🔒 ANC rule will be over by end of decade, helped by Covid-19 – Frans Cronjé, Ralph Mathekga

The ANC and its alliance members have been in power since 1994. A future without the party that Nelson Mandela led is almost unthinkable. In the 2019 elections, the ANC under the new leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa managed to attract 57.5% of the vote. President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised a New Dawn but he has failed to rein in corruption and controversial policies on alcohol and tobacco products during the lockdown has left many South Africans bitter and angry.   But would the voters that has kept the ANC in power for so long, turn their back on South Africa’s liberation party? – Dr Frans Cronjé, the Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Race Relations told the BizNews Midweek Catchup webinar that the believed the demise of ANC-rule was inevitable and the Covid-19 pandemic could be the catalyst that sped up the process. Dr Ralph Mathekga said he it was likely that President Ramaphosa would not have a second term.  – Linda van Tilburg

South Africans are becoming more and more disillusioned with the idea that President Cyril Ramaphosa could turn the country around after the devastation of the Zuma years. Ramaphosa took the position as the head of the ANC, with the promise that he would tackle corruption and get the economy, that had been weighed down by the implosion of state-owned enterprises, back to growth. When Covid-19 and its strict lockdowns hit South Africa, Ramaphosa was praised for acting quickly.
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But the initial trust turned to cynicism and anger as he allowed some of his senior ministers to rule the roost. The illegal trade in cigarettes and alcohol boomed, and a spokesperson was put on suspension after a lucrative personal protective equipment deal went to a family member. The Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Race Relations (IRR), Dr Frans Cronjé told the BizNews Midweek Catchup webinar that the pandemic could, however, be a critical turning point for Ramaphosa and South African politics. 

In the midst of all of this, we published a book titled ‘The Rise or Fall of South Africa‘, the ‘or’ is a very critical part of that title.

That book was sent to its publishers in November, one month before Wuhan, and we wrote in the book, we used the word ‘fragility’ a lot and said that, if a major geostrategic shock washed through the world now, the consequences could be to set South Africa up for a political realignment on a scale of what last happened in the 1980s and 1990s.

One month after that, we had Covid-19 and that was the shock. And indeed, it’s the catalyst that I think ,will bring about a realignment this decade on a scale with what happened here in the 1980s and the 1990s.

Dr Ralph Mathekga said it had become evident that President Ramaphosa had not been able to realign the ANC and he did not rein in the corrupt faction in the organization. 

As you and I and are speaking, you’ve got a member of parliament who is a suspect and is heading a committee of correctional services, which is supposed to be in the security cluster. Since Nasrec (ANC elective conference 2017), we have seen the two groups just agreeing on deployment.

It was more like factions going into deployment, it had nothing to do with the strategy of the party. It had nothing to do with the vision that the cabinet was going to implement. It had a lot to do with the compromise around power. So, there’s not been any realignment.

Actually, the sad part is the risk of a further democratisation of corruption under President Ramaphosa. I would say under President Jacob Zuma things were a bit pedestrian. Corruption was not sophisticated. People took things that were not attended to. Now you have under President Ramaphosa, a group of sophisticated people involved in corruption. I wrote in my book, ‘When Zuma goes‘, that we will not see the end of corruption.

We are most likely to see even a more sophisticated corruption that is not illegal. So, the repercussion is politics characterised by tensions. I’ll agree with Frans that protests will be the order of the day, but even beyond protests, it is the radicalisation of South Africa’s politics with Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) growing and almost becoming a party at the centre of policy influence.

Given their position, it just tells you that you’ll have South African politics that will be moving much more towards the radicalisation path. You no longer have consensus at the centre of policy dialogue. You have the winners taking all. With the land debate, if you lose it, you lose everything.

It’s not about coming up with a policy that one can say still reflect that centre politics that South Africa or the ANC has committed to earlier. The repercussions politically are going to be quite severe. I think this is one event that has the potential to really, really, really shake the functioning of our body politics, to bring about or introduce a major re-alignment in our politics in a way that we are drifting further and further from centre politics or the solution.

Dr Cronjé said he believed that the ANC and President Ramaphosa’s inability to realign itself back to the centre of politics would lead to its demise over the next decade. He did, however, not anticipate that the support that the ANC would lose would go to parties like the EFF and said research by the IRR indicated that the majority of public opinion pointed to a new alignment towards a pragmatic, moderate group with a black conservative agenda.

So, I think South African voters are incredibly pragmatic, very well-informed, very moderate in the main. The liberation loyalty voting is not a phenomenon. What drives voting patterns is pragmatism and the material circumstances of people.

