Divided we fall and fall, and fall again — identity politics offer no solutions to SA’s very real problems

31 May 2023

With a general election next year and an unprecedented series of crises being faced by our society, there is little evidence that our politicians are actively looking for solutions to South Africa’s multiple problems.

There is much evidence that our politicians are finding it easier to pick arbitrary fights with each other and within their alternate universe than to spend their time fixing the country’s problems. Coupled with this, the state itself has steadily grown weaker. It appears that those thirsting for political power are more comfortable fighting yesterday’s battles than solving today’s problems.

A decade ago, South Africa was still a land of immense hope. The ANC had just passed the National Development Plan (NDP) by acclamation at its conference in Mangaung. Penned by a team led by Trevor Manuel and Cyril Ramaphosa, it was a publicly available and widely accepted blueprint for our future.

Key to the NDP were its proposals to strengthen the state. These had been agreed to by the governing party and were even welcomed by the main opposition.

Now, 10 years later, our state is probably weaker than it has been at any time since the 1980s.

Crime is rising while the police appear to stand idle, vigilantism is increasing, power cuts hobble our businesses and incomes, unemployment is growing all the time, infrastructure is under attack and cholera stalks the land.

So severe are these crises that ANC Chief Whip Pemmy Majodina felt compelled to spend part of her speech in Parliament on Wednesday arguing against the notion that South Africa is a failed state.

Most of these crises are the result of a failure of governance.

A nuanced picture is important — one always has to consider how much of this near-catastrophic state of affairs was due to the failure of those in charge, and which elements would have been beyond anyone’s reach.

For example, both the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic severely weakened the state.

And the deepening process of our democracy may have made it harder to govern at every level.

In the late 1990s, the ANC leaders were sitting so pretty that they did not need to worry about what the party’s provincial leaders thought, with civil society and NGOs going to court on just about every conceivable issue.

Now, disillusioned citizens have grown more assertive, increasingly protesting against the government and making tougher demands by the bucketload. They ask for free housing, free electricity and free higher education. When the government refuses to provide these, people refuse to pay for electricity, they storm campuses and occupy buildings.

But there is also so much the government could have done and failed to do.

Corruption allowed to flourish

For example, government and political leaders have often promised proper economic reform, but have failed to deliver it, despite this being within their power.

As a direct result of this process of weakening, corruption has been allowed to flourish, to the point where it appears this undermining of the state has been deliberate.

It did not have to be this way, as the examples of good governance show.

For example, the Western Cape Department of Health appears to provide better care than the Gauteng Department of Health, famous for hospitals with no water but with a supply of skinny jeans.

Then there’s the municipality of Senqu in the Eastern Cape, which has achieved successive unqualified audits — just one piece of proof that it provides a better life for the people who live there than so many other councils do.

Voters are crying out for a stronger state. They are asking for cleaner water, more reliable electricity, for the police to prevent violence and for the delivery of services.

While these voices are growing stronger, it is one of the features of our current political situation that few of those contesting for power are publicly offering solutions.

Instead of focusing on how the cholera outbreak in Tshwane can be resolved and fixing our water supply systems, the three biggest political parties are arguing about our relationship with Russia.

This is an argument about identity and history, it is all about the elements of the identities of South Africans.

But it does nothing to resolve our major day-to-day problems.

The same is true about the current spat over the proposed new Employment Equity regulations. The DA and others have said they will go to court to challenge them, while the ANC, through the government, says it is merely trying to speed up transformation.

Again, this is an argument about identity, and it does nothing to lead to more economic growth.

There are many other examples of this, where politicians engage in “whataboutism” to label their opponents. It appears that many of our politicians are much more comfortable attacking each other than trying to solve this country’s problems.

Unfortunately, we may now be in a situation where this dynamic is beginning to spiral out of control. As the country’s problems get worse, the politicians focus on what they know best — attacks across the political divide. This then pushes them further into their identity trenches.

And as nothing improves, anger and dissatisfaction will rise among the voters.

At some point, with no solutions being placed on the political table and after years of focus on identity politics, the risk of that anger being the determining political dynamic will be very real — voters will follow the politicians’ lead and turn on each other, rather than looking for solutions.

This of course sets up a feedback loop, where politicians feed on the anger, and offer more of this fare to voters.

The result: more violent populism, where serious solutions are ignored in favour of measures which on the surface appear to benefit one group of people, one constituency, more than another.

It is not easy to see what will break this pattern. As the ANC continues to grow more divided and weaker, and time marches on, it is possible that our awful history will play less of a role in our politics. But it is also very possible that if our economy continues to struggle, our racialised inequality will continue to entrench identity politics to a breaking point. The evidence suggests that our problems will only grow more urgent and almost impossible to solve. DM

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South Africa

Corruption allowed to flourish