What was unthinkable 20 years ago has happened in 2014. In 1994 it seemed impossible for the party of Nelson Mandela to be defeated and any split in the tripartite alliance seemed far-fetched.
The ANC-led alliance is now hanging together by a thread, with all three of its components facing declining legitimacy and support and, in the case of Cosatu, possible implosion.
While it has become clear that the macroeconomic policies pursued under Zuma do not differ markedly from those under former president Thabo Mbeki, most of the energy of the SACP and those currently dominant in Cosatu are devoted, instead, to defending Zuma’s security of tenure through evading accountability for enrichment.
In this context, opposition parties have recently been more skilful than in the past at challenging the failure of accountability, using filibustering and other tactics.
To counter this, the ANC has twice brought the riot police into parliament; as an institution for public debate it is now at risk. There are no ideas emerging from either the ANC or the opposition parties to advance a new initiative.
In such situations there is a tendency for people to ask whether this or that person could get “us out of the mess” and whether or not there are “good people left in the ANC”.
Referring to the hopes that were vested in the Obama presidency, US scholar/activist Angela Davis has said: “We have a tendency to invest our own collective power in individuals. We have what I sometimes call a messiah complex.
This is why, when we think of the civil rights movement, we think of Martin Luther King. We can’t imagine that that movement could have been created by huge numbers of people whose names we do not even know. We can’t imagine that.”
We, too, need to think beyond powerful individual leaders and indeed, look also to ourselves in the various institutions, associations and organisations where we are located in order to use our power to find ways of reversing the devaluation of democratic power and recover, rebuild and enhance the hard-won rights we so badly need to build our future.
Professor Raymond Suttner is attached to Rhodes University and Unisa. He is a former political prisoner and was in the leadership of the ANC-led alliance in the 1990s. His book “Recovering Democracy” will be published by Jacana Media next year. He blogs at raymondsuttner.com. His twitter handle is @raymondsuttner. This article first appeared on Creamer Media’s website: polity.org.za
Beyond messiah paradigm to flexing personal power
The ANC-led alliance is now hanging together by a thread, with all three of its components facing declining legitimacy and support and, in the case of Cosatu, possible implosion.
While it has become clear that the macroeconomic policies pursued under Zuma do not differ markedly from those under former president Thabo Mbeki, most of the energy of the SACP and those currently dominant in Cosatu are devoted, instead, to defending Zuma’s security of tenure through evading accountability for enrichment.
In this context, opposition parties have recently been more skilful than in the past at challenging the failure of accountability, using filibustering and other tactics.
To counter this, the ANC has twice brought the riot police into parliament; as an institution for public debate it is now at risk. There are no ideas emerging from either the ANC or the opposition parties to advance a new initiative.
In such situations there is a tendency for people to ask whether this or that person could get “us out of the mess” and whether or not there are “good people left in the ANC”.
Referring to the hopes that were vested in the Obama presidency, US scholar/activist Angela Davis has said: “We have a tendency to invest our own collective power in individuals. We have what I sometimes call a messiah complex.
This is why, when we think of the civil rights movement, we think of Martin Luther King. We can’t imagine that that movement could have been created by huge numbers of people whose names we do not even know. We can’t imagine that.”
We, too, need to think beyond powerful individual leaders and indeed, look also to ourselves in the various institutions, associations and organisations where we are located in order to use our power to find ways of reversing the devaluation of democratic power and recover, rebuild and enhance the hard-won rights we so badly need to build our future.
Professor Raymond Suttner is attached to Rhodes University and Unisa. He is a former political prisoner and was in the leadership of the ANC-led alliance in the 1990s. His book “Recovering Democracy” will be published by Jacana Media next year. He blogs at raymondsuttner.com. His twitter handle is @raymondsuttner. This article first appeared on Creamer Media’s website: polity.org.za
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