James Myburgh (PoliticsWeb, 28 April) is undoubtedly correct in his assessment of the three chief factors which have delivered the ANC an apparently permanent electoral majority despite its corruption, criminality and incompetence. These are ethnicity, patronage and bribery, and boots on the ground where it counts. In this article I would like to take up some additional factors and possibilities not dealt with by Dr Myburgh.

A preliminary warning is in order. This is a longish article and the argument unfolds in stages. The final section gets to the red meat but I hope the reader will follow the thread from the beginning.

Context  

A first step is to specify and understand the context within which South African politics takes place. Globally, the West in particular is going through an intense polarising transition in which class, power and various overheated forms of identity politics are engaged in a free-for-all against more liberal traditions and power relationships.

Relevant to South Africa is that this movement foregrounds race and gender identities as key political issues. This broad zeitgeist has been taken up as the default gospel by most of the establishment institutions - media, education, corporate, entertainment and academia, including big science - which set the ground rules of public debate. This woke gospel is coupled with a utopian drive to re-order society so as to eliminate all aversive experiences whether psychological or material.

Humans being what they are, the full accomplishment of these objectives is impossible, which sets up society for unending conflict between woke zealots and liberal-conservative partisans. This in turn sets the stage for an intolerant polarised social tone, endless skirmishes in the public media and an inability to stop political opportunists from milking the situation to their own advantage.

These trends feed directly into the peculiar structure of South African society with its cross-cutting divides of education and culture, wealth and ethnicity. More specifically SA media reflects the dominant woke narratives swirling around the West. Thus public attention is consistently diverted from sustained action in response to incompetent governance and wholesale looting.

This vastly amplifies the power of ethnic and even gender politics in the hands of the ANC. The media is happy to go along with this strategy in order to maintain relevance and market share. Such political theatre also fits comfortably into normal human psychology especially when further sharpened by selective historical narratives.

All this works to the disadvantage of the DA and to the advantage of the ANC and its allies of convenience.

Culture and Sociology

South Africa is cross-cut along many lines of cleavage, but it is useful to simplify and visualise the country as consisting of two entangled archipelagos: the larger and politically dominant I'm going to call African by virtue of its main racial component and historical origins and the other, for similar reasons, is European.

A closer look reveals that the African Archipelago (AA) is divided largely between 2 main classes: one the politically connected elite within both corporate and governmental corridors of wealth and power, and the other, much larger group, the variably impoverished and insecure masses mainly rural or peri-urban in distribution.

There is a relationship of dependency between the two classes. The élites rely on the lower class for the major source of their electoral support while the masses depend significantly upon the alms (social grants) and crumbs which trickle down from above.

This uneasy relationship, which occasionally turns into hot conflict, is mediated by an army of cadres (or intermediaries) referred to by Myburgh. This intermediary group is also in turn distributed between the two socio-economic classes - the elites and the masses.

The racial composition of the AA is mainly Black African but includes small numbers of South African racial minorities concentrated largely, though not completely, in the elite class. The zeitgeist of ANC-aligned elites is determined largely by 3, possibly 4, factors:

- Firstly, by a still significant pre-modern culture characterised by tribal elements of clan and kinship loyalty, hierarchy (submission and dominance), patronage and tradition.

- Secondly, by almost a century's, experience of a segregated, economically marginalised and oppressed peri-urban existence on the fringe of a modern industrialised European-dominated state.

- Thirdly, by the history of the liberation struggle characterised by intense suspicion and hostility towards the ruling white European caste, lawlessness, and violence - both suffered and inflicted on others.

- Finally, a fourth factor affecting attitudes includes cultural diffusion from the European Archipelago (EA) and overseas. This is a complex process but includes anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and identity narratives as well as the liberal, socially progressive elements reflected in the Constitution.

The upshot of these various streams of influence is a low-trust society with kin and tribe-based support systems habituated to massive social divides of inequality and dependence. It possesses weak attachment to the impersonal, rule-based foundations of sustainable democracy and the concept of the greater social good.

Thus while the majority within the AA support the idea of democracy, they have little attachment to democracy's internalised norms and formal institutional support systems - already under threat by internally generated political currents in the West.

The European Archipelago (EA) differs in obvious and less obvious ways from its African counterpart. Historically and by definition Whites are the largest component, if not in terms of numbers at least in terms of cultural influence. But there is also significant Black, Coloured and Indian representation within the EA which attenuates white domination significantly.

