A shift in the political culture
By 2014 it is possible to detect a major shift in the political culture of society. This is not so much a once off event, but rather the start of a new process of interaction between government and population. This is where the impact of the Strategic Shift can be observed in society.
Since 1994 the interaction between the ANC government and the population has been determined and regulated by the liberation dynamics and the struggle against apartheid. Government was the visible empowerment of the liberation struggle and the population was embedded in the guiding care of the ANC as party.
This shift in the political culture can perhaps best be explained in the following:
The political culture created in 1994:
The ANC empowered the people;
The people voted for the ANC.
This symbiotic relation between the ANC and the people was much more than a political relationship - party membership and voting once every four years. It created a whole new political culture of beliefs, interaction and dependence. It was a quest for political liberation of the people based on a struggle relationship against apartheid, led by the ANC as the "only legitimate representative" of the people. This has become the essence of "the legacy" of the ANC over the past twenty years.
The struggle culture after 1994 became all-embracing of the voter and society.
The political culture after twenty years:
The ANC still exerts dominant political power,
Its internal delivery capability has entered the break-down zone.
People still vote for the ANC, but small opposition parties have appeared.
Within society, something new has emerged, the appearance of "service delivery protests".
For the first time since 1994, the struggle alliance between government and sections of the population has been disrupted. The struggle alliance as an all binding relation has been replaced with a new antagonistic relation based on the lack of service delivery.
Something extra-ordinary happened. The former allies in the struggle alliance have become antagonistic - enemies! [The reader ought to know that this shift is not a first for South Africa. Its real origin goes back three years to the start of the Arab Spring in the Middle East when former struggle leaders suddenly became enemies of the people.]
What is now occurring in society is extremely significant. The binding force of apartheid (an ideology) between government and population in 1994 is now in the process of being replaced by antagonistic forces such as a lack of services - an absence of Government from society and an inability to re-enter society.
These new opposing forces in society have not yet entered the political scene in the form of political parties, and with reference to the Arab Spring, they are unlikely to do so. It is much more likely that they will continue the resistance on the pavement of society as a civilian movement. For what they demand - services - can at present not be delivered by the current political system and that brings into question - from their perspective - the legitimacy and need for an election.
This provokes some sobering questions: "Is such a Strategic Shift in society really possible? Can a harmonious relation between government and population turn, almost overnight, into an antagonistic stand-off?" The available facts indicate that governments and autocratic (struggle) leaders in die Middle East who held on to power for almost 40 years, were unseated in less than a year.
Implications for society
Can something like this happen in South Africa? The answer may be partially found in the excellent article by Athandiwe Saba and Jeanne van der Merwe of M24i: "Revealed - the true scale of SA service delivery protests." (January 22, 2013.)
"South Africa's wave of service delivery protests is far greater than previously imagined with official police data revealing more than 3 000 protests in the past four years.
Media24 Investigations used access to information law to ask the South African Police Service for official records showing service delivery protests across the country...
The data shows that there is a service delivery protest - either violent or peaceful - at least once every two days across the country.
The police records - which show protests specifically classified as service delivery related - show that there have been 3 258 service delivery protests in the country between January 2009 and November (2012) last year when the request for information was filed."
An election every four years;
A service delivery protest once every two days!
This is part of the dramatic Strategic Shift in society. All the attention, speeches and commentary are focused on April 2014. A percentage up or down of the vote for any party will be analyzed and projected to the next election of 2019.
The fact that people vote for a service delivery protest once every two days, is of no consequence whatsoever in the election process. An election and service delivery have been allowed to become separate entities. An election is about parliament, and a lack of service delivery about open sewage and lack of water.
It has created a situation that is not sustainable. Have we entered as South Africans a phase where the current political dispensation has failed the people? South Africa has entered a new environment very few people understand at present.
The role of the ANC in this environment
There is no guiding doctrine for action up to 2020. The political process has become part of the problem. The constitution opened up the opportunity in public life for gross mismanagement and thus parliament has become paralyzed. The same problems and deficiencies are tabled year after year, discussed, lamented and set aside for next year. The President and ministers are softly and warmly applauded by their colleagues after each speech, without any appreciation that they had already said it last year - and on the pavement there is a "service delivery protest every two days".
The ANC is badly in need of a new binding ideology. This was abundantly clear during the period of Nelson Mandela's hospitalization and eventual death. The visits to his bedside, photos and messages made it clear that a transfer of the Mandela legacy to the current ANC leadership was of high priority.
Then the unimaginable happened. President Zuma was booed at the funeral, in front of the whole South Africa, the millions of international viewers and visiting politicians. The gathering was a political funeral, an event where the transfer of ideological belief and purity of doctrine, political policy and future mobilization of the supporters are all carried over to the new leaders. A political funeral has always been a powerful consolidation of leadership from the old to the new.
When Zuma was booed, a signal was given that the transfer of leadership had not really materialized. What people tend to misinterpret is the fact that the political culture has changed completely.
The election of 1994 occurred just at the end of the Cold War. The ANC, and in particular, Nelson Mandela were accepted by both West and East as the icon of liberation - for different political reasons. He was the solidifying force against apartheid. Twenty years later, the Cold War is long gone. Communist Eastern Europe collapsed on itself, and through the Arab Spring, democracy has not yielded the results in the Middle East as was expected. World attention has shifted, apartheid is not an issue any more and the struggle has lost its significance. The world of Nelson Mandela ceased to exist a long time ago!
As a result, there was no clear-cut legacy to be transferred at the death of Nelson Mandela and what will haunt Zuma after the election is the "service delivery protest once every two days". The President himself is confronted by a completely new and strange environment - outside parliament on the pavement of society.
Dr Jan du Plessis is Editor and Publisher of Intersearch. This is an edited extract from the Intersearch Management Briefing for January 2014. Dr Du Plessis can be contacted at [email protected]
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
