Such is the enthusiasm for the possibility that the ANC will fall below 50% in the next election that the alternative — that it will get 51% or more — has not been properly contemplated. But that too is a possibility and, should it come to pass, it will leave many as confused as they will be disappointed.
Underpinning that will be the obvious question: how can it be possible that a party so profoundly inept, so hollowed out and corroded, is still capable of winning the support of so many?
As the gears turn, and the unthinkable is slowly processed, the next inevitable question will be: what does this mean for a country balancing on a precipice?
The answers to both those questions are depressing. No more depressing, mind you, than the status quo. How the ANC has clung to power this long is already a modern miracle. It is the antithesis of everything a democracy is supposed to produce: accountability, consequence, healthy competition, and the resultant good governance those things are designed to ensure.
In general terms, then, another five years would bring with it the relentless slow but powerful destruction of our foundation. Institutions would continue to collapse, the economy would melt down further, the social contract would weaken and service delivery would transition fully from proactive expansion to retrograde crisis management.
Underpinning that all would be five budget cycles, where new money would be pumped into the feeding trough, and immediately siphoned off, away from the people and into the bank accounts of the corrupt.
But it would be sanctioned by a democratic majority, and that contradiction would produce the following responses:
First, to what extent is the ANC a legitimate government? How do you weigh the demands of the constitution against the will of the people?
Second, how functional is our electoral system, that it can produce such a circumstance? The people themselves are never blamed, so it must be the system.
Third, the arbiter of these questions, the courts, will become the final battleground.
Thus, there will be a series of conflicts. These are established conflicts already, but they will become profound:
- The rule of law versus ANC policy and conduct
- Electoral reform versus entrenched interest
- The judicial system versus transformation
The assumption that defines much analysis of these conflicts to date, is that the judicial system will hold and remain the bulwark between chaos and order.
It is, however, only as strong as it is independent. And the greatest weapon in the ANC’s arsenal — the one it has brought to bear on everything and through which it has reduced all comers to rubble — is transformation. It is an idea as amorphous as it is deadly. In the hands of the innocent, it speaks to social justice; in the hands of the ANC, it is all about control and ideological subservience.
It has yet to fully bend the judiciary to its will. But there is a great appetite in the party for the judicial system to be made more compliant. And its compliance would seem the only way the ANC can feign legitimacy were it to secure another five years.
That is a fight that will play out inside the ANC as much as it will outside the party. Those who have been ensnared by the law — who risk being found to be corrupt — have a straightforward personal interest in its circumvention. Those who have not, desperately need some profound policy intervention that demonstrates their commitment to the revolutionary ideals they claim to stand for. They want the guilty punished, but the rest of the constitution remains for them a problem.
Desperate and failing, the ANC has pushed the constitutional limits to its policy agenda to the brink. Its impulse to nationalise and centralise power, its desire to endlessly expand our welfare state with little economic growth, its instinct to reduce parliament to a rubber stamp, has seen it push ideas it cannot reconcile with its own ability, over the past decade.
Control without competence, welfare without a budget, laws with no constitutional basis. Regardless, with every loss, on every front, its response is to push harder, and for its frustration to increase. One needs to understand: when the ANC is constrained, its reaction is never introspection. It is fundamentalist in its attitude. The problem is never the ANC, its values or policy. The problem is the world, and its prejudices.
The greatest truth ever uttered by an ANC official was by Jacob Zuma, way back in 1996. He said then that the ANC was “more important” than the constitution. That the constitution was there only “to regulate matters”. You can say what you like about Zuma, but few people have been better hardwired into the ANC’s revolutionary worldview. The ANC in turn might be fractured these days, but that belief is only sublimated in those who might feign otherwise. Implicitly or explicitly, the constitution has always been more obstacle than guide to a party that believes it was chosen by God, before it was chosen by the people.
The problem with so much analysis of the ANC is that it is born of a constitutional perspective. But consider what the world looks like, if you regard the constitution a secondary concern. Consider, too, how you might view the ANC’s performance since 1994. It no longer becomes a failure, but a frustration. It cannot be realised, not because it is inherently flawed or the ANC inherently compromised, but because of a document it cannot control.
That is how the ANC will view 51% — as agreement with that sentiment. Fifty-one percent doesn’t excuse failure, it justifies it. It is a mandate, not an indictment. And you can be sure, given another five years, the ANC will redouble its efforts to deliver on it.
The great revolutionary movements in history, the ones that actually achieved fundamental change on a grand scale, had two things going for them. First, a belief that they and their cause was primary. Second, a leadership that was highly competent and strategically insightful. Those two things delivered power and control.
The ANC, which believes it too sits in the pantheon of great revolutionary movements, has neither. It is constrained by democracy and a constitution; and it is populated by the intellectually weak and strategically feeble. Yet it believes. There is no more powerful recipe for chaos, and no vicious circle more self-destructive.
Should the ANC get 51%, the next five years will be written in court judgments. From the ANC’s perspective, the ultimate question will be: who is writing them?
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