Numerically and politically it is overshadowed by the AA but the EA is the major source of wealth (per capita at least), skills and commercial and entrepreneurial enterprise in South Africa. These relationships are not fixed in stone but are the product of historical circumstances and are subject to change. Without the EA, South Africa would likely be a failed state.

Unlike the AA, the EA is not divided into a dominant politically connected and influential elite with a large impoverished working and under employed underclass. The EA is mainly bourgeois and managerial-professional with a working class component plus significant wealth and status gradients. It lacks however the sharp divisions and patronage relations characterising the AA.

Ideologically, the EA is indebted mainly to Western Protestant/Judeo-Christian traditions resulting in the WEIRD personality profile: individualistic, ambitious, analytical, rule-driven and comfortable with deferred gratification and the impersonal compromises of market economies. This is reflected in the parties it supports both for reasons of self-interest and cultural affinity, namely, the DA and more ethnic conservative parties to its right.

Most members of the EA are comfortable with the underlying norms of liberal democracy in comparison with other models of governance. Some caveats should be attached to this. Their experience with liberal democracy in the full sense of the word is limited essentially to the last 25 years which have been characterised by one-party domination. Furthermore, under pressure there is potential for the rise of more openly ethnic-based parties and splinter groups within the EA.

Summary of the 2 archipelagos

* Socio-economic inequality. South Africa's Gini coefficient is the highest in the world and is mainly due to the inequalities within the AA.

** Women suffer considerable domestic abuse and low status generally in the AA despite political equality and pleas from political leadership. It's a reflection of their historical trajectory, shattered cultural fabric and poverty

*** These refer to high-level skills relevant to a modern industrialised country: literacy plus analytical , numerical, technical and managerial skills. All communities possess skills relevant to their socio-economic niche.

****WEIRD personality traits measured as personal ambition, individualism, impersonal rule-based, analytical, transactional trust/fairness, tolerance for deferred gratification, goal orientated.
___

These comparisons show massive historical, cultural as well as existential differences between these two archipelagos. They represent two different existential universes. South Africa is not a rich White nation side-by-side with a poor Black one, but something much more complex.

Of course, fringe groups and individuals within each group may lie outside the broad distribution for their group and provide for some inter-group overlap. Such marginal groups and individuals can become important during periods of change and over time.

The point of this analysis is to provide a foundation for looking at future options for South Africa. The EA offers the prospect for sustainable growth and prosperity.

The country's failure to achieve this is political-cultural in origin. South Africa's stagnation is not due to externalities limiting her growth. It comes almost entirely from within and the next section looks at this in more detail.

Political Solutions

We can't alter history but we can, possibly, change perceptions and influence the political currents. But first we need to understand them.

To Myburgh's unholy trinity of ethnic nationalism, systems of patronage and army of enforcers, we need to add historical narratives and profound existential and cultural inter-group differences which align along political lines. These reinforce the status quo and make political reorientation extremely difficult.

The DA has narrowly emerged victorious, so far, in the Western Cape because the EA is more concentrated there - an accident of demography and history.

The thesis I wish to advance is unless it is possible to recruit more black (and other previously marginalised) South Africans into the EA, the political dynamics within the AA is stable enough to ensure ANC electoral victory for the foreseeable future.

This perception was the basis for previous articles arguing that the DA needs to focus on the black underclass within the AA which either does not vote at all, or votes as directed by ANC enforcers, or are potential recruits for the EFF brand of nihilistic revolution.

These counterintuitive voting patterns reflect an absence of cultural trust in and affinity with the impersonal democratic processes of the West. Theoretical calculations of self-interest cannot compete against the political and existential pressures which impact daily on its collective consciousness.

What is needed to liberate the mainly black underclass from its psychological and existential state of dependency on the ANC political machine?

It is a major political conundrum which stands directly in the path of electoral fluidity in South African politics. The DA surely recognises this reality even while it knows the problem is a political timebomb, particularly in view of the global currents referred to earlier.

The DA's constituencies within the EA are apprehensive and intensely suspicious of any perceived weakening of the DA on the issue of non-racialism. The DA represents a bulwark against the ANC discriminatory 'affirmative action' policies. This fear is further stoked by the ANC-EFF deployment of WMC and EWC slogans as downstream threats to white existence.

These DA constituencies understand that the mere existence of the EA represents a potential threat to ANC power and interests. In this charged atmosphere ideological purity becomes very important.

