Tony Leon questions whether current ANC and DA leadership can deliver on their repeated promises while staying true to their ideological foundations in the government of national unity.
Bar the fact that both Winston Churchill, who saved the world from Nazism, and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, current ruler of Dubai, loved horse racing, there are few linkages between the world of politics and the empire of the turf.
When weighing the odds for a race, the breeding lines and past form of the thoroughbred matter more than the jockey riding the horse. Though, of course, a great rider can overcome obstacles like a bad draw and poor racing conditions.
In the world of politics, it is almost the reverse: pundits and the public are more fixated on the jockey than the horse. Just witness the improbable political resurrection of Jacob Zuma here: I hazard that very few MKP voters in 2024 paid much attention to the party manifesto and far more to the vibes around the man in its saddle.
On political leadership, Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh wrote in 2015:
“Leadership in politics is not quite the only thing that matters, but almost. A party with a good front man or woman can afford to get almost everything else wrong and probably will not. Most other variables – policy, strategy, organisation flow from the leader.”
In a similar vein, this week on these pages, Adriaan Basson wrote on the ANC and DA “succession battles” suggesting that “the next leaders of these two parties are essential for the country”.
I know something about both political leadership and issues of succession. But steering the steed and in which direction is a key requirement of political command; to choose the course and determine both gains and risks en route to the winning post. As the party executive chair of my era, the late James Selfe, once put it with some frankness:
“Your job is to indicate whether it’s Moscow or Stalingrad, our job in the party is to get us there, but absent you setting the route, it won’t happen.”
An interesting metaphor for an avowedly anti-communist party manager to offer, but very clarifying.
It is quite striking to recall the pitches of the two current frontmen of the two largest parties in South Africa as they paved the path to the top job.
This week, in his address to the ANC national general council, Cyril Ramaphosa said:
“We require a renewal of values and ethics. We need to deal decisively with corruption and unacceptable conduct. And we must forge a cadreship [sic] imbued with a militant, principled and fighting spirit.”
Yet, as archival sleuth Gareth van Onselen excavated from the internet, the same CR had offered the same view, with more bells and whistles as he positioned himself for the top job. In 2012, he said:
“We need to go for renewal, and to this end, we have developed the decade of the cadre. The decade of the cadre also means we have to inculcate the most outstanding values and ethics among the leaders of the ANC. The education that they will be exposed to during this period is meant to chisel out precisely all those with very bad tendencies.”
This commitment, from the man who, at the time, headed the cadre deployment committee of the ANC, hardly aged well – just check out the neglected Zondo Commission list of corrupt cadres, all appointed by Ramaphosa, and many of whom are still in place around the cabinet table and his party’s current national executive.
Van Onselen notes: “Man in charge of the ‘decade of the cadre’ when first elected ANC [deputy president] in 2012 which he totally failed at, now promises exact same thing 13 years later. He should open a waffle shop; he produces so much of the stuff.”
What menu was offered by the DA when its current leader, John Steenhuisen, successfully campaigned for the party top job in 2019?
Analysing the loss suffered by the party in the preceding election, he said:
“The DA has become a big, blue wobbly jelly buffeted by political winds, lacking a firm direction – the party needs to find its spine again and re-anchor to its core values.”
This week, also in News 24, Steenhuisen offered a defence of the achievements of the government of national unity (GNU) and his party’s role in it.
He described the 18 months of the GNU as a case of “so far, so good”. He cited the removal of SA from the grey list, improved government revenues and a growth uptick and planned infrastructure spending. A budget win on VAT, among other achievements as advances. “None of them would have been made without the DA in the government of national unity.”
Doubtless, the ANC will scoff at this claim but will be less able to contest Steenhuisen’s essential pitch: “The alternative, what we referred to as the ‘Doomsday Coalition’ between the ANC, EFF and MK Party would have ruined this country.”
Of course, both Enthoven and Steenhuisen are correct in one sense: both improved logistics, a repaired national balance sheet and keeping destructive political forces outside the cabinet are significant.
Indeed, for many in both the business community and in the wider electorate, the greatest claim for the current GNU is not its achievement, but its continuance.
The acronym “TIWAW” (There is a Worse Alternative Waiting) seems to resonate in opinion polls that point to an improved standing for the DA.
But as the ANC powers on with its “national democratic revolution”, threadbare and bankrupt (in all respects) as the party is today, where does this leave the DA and its own leader’s warning against the party being the “big blue wobbly jelly”?
All politics and choices commence from an a priori position. In other words, ideological first principles, which was the thrust of Steenhuisen’s leadership pitch back in 2019.
Chat GPT usefully summarised the liberal a priori position (or its assumptions as it heads to the course before looking at the evidence or even experience) as: “Markets are usually more efficient than the state.”
For a theoretically socialist party such as the ANC, the pitch would be: “The state must promote equality above all else.”
The ANC, with an added and often lethal dose of racial nationalism, has, in theory at least, lived up to this assumption.
These two ideologies do not easily mix.
For the DA, its own fealty to, and advancement of, “core values” to which its leader committed six years ago, is less clear. Doubtless, constraints in government, a minority position in cabinet, and a recalcitrant civil service make this difficult.
Compromised principles
Also, broad political parties, such as the DA and even ANC, cannot be doctrinally pure, and pragmatic compromises are often the price tag of governing. But at least be mindful of the principles being compromised.
On the other hand, if the advancement of liberty and expansion of personal freedom, in everything from liberating education from the stranglehold of teachers’ unions to selling off non-core state assets to expanding enterprise by curbing the state (and there is a long list from communications to commerce) is not the order of business, why be in government? Both the connections to the horse and those jockeying to ride it might consider the question. And suggest some answers.
