Let us paint an ungenerous picture: we are governed by a criminal syndicate and led by a compromiser and appeaser; our economy is decimated and headed towards collapse; there is an accountability crisis and a general and pervasive hostility towards the idea of any opposition that does not genuflect before the ANC’s worldview; and on the margins, the rise of fascism and the politics of violence and intimidation.
It is tempting to say SA’s constitutional democracy has “matured” over the past 25 years, but has it, really?
There are some positives, to be sure. We seem, for example, to have made the connection between accountability and consequence in the past decade; a non-existent link in the age of Thabo Mbeki. But even that is debatable. For all the demands, there isn’t much to show for it all.
One could say our electoral system is maturing, helped along by the courts. But voters, when presented with the ANC’s cataclysmic and total failure over the past 15 years, recently gave the ANC another majority. So any systemic change seems redundant in the face of identity politics.
And besides, in KwaZulu-Natal and other places, many local elections are determined by death and violence. Competitors are simply terminated. Hard to argue electoral politics is maturing when you need a commission of inquiry into political assassinations. And that applies to industries other than politics.
In turn, that particular manifestation of ANC self-immolation is moving up not down the food chain. We already have a former president who openly admits to several failed assassination attempts.
Changing attitudes to accountability are encouraging but, essentially, they born of parliamentary failure. Demands and pressure for consequences are made and applied directly to political leaders, not committees or the National Assembly. No-one takes parliament itself seriously as an accountability mechanism.
This week, the defence and military veterans minister dismissed any need for consequences after the ANC used an SA National Defence Force aircraft for party business, on the grounds that the ANC itself had dealt with the matter. That is a child-like attitude to the separation of party and state specifically and accountability in general. It is an indictment of the calibre of ANC ministers.
SA constitutional and democratic culture — the unseen zeitgeist that underpins our democratic order — is changing ... It is degenerating into something quite ugly and dangerous
All the great parliamentary mechanisms for oversight are a farce. The DA puts up a brave fight to keep them alive but for the most part they are all on life support: oral and written questions; committee oversight (with the odd, ad hoc exception by issue); ministerial attendance; parliamentary debates; the ethics committee — parliament is a pretence, powerless in the big picture. And even it is relatively well off, compared to what goes on in ANC provincial legislatures.
By the time you get to local government (and, again, outside of DA-run municipalities) governance has so imploded that the brutal truth is we don’t really even know to what extent. We are preoccupied with trying to sort out a national collapse, we have no idea the depth and breadth of theft, incompetence and mismanagement at local level. Were any proper investigation to be done, it would make national corruption look like a joke.
The ANC has developed zero appreciation for the separation of party and state. And it had zero to begin with. The state is its play thing, cadre deployment is how it bypasses the constitution to control public service or ostensibly independent bodies or boards, and it shows no sign of any organisational reformation that would result in more respect for these boundaries.
Many of our Chapter Nine institutions are effectively destroyed. The public protector and the human rights commission are both led by political activities not independent, constitutionally minded experts. The auditor-general (AG) is the best of the lot — but to what end? All it does is produce an annual graph of how much money the ANC has blown, lost or stolen and, once everyone has finished being exasperated, normal business resumes. All the AG does is document our decline. He is a record-keeper.
How many people have been fired as a result of an AG report in the past 25 years?
As for the other Chapter Nine institutions? The Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities? More words can be found in its name than in the list of total outcomes it has produced in the past two decades.
The Electoral Commission of SA has been holding it all together. Though only just, you feel, and the graph is not headed in the right direction.
Freedom remains severely physically curtailed. If you are a woman in particular. Crime in general, and murder and rape in particular, are rampant. With it, much fear and trepidation. You just don’t feel free in SA, whatever the ANC tells you.
The same is true intellectually with regards to the democratic market place of ideas. It, too, is limited.
Are we interested in real alternatives? No. We are not; not the grand sense, although many do revel in arguing about the particulars. The ANC’s hegemonic hold on policy, with linchpin ideas such as BEE and affirmative action, remains so strong the commentariat recently rejected no less than non-racialism — as Tony Leon pointed out this week, a constitutional imperative itself. The ANC has destroyed the public imagination. Our “intellectuals” remain utterly beholden to race, are viciously rounded on.
On the fringes with have the EFF, a small but powerful metaphor — perhaps the very embodiment of how our democracy has devolved. That party is a symptom of our democratic decline: demagogic, violent, unaccountable and authoritarian. It is a manifestation of a great many anti-constitutional impulses. That it is growing, not shrinking, suggests, too, a failure to inculcate and respect constitutional and democratic values.
The problems with the ANC are acute and profound. Much of the above can be laid at the ANC’s doorstep. But the ANC is a temporary phenomenon. It will die or mutate with time. In theory, our democracy is supposed to be around for much longer. On this front, there is an ugly truth we are being distracted from, by the ANC’s incompetence.
The truth is, SA constitutional and democratic culture — the unseen zeitgeist that underpins our democratic order — is changing. And it is not becoming more democratic or more constitutional. It is degenerating into something quite ugly and dangerous.
It is hard to say what that is exactly. It has many elements to it: intolerance, radicalism, tribalism, violence, populism, hate and anger. If it gets strong or big enough it will change the fundamentals of the country, directly or indirectly. The state of the economy is fanning that particular fire at a rate of knots. And its flames care nothing for the ANC. They might be born of its failure but they risk running wild. And they have an insatiable hunger all of their own.
Hard to say what the cure is. You cannot strengthen a democratic or constitutional culture when you are led by a party that cares only about itself. The ANC exists for the ANC. It is both the means and the ends. But in its wake is a trail of poison that will eventually burn through our very foundation. And below that is a bottomless pit of rage that, unchecked, will quickly rise to surface and refashion the world after its own image.
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