S.Africa: Black Politics: How far can the ANC go in trashing the Constitution before the GNU collapses?
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2005: S.Africa: Black Children as young as 5 have sex at school
This was a news story from the mass media about young Black children having sex at school.
Veteran journalist and former editor, Peter Bruce, began his 27 October 2024 Sunday Times column with the following observations:
“Jacob Zuma was correct when he said the ANC was more important than the country. All politicians put their parties first or, if you’re in Russia or North Korea, themselves. Americans are about to find out what that might feel like.
“John Steenhuisen would feel the same way. He said last month the DA wouldn’t crash President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Government of National Unity ‘unless it is crashing the economy or trashing the Constitution’.”
The Government of National Unity (GNU) to which Steenhuisen refers is actually a 10-party coalition of political parties represented in the National Assembly. Nine of these responded positively to the invitation extended by the ANC after the May 2024 general elections, an invitation which expressed the intention to govern under the rule of law and in accordance with the Constitution.
Several parties did not accept the invitation, principally the MK party, the EFF and Action SA. They now form the opposition in Parliament with disgraced former Western Cape Judge President Dr John Hlophe as leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly.
The DA, which Steenhuisen leads, is the second biggest party in the GNU which means in effect that, without the DA, the GNU would cease to function, thus precipitating either fresh coalition negotiations or, if they fail, an early general election to deal with the hung Parliament that the voters of SA engineered by the manner in which they voted in May.
National Democratic Revolution
It is important to note that the ANC’s invitation to join the GNU made no reference to the ANC’s long-established guiding lights, the tenets of the National Democratic Revolution, according to which it has always sought to establish “hegemonic control of all the levers of power in society”.
Any initial hopes that hegemonic control is no longer on the agenda of the ANC have been dashed by the announcements made after its NEC meeting over the past weekend of October 2024 in Boksburg. The ANC is intent upon educating its membership in the ways of the NDR.
What Anthea Jeffery has dubbed the “Countdown to Socialism” in her eponymous book, continues with the ANC using, even abusing, the GNU as a blunt instrument to achieve the goals of the revolution by co-opting smaller parties to do its bidding on that road to hegemony.
The references to the Constitution and the rule of law in the invitation to form the GNU were no more than window dressing and sleight of hand on the part of the panicked ANC leadership. For the first time in 30 years of democracy, the ANC lost majority control in Parliament by slipping to only 40% of the votes in an election in which only 16% of all eligible voters cast their votes in favour of the ANC.
These figures highlight the precarious position in which the ANC finds itself. It is actually renewing and rebuilding its NDR agenda using the GNU as a temporary vehicle to do so. What it calls “dexterity in tact” is required for this exercise.
The prospect of early elections and a return to the polls of those who stayed away in May to vote the ANC out of office has concentrated the minds of those who lead the ANC.
The tenets of the NDR are incompatible with those of the Constitution. Multiparty constitutional democracy with free and fair regular elections, openness, accountability and responsiveness as the watchwords are not the stuff of revolution. Respect for guaranteed human rights and the doctrine of the separation of powers are all patently not any part of the ANC’s hegemonic control of all the levers of power in society.
The topic of NDR incompatibility with constitutionalism has been subjected to detailed analysis by Dr Jeffery in her book and in my January 2020 essay.
The factual questions with which the DA must now grapple are whether, in the words of its leader, the ANC is busy “crashing the economy and trashing the Constitution”.
Grand corruption
The economy is bound to remain in the doldrums for as long as SA remains on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list. The biggest issue that needs to be addressed to get off that list is the high incidence of money laundering as a consequence or by-product of the endemic grand corruption that has stunted the economic growth of SA.
The ANC has absolutely no political will to address grand corruption. It is, in the words of its own leader, “Accused Number One” in the State Capture inquiry. It is also guilty as charged if the findings of the Zondo Commission of Inquiry withstand any judicial review aimed at undermining them. So far, no review has been successful. Long before the Zondo Commission’s report was published there were indications that the ANC had all the hallmarks of a criminal enterprise.
The high incidence of money laundering is not countered adequately by the criminal justice administration because the ANC has chosen to ignore the reforms required, in binding terms, by the courts in the Glenister litigation.
Without effective and efficient anti-corruption machinery of the state, the prospects of remaining on the FATF grey list loom large in the economic future of SA. This makes it harder to raise funds, more difficult to attract new investments and more expensive to service the national debt.
If Steenhuisen would simply open his eyes to the parlous state of the economy, he would clearly see that the economy has already crashed due to the propensity of the ANC to paint outside the lines of good governance.
Endless list
As for trashing the Constitution, the list of precepts overturned by the ANC is endless. The early experiences of the DA in the GNU in relation to the Bela Bill and the NHI debacles are illustrative of this point.
Transferring school governance from school governing bodies to civil servants in a way that will surely make inroads on the right to be educated in the language of choice of those receiving education is not what the Constitution contemplates. An unfunded pie-in-the-sky national health system is no way to achieve the progressive realisation, within the available resources of the state, of the healthcare services referred to in the Bill of Rights.
At a more fundamental level, the backsliding of the ANC when it comes to proper implementation of the Glenister anti-corruption rules is sure to come to a head when the DA’s bills for the establishment of the Chapter Nine Anti-Corruption Commission are debated, as they must be in the near future. The bills are already with the Speaker of the National Assembly awaiting allocation of a date for the debate.
Cadre deployment
The continuation of the noxious practice of cadre deployment in the public administration, the state-owned enterprises and even the judiciary and existing Chapter Nine institutions, is the subject matter of an appeal in which the DA and ANC are at loggerheads.
It is unthinkable that institutions that are meant to be independent and a judiciary that is meant to be impartial have been subjected to the secretive work of the Luthuli House cadre deployment committees.
But this is what was revealed during the evidence of the President in the Zondo Commission. Cadre deployment is in many ways at the root of the trashing of the Constitution by the ANC. Loyalty to the Constitution rather than to the NDR is honoured in the breach in the way in which the ANC went about governing SA. It is intent on continuing this malpractice under the GNU.
The values and principles which are supposed to inform the public administration and state-owned enterprises, set out in Section 195 of the Constitution, are also honoured in the breach by the ANC.
Tenderpreneurism
Procurement of goods and services for the state is routinely subjected to the ravages of tenderpreneurism instead of being the preserve of “a system which is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective” under Section 217 of the Constitution.
These malpractices add greatly to the cost of governing the country. They “trash” the Constitution as they do so.
It is plain on any objective conspectus of the facts traversed above that it is just a matter of time before the GNU crashes, to use the Steenhuisen terminology.
The hegemony of the revolution is wholly incompatible with the success of the GNU. The ANC is the largest and only party in the GNU which subscribes to the NDR.
Steenhuisen will also be aware that junior partners in coalition governments do not fare well in later elections. He will have to choose the timing of the departure of the DA from the GNU carefully. DM
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