“We heard it from the ground, interacting with people, we have seen it in the voting booth, it was a peaceful, non-verbal democratic revolution: people were saying ‘enough is enough; we don’t trust politics and politicians any more’. That is the message. And that is why we stood up over two years ago, to say this is the way of resolving problems at municipalities, is to depoliticise local government.” New Horizon Movement (NHM) leader, Vincent Jones, November 2021.
Where does one start with Mmusi Maimane’s latest political graft, Build One South Africa (Bosa)? The contradictions inherent to the idea are so profound, they make your head spin.
Let’s start with an obvious one: independent candidates are, by nature, independent. At least, they should be. Maimane made a whole range of promises in launching Bosa, from a venture capital fund to, well that was the only real concrete policy. The rest was just waffle about making everything better.
But the point is, if you have a party of “independent” candidates, how can you guarantee they will all support these ideas? You can’t, unless they are bound to the party in some way, in which case they aren’t independent.
That is a fairly foundational problem, which brings us to another issue: who are these “independent” candidates? If they are all nominated by “communities”, presumably you will take them as they come: democrats, conservatives, pan-Africanists, radical socialists, libertarians, racial nationalists, Christian fundamentalists, greenies, fascists? That’s the spirit of independence after all. He is going to bring these people all together under one umbrella to work on a venture capital fund? Sure, whatever.
An army of Maimanes
But no, that is not what Maimane means. He means independent candidates who think, feel and believe as he does: the great Maimane. He wants an army of Maimanes. Run by the chief Maimane. Independence has nothing to do with it.
To this end, he will be the presidential candidate. Because, well, obviously. It was his idea after all. He doesn’t even know who he will attract yet, but he does know he is the best of them. Also, he will ensure he is the best of them — because that is the point of the project. When Maimane looks in the mirror, he sees a political leader and potential president. What he doesn’t see is followers. So now he is going to manufacture some.
Why does he want this? Well, he has nothing to do, an ego to massage and bills to pay. That and a voice note from God on his phone telling him he is Moses. Maimane says politicians are self-serving. He would know.
On and on Maimane has gone, since his departure from the DA, slamming political parties as abhorrent. “The world over, parties are the antithesis of direct democracy and community-based decision-making,” he said in May last year. The “antithesis”? That’s quite a claim.
Thus, quite a contradiction, too, that he would now start one. He says he was forced into it: “I guaranteed South Africans that I would stand, but [parliament has] made it impossible for me to stand for a presidential election without amending the law. That’s why we need the platform.” Rubbish. Stand as an independent, on your own, and once elected convince the other independently elected MPs to vote for you as president. Why indulge the “antithesis” of democracy?
As an aside — assuming Maimane’s version that he cannot run without starting a party is true (which it isn’t) — how heartbroken would South Africans be, exactly, if Maimane simply said, “Sorry, I can’t fulfil my guarantee, because the system won’t let me?” Not a tear would be shed, anywhere. It would be like missing the invisible man.
Obviously he can’t wait. SA needs Maimane now, even if it doesn’t know it needs him. He has been ‘forced’ to do a 180. He had no choice. Moses, apart from the 40 years wandering through the wilderness, also jumped into action, at least initially. You hope Maimane has a better map, but you get the feeling he is making it up as he goes.
Why are independent candidates so much better than list-elected politicians? Well, they are directly elected of course. Accountable to the “community”, so compelled to be selfless and ethical. That and the ANC has failed the people and is corrupt. We must have “change” Maimane has said, a hundred thousand times.
In the 2021 local elections, Maimane’s first attempt to free his people — The One South Africa (OSA) movement — endorsed a whole range of (not) independent candidates. In the end, of about 250 candidates who stood with OSA’s help, they won just 16 seats, 15 via the list system, the very system he detests, so they weren’t directly accountable at all. Here is a fun case study of one of those.
Bishop Vincent Jones was the mayoral candidate for the New Horizons Movement (NHM) in Emfuleni, Gauteng. NHM is “not a political party”, according to Jones. It has some convoluted, impossible-to-fully-understand organogram that suggests its members are 100% rooted in, accountable to and drawn from the community. “There is nothing remotely political about NHM,” its website states. We shall see.
Jones was elected as a councillor via the list system, on a fraction, with 1.27% of the vote. Maimane campaigned for him and OSA helped “capacitate” NHM.
“We must give power back to communities. They know better than party politicians what they need. They know better who their authentic and hardworking leaders are. I was on the ground in Emfuleni today and I am convinced direct democracy is the answer,” Maimane said on the campaign trail.
