The July 2021 unrest, the burning of parliament and the debates around tourism minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s utterances about the judiciary leave most of us wondering: can 2022 be any different from five years ago, when Cyril Ramaphosa was elected ANC president?
Notwithstanding all manner of attacks on Ramaphosa’s presidency, his administration and our constitutional democracy, the centre has held. There has been an effective response to the Covid-19 pandemic, albeit tainted by acts of corruption, and the successful prosecution of several elements of the state capture crowd, including the brief jailing of former president Jacob Zuma, all of which was crowned by the delivery of part one of the Zondo commission report.
These developments can conceivably lay the basis in 2022 for a turnaround in the performance of the state, which, as noted by the National Planning Commission (NPC) December 2020 review of economic progress, “is the essential foundation for delivery on NDP [National Development Plan] objectives”.
Keeping this in mind, 2022 should be a cathartic moment similar to what we went through with the other major moment in democratic SA, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose report SA academic Aletta Norval suggested should be read as “founding of the contours of a new conception of democratic community, a founding which is incomplete and requires refounding in a variety of different sites”.
There has been much focus on how the state, and especially the governing party, is going to respond to the Zondo commission’s findings. That is an essential but too narrow response: the report should be reflected upon by all of society, so we can appreciate what this means for us as a law-abiding people committed to building our country.
To paraphrase Norval, the Zondo commission report should be part of a discourse on the refounding of the SA state that helps deepen democracy while promoting the wellbeing and security of its citizens.
A key aspect of this discourse should be around how we tackle the alienation citizens feel from their elected representatives, as well as being disempowered by formal electoral processes. This growing disenchantment has seen declining participation in elections and more instances of people resorting to protest action, which often turn violent, trends that were exploited by agitators trying to settle political scores through the riots of July 2021.
Part of this discourse should be how we improve the quality of our national, provincial and local assemblies. There is a crying need for political parties to apply higher standards — not necessarily academic standards — in the selection of their candidates so the laws and regulations that emerge are more robust, having taken into account the consequences of such legislation.
The issues that have hamstrung the performance of the executive are manifold and have been well aired by the NPC as well as the Zondo commission. These include stabilising the political-administrative interface, especially between ministers and their directors-general, while being clear about delegation, accountability and oversight. This would go a long way towards avoiding the grand-scale looting made possible by state capture.
The burning need to develop specialist professional and technical skills in all spheres of government has now come to be referred to by the shorthand “improving the capability of the state”.
A much-needed discussion is needed on how the state itself should be reformed so it operates in a more streamlined manner, instead of having, for example, economic policy being shaped by a disparate range of commissions, councils, departments and advisory structures. This should be a reminder of the unfinished debates around the need for a leading pilot agency to help simplify processes and set priorities for the state.
One gets a sense that, compared to December 2017, Ramaphosa is on steadier ground and, with the SA public willing us on to a better democracy and a better state, this may just be the long-awaited inflection point.
• Abba Omar is director of operations at the Mapungubwe Institute and serves on the NPC.
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