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Let’s do away with ideas that ensure our people are the wretched of the earth

12th December 2014

By: Aubrey Matshiqi

  

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The year 2014 is the year during which South Africa celebrated 20 years of democracy. But 2014 is also the year during which chinks in our liberal democratic project seemed to occupy centre stage in expressions of pessimism about the direction the ruling party, our institutions and our economy are taking.

It is also the year during which the National Development Plan (NDP) became nothing more than a weapon used against opponents during orgies of mainly ideological fingerpointing between business, labour and the African National Congress (ANC). Most important, however, is the fact that 2014 is the year during which deficits of trust between the social partners – business, labour and the ANC government – mutated into a crisis of confidence in all of them and among all of them.

A variation on this theme is the fact that, in Gauteng, voters abandoned the ANC in droves in the May election. Even more important is the possibility that the decoupling of levels of electoral support from levels of the legitimacy of both the ruling party and the State may already be under way. If I am correct, what will happen in future elections is the possibility, especially at national level, that the ANC’s dwindling electoral majorities may increasingly become inversely proportional to the legitimacy of the ruling party and that of some State institutions.

Put differently, the qualitative decline that has become one of the dominant features of internal ANC dynamics, as well as the pernicious effects they have had on State institutions and society as a whole, will one day cause to converge the organisational decline, the erosion of electoral support and the displacement of the ANC by other forces from both the moral high ground and its position in society.

I must hasten to add, however, that in our attempt at figuring out what is best for the country, we must not entertain too much those whose pessimism is a function of confirmation bias – in other words, those who are motivated by the thinly disguised agenda of demonstrating that the failures of the ANC and the postapartheid State constitute evidence that black people cannot govern a modern State and economy.

Qualitatively, this adds nothing to the debate. What we must guard against is the attempt on their part to convince themselves, and then the rest of us, that, as a postcolonial society and postapartheid State, our development can only be linear, leading to the ultimate destruction of the city of white angels they built during colonialism and apartheid.

The second group we must be wary of are those who succeeded in convincing the world that, in economic terms, the world is not flat but, having benefited from this knowledge for too long, will poison anyone who dares to suggest that the earth is not a perfect circle. What is needed today are people who recognise that the earth is elliptical in shape – not the echo chambers in which those whose interests have become entrenched in both the global and domestic economies pride themselves for not being flat-earth zealots when, in fact, they want to profit from convincing the rest of us that our planet is as round as a ball.

These post-flat-earth zealots refuse to accept that the real economic, social and economic crisis that is on the horizon will be shaped by the cumulative impact of a ruling party, actors in the State and economic actors who are in denial about the nature of our social, political and economic crisis. That 50% of total income is earned by a mere 1% of the country’s top earners, or the fact that the top 5% earn 40% of the income in this country, is the real social, political and economic disaster waiting to happen in this country.

Their apologists will argue that the problem is a lack of skills and poor education. In other words, if the capabilities of the population are improved through education, inequality will wither away. This, however, is both a partial truth and a partial lie. The truth is that the rate at which the minuscule number of the super-rich are getting richer tends to outstrip the rate at which benefits in income accrue in line with improvements in education.

So, every time an ANC leader makes empty noises about radical economic transformation, or so-called left-wing politicians make noises that were last heard in some continents two centuries ago, one is struck by the commitment to win votes and the deficit of honesty when it comes to the imposition of a counterhegemonic logic and reality in the South African economy. The coming year must therefore be about finding the courage to look for, and actively create opportunities for, the dethronement of ideas that still consign our people to the status of the wretched of the earth.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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