What Maimane needs to admit is that he is a politician, not a Messiah. Thus, a victim of its drawbacks and susceptible to its influence, just as much as he is a good person trying to do the right thing.
After he failed to be directly elected, Jones went into a coalition with the ANC, in return for a position on the mayoral committee as MMC for public works. One of the NHM’s big issues was “professionalising” the public service: “We are saying let’s professionalise. We are going to put the right people, qualified people in the right positions”, the NHM leader said in September 2021. Jones has a degree in theology. It is difficult to say how that squares with managing public works, but it obviously wasn’t a problem for the ANC or Jones.
Emfuleni, where sewerage flows through the streets, is about as miserable an example of ANC mismanagement as you will ever see. But Jones gave them another shot. To the consternation of the NHM, he supported the vote for both an ANC mayor and speaker. Not much has changed in Emfuleni since the election. But the executive did hire a range of “executive assistants” at a cost of R15m; not bad for a bankrupt municipality that had to pass an unfunded budget this year.
So, no change there. But that wasn’t all. The NHM (“not a political party”) soon got over Jones and held a secret meeting to elect a new executive, which then proceeded to write to the speaker saying Jones was to be recalled and his membership to be terminated. Jones, in turn, is threatening to take the new executive to court, as he claims it is illegitimate.
It’s about as ANC-like an affair as you could ever hope to see. 1.27% “independence” has bought the people of Emfuleni a return of the ANC, huge infighting and the recall of Jones. Thank goodness he didn’t get 5%. Of course Maimane has had nothing to say about all this; he is only really in it all for the positive PR. And that’s how the press treats it all, so it works out fairly well for him. Real accountability is not what Maimane does.
Garbage in, garbage out
Endorsing the NHM in 2021, Maimane said, “These are people from the community, located close to the community and will remain in the community.” But, you see, the thing about the ANC — about all political parties — is that they, too, come from “communities”.
“Now, there’s one thing you might have noticed I don’t complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: garbage in, garbage out.”
That was the great George Carlin on US politics. Obviously there are good people, good politicians too, but there is a lesson in there for Maimane. This romantic idea Maimane has of “communities”, as comprised entirely of pure and virtuous angels is just not true. That is, of course, hard for any politician to say, but if you are going to build an entire political organisation on that assumption, a little reflection is order.
An independent candidate is a politician, and whether they come from a party or an organisation, are directly elected or chosen via a list, they behave politically. And they have constituencies, who behave politically, too. It’s all politics, all the way down. Democracy is the lesser of all evils, the saying goes. If you think there is some untapped, untainted democratic impulse lurking in “communities”, waiting to be unleashed, you are in for a surprise. Ask Jones, he seemed like a good, well-meaning kind of fellow. Politics ate him up and spat him out like a piece of chewing gum, community roots or other wise.
In many respects, Mmusi Maimane is SA’s ultimate politician, at least in terms of all the negative political attributes he constantly alludes to. The way he clings to the idea that he is the truth and the way. The desperate attempt to manufacture political relevance. The endless fluffy rhetoric that falls apart on close examination. The insatiable ambition to be promoted to the highest office. The lack of accountability on his own part for his failings, all dismissed as conspiracy. The need for accolades and acolytes, who genuflect his own vision back to him. The hypocrisy and contradiction. It’s all there.
What Maimane needs to admit is that he is a politician, not a Messiah. Thus, a victim of its drawbacks and susceptible to its influence, just as much as he is a good person trying to do the right thing. We will all understand. We know the game. It’s OK. But please, this idea that he has stumbled across some non-political formula for success, that sets him apart from the rabble, needs to stop. No-one likes the pretence of infallibility.
The route to the presidency is unclear for Maimane. He needs to be elected as an MP first. Then he will have to convince a majority of the National Assembly to vote for him. Presumably he thinks both those things are possible. For that he will need the list system and, ironically, to collect together whatever indirect and scattered support his yet-to-be realised army of pseudo-independent candidates can muster. Tough ask.
It would be nice to see Maimane in parliament though. The hypocrisy of it all will be greatly entertaining. How will Bosa make decisions? On whose mandate? On the Maimane mandate of course. The only mandate that matters.
By the way, independent candidates don’t need Bosa. They can stand on their own. In fact, if you are truly independent, that approach would seem to make most sense. However, Bosa desperately does need independent candidates, if the vision of its leader is to be realised, and that, as they say, is the politics of the matter.
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