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My friend counts himself among these, whom he amusingly terms the “electile dysfunctions”.
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I don’t know how many election seasons we’ve been saying that South Africa is in a political interim desert, a no man’s land, where the old is dying an excruciatingly slow death while the new is undergoing its birth pangs. The future of our political direction depends on those with enough courage to venture out into something new and convince the majority of eligible voters, who are in a stupor due to political choice despair. My friend counts himself among these, whom he amusingly terms the “electile dysfunctions”. Reading the 2024 political party election manifestos has not managed to ease his voting irresolution.
The launch of political party manifestos is always a great thermometer to measure the directional heat of our national status quo. It is the final punchline for parties to convince irresolute fence-sitters like my friend, who, in his own words, says he’s looking for a party that will carve a new political renaissance out of the wreckage left by yesterday’s unfinished battles and the immovable tyranny of late capitalism. He is a member of the black middle class, which probably forms the greater part of the real undecided voters of 2024. Those who grew rich, or hope to grow rich, through the BEE graft of the ruling party, will most probably vote for the ANC. So would the stoutly resolute, like my late mother, who voted for the ANC based on nostalgia and the fact that it was an organisation established by the first black elite class of reverends, teachers, etc. The abject poor, especially from the townships and rural areas, will most probably also vote for the ANC, since they trust no other political party to continue the social grants. With the IFP, the ANC is also the party of rural aristocracy and chieftaincy; most of those who vote by clansmanship and tribe will take a cue from that. All this most probably means that the ANC will resemble something like the Zimbabwean ZANU-PF after the next election.
Steve Biko was of the opinion that the quickest way to betray our liberation quest in South Africa would be through the creation of a black middle class, which would “succeed in putting across to the world a pretty convincing, integrated picture, with still 70 percent of the population being underdogs”. This has come to pass in post-’94 South Africa in precise Fanonian prediction. The nodal point was the Marikana massacre of 2012, where our Orwellian pigs showed in no uncertain terms that they had grown the human faces of the oppressor.
Since Mbeki’s second term, the demise of opposition parties has been the obsession in scavenging the political failures and wreckage from the corruption mess of the ANC. The only post-’94 political parties that almost succeeded in this stance were the UDM, COPE and the EFF. But this political stance, too, aged very quickly to become stale in the eyes of voters, especially the youth, who are straining on the leash in desperation for new crusades of innovative initiatives that provide living employment at the end of the day. For its part, the EFF survives better, because it not only relies on scavenging the residual anger emanating from this desperation and post-’94 trail of broken promises, but also positions itself as the platform for radical left politics that is willing to confront the economic power of WMC (white monopoly capital). It probably is mostly let down by the spuriousness and corrupt tendencies of its small-men leaders who cast big, spoof shadows. The EFF is also no exception from the bane that besets our opposition party politics, the lack of a credible alternative vision. Not only is it hapless against the all-consuming hegemony of neoliberalism through the lifestyles of its leaders, but its middle-class membership has also been subsumed by its manacling twin, the consumerism of late capitalism.
By late capitalism I mean global post-industrial capitalism that, according to Frederic Jameson, has lost touch with history by expanding into the cultural realm through hyper consumerism. In it everything, including immaterial things like arts, religion, lifestyles, are commodified by attendant consumerism. For the Marxist this is the stage when Capitalism becomes obsolete, ushering in a post-capitalist societies that are ripe for necessary evolution into either socialism, communism, anarchism or primitive nationalism that are tribe/racial/ethnic based.
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The MKP’s vaudevillian politics would be comic, had Jacob Zuma, like Donald Trump, not mastered the tragic art of performance politics.
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The traditionally left-leaning political parties of radical land reform and black consciousness, like PAC, AZAPO, etc, are slowly waking up from their post-apartheid ouroboros slumber. But they lack the blind opportunism of the MKP (uMkhonto weSizwe Party) that is currently cannibalising that space by promulgating unsustainable populist politics. The MKP’s vaudevillian politics would be comic, had Jacob Zuma, like Donald Trump, not mastered the tragic art of performance politics.
Global politics at large is beset by a cluster of these kinds of demagogues. The fault is not in the stars, but in our social media age. We take too much to heart from the soapbox rabble-rousing of scammers who appeal to our Samson syndrome desires to pull down the pillars of the tone-deaf system the elite of late capitalism oppresses us by. We accept anything vaguely opposed to the establishment, as long as it shows us a glimmer of hope of escaping the state of fatalistic haplessness we feel we are under, because of the all-conquering, though detested, neoliberalism. Because we’re prisoners of our own contradictions. Even religion will not save us from this visceral theatre of performance-art politics that has reached even the churches. The fundamental problem is that we’ve divorced morality from all our actions, including the political ones. Hence the performance theatre of our current politics has no care for ethics or the demands of virtue for veracity; the sensational is what is believed and is all-conquering.
With the weak state of almost all our political parties, it has become apparent that our politics is no longer about the battle of ideas. Hardly anyone cares for wrecking their brains in blind ideological alleys anymore. But people still expect a coherent vision from political parties of providing public service. And this is where almost all the political parties are failing us – including the DA, which is obsessed with passé Thatcherite policies. And the era of sick, worn-out platitudes and cults of hysterical nationalism verging on genteel versions of left-wing fascism, or closet right-wing racism, or the half-baked insincerity of liberalism, is fast passing. Thank God.
The danger is that this has left behind a void that is currently being filled by the opportunistic performance-political artists and demagogues. Hence we’ve fallen into this interim limbo of the dying old and gestating new, which is why parties like the EFF, FFP+ and DA have also reached a growth ceiling or are actively losing support.
The studied political howling and mindless toyi-toying is fast becoming stale and unappealing. People want a coherent business plan to rescue the country out of its present doldrums. People are looking for a moral code to get out of the current political quagmire. All this can be provided only by leaders of strong moral ethics and captivating vision. Will the new kid on the block, Rise Mzansi, be able to deliver us from this poisonous political jungle and age of demagoguery that is huddling us into kleptocracy? Or, in the words of Ayi Kwei Armah, perhaps The beautyful ones are not yet born?
See also:
Election 2024: The Economic Freedom Fighters’ election manifesto
Election 2024 – The DA’s rescue plan for South Africa: a review
Manifesto: A new vision for South Africa by Songezo Zibi: a review
Who will rule South Africa? by Adriaan Basson and Qaanitah Hunter: a review
Die "professionele klas" uitgedaag in ’n gesprek oor Songezo Zibi se Manifesto
Kommentaar
It is the age old story. People are pinning their hopes on politicians, political parties and elections. I remain unconvinced. Elections is just a reconfiguration of the plunder hierarchy.You might as well pray to god. It will achieve the same result as voting. In fact, making friends that can have your back, even if it is at a capitalist temple such as a church, will serve one far better than any politician ever will. But there are alternatives to church, I should immediately add.
You seem very critical of liberalism. Remember that humans are always on a spectrum. The DA is not the Vatican of Liberalism. Liberalism is a political philosophy that extends beyond, far beyond party politics. Every time a young person refuses to do a dated cultural practice, they are acting out on their liberal inclinations. We are all somewhat liberal, to a lesser or a greater degree. Liberalism is tied up with the notion of individual rights and freedoms, as opposed to group rights. The FF+ (which it seems you refer to as the FFP+), is an interesting case, as they are catering towards conservative South Africans, and they are shedding their white Afrikaner roots slowly but surely. South Africans are by and large conservative. The proverbial dark horses seem to be the EFF and the MK party, the latter of which seems to be disrupting KZN politics, which will impact national outcomes.