In anticipation of the effects of the rise of MK, it would be safe to assume that South Africa’s provinces will become more politically powerful, and with them, the provincial elites.
Jacob Zuma’s MK party has hijacked the brand and remnants of the armed struggle wing of the ANC and is now attracting high-profile members from the EFF into its ranks.
MK received 14.58 % of the national vote (4,584,828) and won the most votes in KwaZulu-Natal with 45.3%, ahead of the IFP on 18% and the ANC on 17% in South Africa’s most populous province.
It appears that MK is an expression of Jacob Zuma’s opportunism and his faction’s guerilla resistance to a loss of power in the ANC, and in the process the former president has allowed the genie of ethnic chauvinism out of the bottle of constitutional democracy, in which it has been under guard for three decades.
As MK began, several sources revealed Zulu nationalism at the core of MK, such as its focus on the empowerment and representation of the Zulu-speaking population. This is evidenced by the party’s leadership criticising the ANC for sidelining Zulu interests and pledging to prioritise economic and cultural autonomy for Zulu communities.
Further, MK has highlighted its goal of restoring pride in Zulu heritage, linking its platform to the legacy of resistance and warrior culture that historically characterised the Zulu people.
The party’s support base is also predominantly concentrated in KZN, where it campaigns on issues central to Zulu identity and socioeconomic empowerment. However, with Floyd Shivambu now at the helm as secretary-general of the party, and Dali Mpofu joining the leadership ranks, it seems to be pivoting towards a new positioning, as a leftist vanguard of radical black nationalism.
Is MK dangerous or a lame duck?
The Zulu ethnic group is the largest in South Africa and while primarily concentrated in KZN, Zulu-speaking people are found in all parts of the country. They make up only 22% of South Africa’s population (13.2 million out of around 60 million). It is therefore unlikely that Zuma’s Zulu nationalism can ascend to power via majoritarianism – unless it can crowd in other ethnicities under a broad church of black nationalism.
A different scenario is more likely: that the party precipitates a new regionalisation of politics, where KZN becomes an ethno-nationalist enclave, and secondly, MK’s actions strengthen a new political norm which grows tentacles across the country – of new ethno-nationalistic power hunters popping up in their provinces.
In this scenario, as Zulu pride drives a “Zulu first” populism in KZN, one might imagine a chorus of Sotho voices calling for respect for Basotho culture in the Free State and Limpopo, or a lippy young Tswana calling for cultural revitalisation in North West.
More interesting, will be if a coloured intellectual publishes an important book on “die taal en geloof” of “haar mense”, couched in a claim for land ownership in the Western and Northern Cape. Others will emerge, such as Xhosa commentators in university halls lamenting the decline of the quality of the public discourse, but doing so in reference to waning Xhosa intellectualism.
Of course, these new political noises will provide a pretext for old Afrikaner nationalisms to vaunt their sense of superiority and beat their chest at byeenkomste for young “wit mense”.
The future ‘we’ want?
What makes this future dangerous and undesirable is not the threat posed by the diverse cultural strands of the South African tapestry. Rather, it is the political distraction it represents from the true national question – of inclusive development, involving the modernisation and expansion of the economy in terms that are competitive in the real world, as it exists outside of South Africa’s perceived and naive multicultural exceptionalism.
Potentially, Zuma’s MK might prove to be a lame duck if the former president were to disappear into history and his offspring (political and otherwise) do not have the wherewithal to expand his political kraal.
Or the above scenario, where the propensity for in-group political group-think, now being popularised by Zuma and his minions, gives rise to the Federal Republic of South Africa.
Was Van Zyl Slabbert’s long view short-sighted?
Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, a leader of the Opposition during apartheid, proposed a federal system emphasising a decentralised governance structure that would balance power among the country’s diverse racial, ethnic and regional groups.
His vision, developed in the 1980s as an alternative to apartheid, aimed to create autonomous regions or states that would have substantial control over local governance, while a central government would handle national issues like defence, foreign policy and macroeconomic management.
This federal model was to prevent the dominance of any single group by ensuring that all communities, including minorities, had political autonomy and representation. Slabbert believed this approach would foster cooperation and unity by accommodating diversity within a single nation, promoting shared governance and avoiding majoritarianism or centralised control that could marginalise smaller communities.
Nelson Mandela’s ANC was initially sceptical of Slabbert’s federal proposal, as he and the ANC were committed to the idea of a unitary state that would prioritise national unity over regional autonomy. Mandela feared that a federal system could entrench ethnic and racial divisions, potentially undermining the ANC’s vision of a non-racial, unified South Africa.
However, in the negotiations leading up to the end of apartheid, Mandela and the ANC showed flexibility and openness to aspects of decentralisation, particularly as a compromise to appease minority groups, including white Afrikaners and the Zulu-led Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
So, while Mandela did not fully endorse Slabbert’s federal model, he and the ANC recognised the need for certain regional powers and compromises to achieve a peaceful and inclusive transition.
Can the GNU be the glue that holds the centre together?
Some argue that South Africa’s Government of National Unity (GNU) under President Cyril Ramaphosa now functions as a crucial stabilising force, holding the diverse nation together. By incorporating representatives from multiple political parties, including opposition groups, Ramaphosa’s administration aims to promote inclusivity and collaborative governance, mirroring the spirit of the 1994 transition when South Africa first embraced democracy. Assuming the GNU delivers inclusive economic progress, and does so quickly, this argument might hold.
As usual, Ramaphosa has emphasised the importance of consensus-building to address issues, creating a shared sense of ownership and responsibility for the country’s future. The thinking is that the consultative approach helps to balance differing interests and manage tensions among various groups, such as the concerns of minority communities and the demands of economically disadvantaged citizens – but in practice it amounts to an extension of the 1994 elite pact.
A contrary view is that all the GNU can do is provide a shallow remedy to patch over the political polarisation of the past decade, without actually enabling a material change in the economic system, such as by mobilising massive capital investment, job growth and stable public finance.
In this view, the GNU itself is a temporary phenomenon, a counter-trend within the dominant tide towards political fractionalisation in which even the adaptive Julius Malema’s EFF has been swept away.
My own take is that too much of the political uncertainty facing South Africa hinges on personality and individual charismatic leadership, which is why identity politics can be weaponised to feed ethno-nationalism.
In the absence of a mature democratic culture and with weak institutions, South Africa has been tossed to and fro between the Mbeki pragmatism, Zuma extractivism and now Ramaphosa collectivism, while we wade deeper and deeper into state dependency on the back of stagnation in the real economy. Our politics has been about lining pockets instead of enabling the bloodstream of shared development.
As such, in anticipation of the effects of the rise of MK, it would be safe to assume that South Africa’s provinces will become more politically powerful, and with them the provincial elites who directly or indirectly preside over the companies, state-owned enterprises and value chains that dot the topography of South Africa’s diverse landscape. As MK rises, so will a tide of other uMkhontos (spears).
The question is whether this regionalisation will be organic and messy, or orchestrated and serve the purpose of calling Zuma’s bluff by allowing self-rule instead of ethnicity to be the measure of legitimacy.
More importantly, whether our leaders have the powers of statecraft required to beat those spears into ploughshares? DM