Apply a shock like Covid-19 to that voter base, who’s going to benefit from this? The EFF or the DA?  We say you’re looking backwards to try and see into the future. What the answer may be, is a new idea, a new party, a new movement that will appear to the centre right which is where public opinion tends to resonate in South Africa.

PREMIUM: Herman Mashaba: Come 2025 – we will remove the ANC

I would suggest to you that by the end of this decade, South Africa may be governed by a group and a movement of people, a party that doesn’t exist at the moment, pushing what we call controversially, a black conservative agenda. The very small little steps towards that, I don’t think he’s going to make it, but he’ll lead the example on the battlefield, is Herman Mashaba.

A capitalist, anti-racist and he thinks the state should not rule your life and he’s a popular, slightly right-winger with his ‘chase the immigrants out of the country’. If he was an American, his slogan would have been ‘build a wall’. It’s a very exciting moment to be at.

If South Africa remains a free society in which people and their desires and wills choose its government, then the end of this decade may see the country end up in under new management and in remarkably good shape as a consequence.

Dr Mathekga said he believed that is unlikely that President Cyril Ramaphosa would be President for a second term.

If there is any chance of the ANC changing, it would be very gradual.

What happens after Ramaphosa? I’m not even sure if he’s going to have the second term because we know that, within the ANC…you cannot go against your comrades in government.

You see, the ANC is structured in a way that the system makes it impossible for anyone who want to end the second term from within the party, to do anything meaningful in government that could have implications for the political fortunes of some of the senior party members that are entrenched within the party.

So, it is a pipe dream that Mr Ramaphosa could go after the corrupt and still expect people who control the branches to support him. I also want to use a disclaimer like Frans Cronjé did.

There are great people in the ANC, there’s no doubt about it. But I don’t think their voice is so dominant that one can say they’re pushing against the institutionalisation of corruption within the ANC and the process of electing leaders.

It is being questioned by very senior members of the ANC who make remarks that votes have been bought and so forth.

So, I often say, yes, President Ramaphosa can have the second term but the question is at what cost for South Africans? I mean, we know that his Presidency at Nasrec came at a cost for South Africans because he was willing to compromise. It was compromising with some of the people that are considered to be former President Jacob Zuma’s allies.

So, what comes after him. I find it very difficult thinking about the ANC, where we will be in 15 years. I don’t know whether it’s a useful exercise for anyone. I want to focus my mind on what is going to be after the ANC.

There is the possibility that South Africa’s solution might not involve the ANC, to a point where I think it might not matter who is the president of the ANC after Ramaphosa.

If you are going into these coalitions and I think that’s where we are going, it wouldn’t really matter very much. We need to start to construct South African politics away from the ANC. It is nearly impossible because of how overwhelming the party is, we always think about self-correction and so forth. But for me, it might just not be there.

Both analysts indicated that a coalition was likely in South Africa in the future, and that power would become more fragmented. And the idea that the government in Pretoria decided on policy would be replaced by a less centralised system. Dr Cronjé said communities were already increasingly taking responsibility for themselves. 

Think about it this way, the authority of the state will begin to retreat until a point where the government governs over the Union buildings and the garden around the Union buildings.

But outside, beyond that, more and more, I think you’ll see what we call a fragmentation where communities take it upon themselves to a lesser or greater extent the functions of the state or simply as the taxi industry did a week or two ago, three weeks ago, they just said, to hell with your Covid-19 regulations, we’re going to load at 100% and try and stop us and they got away with it.

If you’re thinking, who will govern in the sort of traditional way that there’ll be a group in the Union Buildings, they make policies that determines everything that happens to South Africa, I don’t think that’s what the country is going to be like.

It will be a far more fragmented society where  institutions, communities will take responsibility for themselves, almost like parallel states and we’ve made great advances towards that already. Middle class communities living in walled villages, it is really the medieval model.

A great statistic is, that in 1994 there were about a 100,000 police boots on the ground, not clerks and things and about a 100,000 security guards. Now South Africa has, I think, about 180,000 boots on the ground, policemen, but approaching 600,000 security officers and staff in the private sector. The classic definition of the state is a monopoly on the use of force or violence in society, that’s already been surrendered to the private sector.

Dr Mathekga: I think Frans is raising a very important issue here. I’ve been studying communities, maybe excessively, and I can tell you that already in some of the rural communities, people are resuscitating traditional leadership authorities and giving them much more power to run communities because local government is just rotten.

I mean, it’s failing. So, you have communities already, indeed organising themselves. If you decentralise, people manage their communities very well. People get involved. We are more likely to see better performing institutions than the centralised one.