Cyril Ramaphosa has shored up the momentum for reform in just a few dramatic days. It is now up to civil society, indeed as many citizens as possible, to play their part.
Neither Ramaphosa nor his ailing yet still ruling party can do the job alone. In fact, its notorious infighting could even harm the national effort of recovery. But at least the ANC has an exceptional leader in Ramaphosa, now re-elected.
This is the moment to remember the words some of us heard over the airwaves from the United States on 20 January 1961. They ring down six decades.
At his inauguration in the US, newly elected President John F Kennedy said something of value to US citizens and to humanity: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
Let us not fall into the trap of letting a dogged, enlightened leader like Ramaphosa battle on without a broadening of his support in the country at large. For some time he has, despite crises, arguably commanded a majority there for some time. It could be most useful if coalition politics were to replace hostility and division.
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It does not mean suspending party politics, which would be unthinkable, outside of a national calamity bringing about a temporary national government of salvation. A collapse of the world economy, or an asteroid heading for Earth, could justify that. (Fortunately, the latest big one heading our way, 2022 AP7, should be a close miss, say space scientists who know.)
The time has come to put aside the more dangerous petty squabbling that we’ve seen for years now, which has been markedly apparent inside and outside what we might call a power-shedding ANC.
Our politics are full of recklessly libellous attacks, racial taunting, and the cynical rejection of well-meaning efforts to find common answers to common problems.
For the benefit of my own diversion, I was called a “thug” more than once recently in a social media reply in Daily Maverick after a mild piece assessing Ramaphosa’s chances. “Thug” is worth googling for anyone unacquainted with the full meaning. Social media, despite being the plaything of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, can be a boon in so many directions, but if not properly monitored can stir the pot dangerously.
Among the vast problems we face are poverty, violent crime and a world-record wealth gap. Those are among the imperatives that need an all-around effort and a certain basic consensus to make even a dent in worryingly rising figures.
We need to find an inclusive spirit of working together, call it a coalescing of the mind on essentials, rather than needless toxic conflict that could one day lead to unending violence in the streets.
A spirit of voluntarism
It could mean rediscovering a spirit of voluntarism — once punted heavily by Thabo Mbeki when I worked for his Presidency as an adviser. This means a system where citizens and institutions, at least those who can, throw their skills and support into the national effort, without expectation of reward. It also means the government listening to such well-meant advice.
That is the opposite of the greedy and corrupt way so many in power have illegally and secretly feathered their own nests, ultimately at the cost of the poor.
We must rapidly empower the poor to give them the real prospect of reaching socioeconomic justice, good education, housing, a safe life, especially for women and children... we know it all by heart.
An inclusive broadening of civil society effort is the gateway, in perilous global times, for South Africa as a unified nation to rediscover its exemplary greatness reminiscent of the freedom that Nelson Mandela and a wide consensus of effort locally and abroad won for us in 1994. Too many forget too quickly that seminal stage in our history. Others never lived through it, thus never knew it, and what came before with apartheid.
The non-inclusive way, always adopting a negative party-political approach, endless carping from the sidelines (or comfy armchairs), and the use of deliberately toxic language, could see much more than a crumbling ruling party. Before long, it could be a crumbling South Africa.
What happens to a ruling party in trouble has really become less important to the national interest now. Ramaphosa, understandably, as its leader, seeks to shore up internal unity within his ANC. How could he do otherwise?
Yet, his real support goes way beyond the ANC and is his most important asset for the country.
He’s tended usually to point to a moderate way ahead despite all the cynicism, dirty tricks and hostility aimed at him personally. We as a nation have to end that negative era once and for all. We must face such forces full-on and, in every possible way, outbid those who seem to want democracy lying wounded or dead in looted streets.
Ramaphosa has a crushing workload ahead, and the advice given to him, and explanations of how precisely he pulled it off, will be abounding on social and other media for months.
Crucially, he has to shore up our economy. With willing players in the league of Trevor Manuel, surely our finest finance minister ever in SA, Ramaphosa can ably carry on the great task of attracting the necessary investment and trade that we need. That could apply also to securing long-term aid — Mandela having inexplicably been denied a Marshall Plan for SA by democratic powers after the defeat of apartheid.
If ever there was a national challenge that strikes at the roots of our country and the life of almost every individual in it, it is the electric power crisis. Here we need to see voluntarism in action too, with all available expertise offered by what we still have left in a multiskilled, resourceful and still richly endowed country.
Civil society, for instance, must come up with new ideas and techniques to circumvent the agony of blackouts. And to move rapidly and in environmentally acceptable ways from a heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Enough expert voices are there to address that, though it was more than a pity to see Eskom’s André de Ruyter go, something that needs more explanation.
The above thoughts seem highly necessary in fielding the full SA team, as we find our way forward, edging back from the cliff, post-Nasrec. DM