JONATHAN YUDELOWITZ: South Africans are uniting as war of ideas takes hold

Ironically, for the first time since the anti-apartheid movement, politically aware South Africans are coalescing around principle rather than identity politics.

The EFF — which favours the political doctrines and personality cults of President Robert Mugabe, Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro — now vehemently promotes the rule of law and due process together with DA and their other rivals.

For the first time, too, organised business and labour as well as religious leaders are substantively agreeing about what needs to be done to right what is wrong in our constitutional democracy.

We are witnessing a war of ideas, characterised by intentional alliances according to principle and interest: not anything like the race or class war many expected.

The fact that former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, former public protector Thuli Madonsela and former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas and many other champions of the fight against state capture are all black, further negates divisive identity politics; probably to the chagrin of Black First Land First and Bell Pottinger, the British public relations firm that helped to develop the propaganda campaign attributing SA’s economic and social woes to "white monopoly capital".

Our transformation project ignores expertise and real contribution, which has led to a corrupt system of patronage, with little sign of the social progress that it was meant to have promoted.

In contrast, Madonsela and Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng have demonstrated what can be achieved if the right person is in the right job — and how important individual conscience and integrity is for leadership.

Another irony is that malfeasance has served to make clear and strengthen the respective mandates of the public protector, the legislature and judiciary; evinced by Parliamentary subcommittees’ impressive handling of the SABC and Eskom, post the dressing-down and clarification they received from the Constitutional Court, in the wake of the Nkandla judgment.

The war of ideas in SA is also forcing us to think about what’s really important: how democracy should work and what the role of ordinary citizens should be. Before the Nkandla disclosures, few South Africans knew what the public protector’s role was, or understood the role of the Treasury and the importance of its independence before the Capture of State report or the firing of Nene. Our strong media, freedom of expression and access to information that are enshrined in our Constitution have also all helped. Moreover, allegations of corruption have been tested and scrutinised by the auditor-general and the public protector in courts of law, demonstrating their educational and developmental role.

In contrast, the failure of our state-owned enterprises (SOEs) reveal the embarrassing absurdity of Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba’s ideological arguments that we should overlook uncomfortable facts that don’t fit the ideal and rather emphasise the potential of parastatals as engines of economic growth, like the SOEs of Asian Tigers.

He maintains that instead of examining corruption and incompetence at the Passenger Rail Agency of SA or the SABC, we should focus on what’s possible in the long term, treating us like the citizens of the erstwhile USSR — under instruction by their hypocritical political masters — to suffer privations, because that was the road to a communist nirvana.

Slogans, like "radical economic transformation" and "white monopoly capital" are value judgments that ignore facts, entrenching the deluded belief amongst their protagonists that they are right and others are to blame for everything that is wrong — thus rationalising the corruption and self-enrichment of our activist-inspired transformation policy.

This probably accounts for why the finance minister seems unaware that regardless of what their political rhetoric may suggest, the Asian Tigers have succeeded because they valued capability, discipline and systems that encourage economic growth and stability.

Singapore’s success, for instance, is largely due to its highly educated public service: products of their first-rate universities and colleges.

Whatever their political slogans suggest, the Chinese have, unlike Gigaba, followed the Singaporean example that demands discipline and fit-for-purpose appointments.

No matter what communist notions they publicly espouse, the Chinese are successful because they do not countenance the spectacularly unsuccessful cadre deployment and superficial labelling that characterises SA’s "state capitalism" and transformation.

The most interesting trend is the emergence of the courts and institutions as major players to which contestants turn to for guidance.

Here quality of thinking, rigour, fairness and the character of our judicial officers highlight most effectively what has, to date, been missing in our national transformation project.

The arrogant and flagrant violation of the Constitution has exposed the flaws in, and has seriously damaged the reputation of, SA’s transformation project and parastatals.

At the same time, the mettle of our courts, and chapter 9 institutions is being proven.

Moreover, it has focused South Africans’ attention and sorted the politician and public servant wheat from the chaff.

• Yudelowitz is joint MD of YSA and author of Smart Leadership.