These perceptions have determined the thrust of current DA strategy. The DA has thus chosen to dampen its direct appeal to the Black dependent and marginalised class in the AA camp, and to trust that its brand of good governance strikes a responsive chord which will be translated into votes - and possibly for the ANC to disintegrate under the pressure, and crises of its own making. This is the realist mindset.

Is there an alternative to this psycho-political stalemate? South Africa seems to be forever trapped in the politics of expediency, recurrent crisis and stagnation and this has affected the national mood profoundly.

Suggestions of bold reform draw weary cynicism or derision rather than applause as South Africans plan escape, or hunker down in their bunkers, or wait for a crisis to offer unexpected opportunities.

Is this the only political reality worth considering? Is it possible for bold and rejuvenated leadership to change the political trajectory without waiting for an apocalypse? Nobody can know the answer to this question which can only be answered by trial and error.

But it raises the question whether there is sufficient transformative leadership in the DA and a critical mass amongst its supporters with the vision and determination to undertake the radical reform necessary to rescue this country?

There are models daring pre-emptive action elsewhere: Germany for instance. In an audacious act of enlightened self-interest in 1948, the USA initiated and implemented an immense rescue operation known as the Marshal Plan to restore a shattered and demoralised Germany to functionality and to withstand the encircling Soviet threat. This changed the course of European and, of course, post-war German history.

It was not all smooth sailing. Still to come were the Red Army Faction, amongst other terror groups, effectively dealing with the German Nazi past, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the immense challenge of re-integrating a destitute, totalitarian East Germany unused to the challenges of freedom and, more recently, the immigrant waves which threatened to overwhelm German cohesion and stability. But the habits of survival had been learnt well and Germany has so-far overcome these threats to her democracy and success.

There are other examples in history. None are identical to each other or to the South African situation. But in this country, the EA is roughly analogous to the USA, a very much weaker USA to be sure, if it can muster the vision and will.

So in that spirit I believe the DA must take on the challenge I have outlined. I cannot specify how this decision should be translated into pragmatic political action. In any case such a drastic strategic decision would need to be work-shopped from every angle, to create a Marshall Plan tailored to the realities of our circumstances.

In closing I want to re-emphasise that the secret to unlocking the black vote is to change the material conditions determining the daily fabric of their lives. Since I have gone so far I will take the next step and propose some specific reforms which could lay the foundations of existential change and the necessary change in collective consciousness

Firstly, to drastically increase employment which ultimately must entail a substantial upturn in economic activity. Employment rather than alms (in the form of social grants) reduces dependency and promotes self-respect and ambition.

Secondly, to institute a massive program of partly subsidised homeownership to a basic but liveable standard. This provides basic security, employment and skills and adds to the same knock-on psycho-social effects listed above.

Thirdly, to vastly improve the personal security status of these communities through effective and innovative policing in liaison with the people most affected by crime and domestic abuse. This is particularly important in aborting the inter-generational cycle of domestic abuse, and liberating women. It is the precondition for creating stable families.

Last, but not least, to enhance education so as to ensure adequate language and numerical literacy and the associated knowledge and skills to become economically productive.

These are Maslow's bottom rungs of human needs upon which everything else can be built. This short list sets the foundations required to create the confidence and psychological freedom so that ravaged communities can shape their own future.

There is zero incentive for the ANC to provide such reforms for obvious reasons. A dependent, malleable voting bloc whose frustrations and anger can be milked for political gain fits comfortably into their model of governance. They will strenuously resist any attempt to change this state of affairs since they, rightly, see it as a threat to their political dominance and access to rents.

It's hugely ambitious given political and economic realities. The DA's ability to act at all is mainly limited to the Western Cape at present. It has neither the political power nor the economic capacity to act at the national level.

But this does not prevent the DA from foregrounding this plan in its own strategic vision and doing what it can to translate it into tangible policies wherever it holds power. It is the South African Marshall Plan of the long haul and, I believe, has the potential to transform our political and future landscape.

Final Words: The long struggle to set South Africa on the 'high road' has manifestly ended in failure. No rational adult can look forward to the next decade with undiminished optimism. But I don't believe we can't afford a fatalistic mentality and I will end with some words from my favourite blogger, Razib Khan:

" We need (to) change the course of history or it will run us over. This is not a plea. This is a fact."

Mike Berger
6 May 2021