This weeks marks a year since coalition politics became a reality for SA. The ANC lost three metro councils – Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay and Tshwane, the seat of government – to a coalition of opposition parties in local government elections. It was a stunning loss, one the governing party has yet to recover from.
In little less than 20 months, South Africans will again go to the polls to elect a new government. This will be SA’s sixth national poll.
For the first time since 1994, it is uncertain who will emerge as SA’s president come 2019 – this, in spite of whoever emerges as the leader of the ANC at the party’s national elective congress in December. There are currently five candidates in the ANC “primaries”.
The leader of the opposition DA, Mmusi Maimane, believes he has a shot at it. So does EFF leader Julius Malema. What is certain is that after a decade of President Jacob Zuma’s misrule, the 2019 national polls will become the moment when the ANC mythology is buried and service delivery, rule of law, good governance and social cohesion become the basis for a coalition government.
If only the process leading to 2019 was that easy. For starters, the process is already taking its toll on Africa’s oldest party of liberation. The ANC is stuck with a very unpopular president while it is in the middle of what can only be described as a civil war.
This is how Richard Poplak of the Daily Maverick explains political assassinations taking place in KwaZulu-Natal. He was in the province to cover the EFF’s fourth anniversary.
Poplak writes: “Welcome to the political charnel house that is KwaZulu-Natal. Just this week, news broke of the 90th – repeat, 90th! – alleged political assassination linked to the notorious Glebelands hostel.
“In the national narrative, the Glebelands hostel has a single grim function: to act as the site of the canary-down-the-mine political infighting that is wracking this country, a bloody précis of what’s going down as the ANC rots and dies. The hostel is where much, but by no means all, of our country’s carnage is processed.” Grim stuff.
Speaking to the City Press, ANC presidential contender Mathews Phosa warned that there were already ANC corpses in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, the North West and more recently the Eastern Cape. The political killing fields of ANC members were rapidly expanding beyond KwaZulu-Natal and engulfing other provinces, he said.
As the governing party crashes and burns and is being buried in the hype of the Gupta leaks scandal, politics are unfolding outside the ANC. The party may occupy the centre of government, but it is increasingly being shifted outside the centre of politics by the sheer weight of its own internal contradictions.
The unpopular Zuma has united various forces across the country calling on him to step down. A broad coalition of churches, business, trade unions and opposition parties has called on South Africans to again take to the streets to force parliament to vote for the motion of no-confidence in Zuma. He may be voted out of power on August 8, or he may hang around for the remainder of his term. But what is clear is that the centre of power has shifted away from the ANC and is moving into the streets.
Some in the party recognise this. ANC MP Mondli Gungubele has joined his colleague Makhosi Khoza in listening to the noise coming from the streets.
Former finance minister Pravin Gordhan continues to tell South Africans to connect the dots about state capture. Many former leaders of the party are demanding a clean government and the arrest of those implicated in state capture.
What is happening in SA today mirrors what took place in India 40 years ago. The country held its sixth democratic elections since independence and the party of liberation, the Congress Party, was kicked out of power. Prior to those elections, India lived through 21 months of a state of emergency.
Indira Gandhi, daughter of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was prime minister at the time. She declared a state of emergency in 1975 after a court found her guilty of corruption and electoral fraud.
She assumed vast powers, jailed opposition leaders, restricted human rights and limited the freedom of the press. This galvanised coalition forces against her rule, leading to her stunning defeat in the 1977 elections.
The emergency is regarded as India’s darkest period. But it is also a time when its institutions were tested and emerged intact.
The Zuma period could be our own emergency, but the indications are that our institutions and democratic foundations will also survive. Bruised, yes, but not totally broken.
It is because we have not surrendered our power to a political elite. Any force that plans to take over from the current ANC will never again take the people for granted. Roll on 2019.
Morudu is a writer based in Cape Town. This piece was first published in Business Day.
Living in perennial hope for a better future
In little less than 20 months, South Africans will again go to the polls to elect a new government. This will be SA’s sixth national poll.
For the first time since 1994, it is uncertain who will emerge as SA’s president come 2019 – this, in spite of whoever emerges as the leader of the ANC at the party’s national elective congress in December. There are currently five candidates in the ANC “primaries”.
The leader of the opposition DA, Mmusi Maimane, believes he has a shot at it. So does EFF leader Julius Malema. What is certain is that after a decade of President Jacob Zuma’s misrule, the 2019 national polls will become the moment when the ANC mythology is buried and service delivery, rule of law, good governance and social cohesion become the basis for a coalition government.
If only the process leading to 2019 was that easy. For starters, the process is already taking its toll on Africa’s oldest party of liberation. The ANC is stuck with a very unpopular president while it is in the middle of what can only be described as a civil war.
This is how Richard Poplak of the Daily Maverick explains political assassinations taking place in KwaZulu-Natal. He was in the province to cover the EFF’s fourth anniversary.
Poplak writes: “Welcome to the political charnel house that is KwaZulu-Natal. Just this week, news broke of the 90th – repeat, 90th! – alleged political assassination linked to the notorious Glebelands hostel.
“In the national narrative, the Glebelands hostel has a single grim function: to act as the site of the canary-down-the-mine political infighting that is wracking this country, a bloody précis of what’s going down as the ANC rots and dies. The hostel is where much, but by no means all, of our country’s carnage is processed.” Grim stuff.
Speaking to the City Press, ANC presidential contender Mathews Phosa warned that there were already ANC corpses in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, the North West and more recently the Eastern Cape. The political killing fields of ANC members were rapidly expanding beyond KwaZulu-Natal and engulfing other provinces, he said.
As the governing party crashes and burns and is being buried in the hype of the Gupta leaks scandal, politics are unfolding outside the ANC. The party may occupy the centre of government, but it is increasingly being shifted outside the centre of politics by the sheer weight of its own internal contradictions.
The unpopular Zuma has united various forces across the country calling on him to step down. A broad coalition of churches, business, trade unions and opposition parties has called on South Africans to again take to the streets to force parliament to vote for the motion of no-confidence in Zuma. He may be voted out of power on August 8, or he may hang around for the remainder of his term. But what is clear is that the centre of power has shifted away from the ANC and is moving into the streets.
Some in the party recognise this. ANC MP Mondli Gungubele has joined his colleague Makhosi Khoza in listening to the noise coming from the streets.
Former finance minister Pravin Gordhan continues to tell South Africans to connect the dots about state capture. Many former leaders of the party are demanding a clean government and the arrest of those implicated in state capture.
What is happening in SA today mirrors what took place in India 40 years ago. The country held its sixth democratic elections since independence and the party of liberation, the Congress Party, was kicked out of power. Prior to those elections, India lived through 21 months of a state of emergency.
Indira Gandhi, daughter of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was prime minister at the time. She declared a state of emergency in 1975 after a court found her guilty of corruption and electoral fraud.
She assumed vast powers, jailed opposition leaders, restricted human rights and limited the freedom of the press. This galvanised coalition forces against her rule, leading to her stunning defeat in the 1977 elections.
The emergency is regarded as India’s darkest period. But it is also a time when its institutions were tested and emerged intact.
The Zuma period could be our own emergency, but the indications are that our institutions and democratic foundations will also survive. Bruised, yes, but not totally broken.
It is because we have not surrendered our power to a political elite. Any force that plans to take over from the current ANC will never again take the people for granted. Roll on 2019.
Morudu is a writer based in Cape Town. This piece was first published in Business Day.
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