'Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do. Our mistake was to see the joy, the extraordinary balance between idealism and pragmatism, the energy, the generosity ... and think that it must triumph over the politics of lies and resentment.
“Our mistake was to think that racism and misogyny were not as bad as they are, whether it applied to who was willing to vote for a supremely qualified black woman or who was willing to vote for an adjudicated rapist and convicted criminal who admires Hitler. Our mistake was to think we could row this boat across the acid lake before the acid dissolved it.”
So wrote writer and historian Rebecca Solnit in The Guardian in the immediate aftermath of the recent US election. Donald Trump’s re-election has sent more than a ripple across the world; it has the potential to blur the boundaries of the world order as we know it, provide licence to every leader with an authoritarian bent to push the boundaries and create further schisms between Europe, the US and the rest of the world.
South Africa, which has its own challenges and unique ability to stymie its own progress, will not be immune to the threat of further democratic degradation in the US or that country’s increasing protectionist tendencies.
South Africa’s presidency of the G20 is clearly being used by President Cyril Ramaphosa to prop up his own insipid presidency. It is not necessary to repeat here the multiple ways in which he has displayed inaction in governing.
Although South Africans are quick to move on and simply get on with the business of living (often hard in a country as unequal and violent as ours), there is a tendency to forget that we held another free and fair election this year and now have a Government of National Unity (GNU) in place. The election result was accepted by the ANC with no complaint or threat of violence or insurrection, but rather resignation.
The GNU is imperfect and has too many interlocutors, which undermines its stability. And we fool ourselves if we believe that things are settled, leaving aside the threat of the uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party, its noise and dangerous rhetoric. It has now taken over the mantle of the EFF as disruptors and anti-constitutionalists.
Malema, now so beleaguered as his comrades jump ship, recently called for the safeguarding of constitutional supremacy, albeit followed by a contorted argument about the role of judges and judicial review. Given Malema’s past outbursts about the judiciary and the Constitution, it is hard to take his sudden commitment to constitutionalism seriously, and some of it has a forked tongue about it.
Now is the time for real democrats to protect and defend the Constitution, not those who do so out of political expediency.
The crown lies uneasily on Ramaphosa’s head as he seeks to balance the interests of his party with those of the country, with these being often entirely incompatible. With shrill Helen Zille in the background being given far more media attention than should be the case, the road ahead for the GNU is anything but smooth. The recent controversy over the Bela Act has shown this starkly, and there will be many other examples that will play out behind the scenes and in sensationalist media coverage.
Being discouraged has become the daily norm now. Recently, the G20 sherpas met in Johannesburg even as the city has severe water and energy challenges, and rubbish is piling up on the streets. The city is but one part of the country where infrastructure is falling apart, unemployment has reached crisis levels and violent crime remains intolerably high. It is therefore not hard to become despondent and to draw inevitable conclusions about the trajectory of South Africa.
Similarly, as the world prepares for another Trump presidency, all manner of unexacting analysis has made headlines.
But as Mark Mazower, who teaches history at Columbia University, wrote in the Financial Times recently, even though democratic norms appear “unusually fragile”, Trump’s victory need not be the harbinger of an “authoritarian future” for Europe. (Here one may insert “the rest of the world” too.)
As Mazower says, the world needs to break the habit of seeing the US as “a kind of precursor” while using fascism as the new threat to Europe, the US and the world.
Mazower masterfully picks apart the theory that the US will automatically now slide into a kind of fascism and that Europe, at least, will follow suit. He distinguishes the European experience from the US historical one, how fresh in the memory fascism, Nazism and the great wars are, and how sui generis the US is in so many ways. He points to the divergent historical experiences of the US and Europe, together with Europe’s geographical vulnerability, which has forced a greater commitment to institutionalism and cooperation (despite Brexit and the general anxiety in the EU).
Polarisation in the US, for instance, is unchecked and unbound by “historical memories that serve to buttress democracy”, Mazower writes.
His challenge is for us to avoid the obvious, and he asks another, more interesting and pertinent question: Why is democracy in crisis? He then says pointedly: “Fascism may not be what awaits it … But fascism is not the only test and the sooner this is understood, the better we will be able to orient ourselves in the uncharted territory that lies ahead.”
As the world continues to face polycrises, we do so in a more unknown setting than ever before, no matter where in the world we find ourselves. We do ourselves a disservice when we make glib assumptions that fascism is the only option that lies ahead.
Might, for instance, democratic drift be more dangerous, a sort of paralysis where nothing can in fact be solved, whether climate change or inequality? Despite the glut of social media and the noise of the moment, there are no clear answers to the next political and global moment.
But to return to Solnit, her seminal work, Hope in the Dark, written in 2003 after the start of the Iraq War, is instructive even now and worth reading in its entirety.
Although the territory is uncharted, it is not hopeless. Solnit writes with more than a hint of pragmatism when she says: “It’s important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction.
“The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It’s also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings.
“Change is rarely straightforward … Sometimes it’s as complex as chaos theory and as slow as evolution. Even things that seem to happen suddenly arise from deep roots in the past or from long-dormant seeds.
“It’s important to emphasise that hope is only a beginning; it’s not a substitute for action, only a basis for it. The status quo would like you to believe it is immutable, inevitable and invulnerable, and a lack of memory of a dynamically changing world reinforces this view.”
Her words echo Mazower’s, whose theory simplified really is that we need to understand history before drawing undemanding conclusions about the world’s trajectory and therefore offering “quick fix” solutions. For there are none.
Hard as the next years will be, Solnit’s words are calling us to remake society in ways that are neither cynical nor naive, and where hope is an act of defiance. But we need to be asking the hard questions first, rooted in deep knowledge thoughtfully applied and not born merely out of the fear, loathing and the panic of the moment. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
