa’s ANC and replace the current GNU at the ballot box, it will be a bun fight of note. These organisations hate each other with a passion equal to their hatred of white monopoly capital. It will only accelerate the country’s demise.Those who welcomed Ramaphosa’s leadership of the GNU after last year’s elections were not wrong. His GNU was the best possible option under the circumstances and remains so deep is the crisis of leadership in the ANC and beyond.But that's no reason to cling onto Ramaphosa or the GNU, either. The centre is clearly not holding, the ANC is busy imploding, and fear of the anarchy that might be unleashed is kicking the can down the road.Helen Zille’s run for Mayor in Johannesburg will indeed be the touchstone that determines whether there is a way out of the disaster SA faces. Everyone knows this, not least of all Malema et al., which is why they are going to go all out to try to prevent it happening.Ordinary South African’s are beyond sick and tired of the situation. That is why, as Jonny Steinberg has pointed out, there was such a groundswell of support for General Mkhwanazi after his press conference, whatever the merits or not of his own case..Read more:.National dialogue or factional farce? The graceless death spiral of the ANC: Isaac Mogotsi.South Africans long for law and order, a state that works, hospitals and schools that deliver jobs, and a future. And they don’t care how these are delivered, even if it takes a benevolent dictator dressed in army fatigues to get there.BizNews readers are generally the South Africans least affected by the catastrophic circumstances the country finds itself in. As a prominent CEO of a listed company told me recently, no matter what, we are still making, and will still make tons of money.The question remains: What is to be done now? The situation calls for radical action, and radical action requires bold thinking, organisation, and sacrifice. The business community is a powerful force in the political, economic, and social spheres and needs to use that power now more than ever. It could do well to take a leaf out of the playbook of the internal anti-apartheid struggle in the 80’s - led by the UDF and Cosatu - which was the main force in forcing the regime to negotiate. For example :At the very least business needs to be speaking out vociferously through its organisations and directly to condemn Ramaphosa’s ANC and its turpitude. With few exceptions, the silence of the business community - including the 100 or so super BEE beneficiaries - is deafening.Business could clean up its own act and publicly take steps to try to ensure that SA is not the country with the worst Gini coefficient/wealth inequality on the planet. It would find willing partners in the trade union movement for such an endeavour.Businesses that are able to could consider work-sharing options with trade unions to help with the unemployment crisis. Well-thought-out Esops (employee share ownership schemes) could be the answer to the ANC’s BEE circus and help employers and employees align with the business’s objectives. Business should think twice about giving even R1 to the ANC and should make its funding of opposition parties like those in the GNU conditional upon them at least taking real steps towards presenting a united front to the electorate.Its one thing whining about the ANC being a corrupt and criminal organisation and government even as one continues to finance it through taxes. Cosatu led an effective anti-VAT campaign in the 80’s. It can happen again; the unions should jump at the idea and the poor would get much needed relief.Even mass action should not be the preserve of the masses. A one-day symbolic general strike, conceived at Nedlac and supported by capital and labour, would pose starkly before the nation where the real problem lies now.All of these and much more were on the table in the '80s. With less secrecy and more open campaigning for a more just, equal, and crime—and corruption-free society, business can help call the ANC’s bluff in the eyes of the masses.

Dirk Hartford: South Africa’s only National Dialogue - How to end ANC rule before collapse

Key topics:

Related Stories