Government of National Unity, or, Undoing, incoming? Will the GNU2 deal with the Proudly South African Democratic Disorder of Corrupt Utopianism?
Dr Petrus de Kock / Buiteboer
If South Africa’s 7th administration, whether it is a grand coalition, or a Government of National Unity 2, cannot slay the dragon of corrupt utopianism, it will most likely end up as government of national undoing. But, what do we mean?
Most likely in a few days from penning these notes the much anticipated Government of National Unity cabinet will have been announced. What we are looking into below goes beyond the question of which political bums will fill which cabinet portfolio seats.
Rather it is asked how the GNU will contend, or deal with the permanent state, the bureaucrats and ANC deployees, still occupying positions in national- and provincial departments, SOEs, the boards of directors of state entities appointed by ministers from the now defunct 6th administration.
The project of GNU cleaning up the state will have to contend with the Proudly South African Democratic Disorder of Corrupt Utopianism. The latter is adapted from Buiteboer’s book, Searching for Madness in the Method, and applied to the evolving political landscape of a GNU trying a march on Pretoria.
Below we cover the following themes:
I – Is the GNU making history? Ask us again in five years!
II – We are marching to Pretoria sings the GNU minibus taxi of ten political party participants
III – Can the GNU exorcise the rot of the proudly South African Democratic Disorder of Corrupt Utopianism?
IV – Politicians, board members, legislators perpetrating highway robbery tactics in fancy suits
V – Slay the modernist utopian assumptions about the state in South Africa
I – Is the GNU making history? Ask us again in five years!
How is history made? Through centuries of toil and turmoil within, and among, competing civilisations, cities, empires, races, religions, families, individuals, states- and non-state actors? Or, is history an accumulation of memories cast every second in the now in which you, or I, persist to perpetrate consciousness, on this side of river death?
But, what does it matter, and more pertinently, what on earth does it have anything at all to do with the birth pangs of South Africa’s political system trying to birth a Government of National Unity?
Whichever way one may want to look at history, it is still way too early to tell whether this GNU will make its mark. Will it go down as resounding success that set the country on a path to recovery, following three decades of rather ruinous ANC singular-party rule? Will it go down in history as the bridge too far, or, as one of the last straws that cracked the state camel’s back? The latter meaning that the GNU may go down in flames the same way multiple coalitions at local government level in South Africa has let not just residents down, through perpetual political infighting, but led to utter neglect and decay of anything vaguely related to public services, infrastructure, or anything resembling that lofty auditorial term – good governance.
However, even more lofty words were spoken by the freshly inaugurated president Ramaphosa on 19 June. One line from the speech reads,
“The formation of a government of national unity is a moment of profound significance. It is the beginning of a new era.”
Even though the speechwriter(s) steered clear of using the word history, the mere mention of, for example, ‘…a moment of profound significance,’ already hammers on the door of claiming some hand clapping for a pre-emptive strike on space in the history yet to be written in the future, meaning, these words try to get us to see the ‘now’ in relation to some imagined future. All we can say is, good luck to the Don of Phala Phala cash bank!
While it is true that a GNU helped the South African transition at a crucial moment in the 1990s, the GNU of today is a horse of totally different hue. Back then the ANC had a major majority, GNU1 was intended to usher in the final constitution, and keep things together, while old things (the Apartheid regime and state system), was being dismantled and reappropriated, reinvented and retooled, for the incoming democratic dispensation. The 2024, GNU2, is nothing but a coalition cobbled together to shore up, plug the holes, and keep a sinking ANC ship afloat.
Who knows, but, a word of advice. Don’t believe any politician who is now pronouncing on this historic moment of the cobbling together a GNU2. Is the new GNU making history? No, but, did the ANC make history by being befallen by such a beating at the ballot box in the 2024 election? For sure!
Any politician who at this stage in the game declares on the historical moment of GNU-bliss should be asked to go sit in a corner, and told, we will wait and see. We will ask you again, on the eve of the results of the next national election, in 2029: do you still think the moment, in June 2024, was indeed such a momentous occasion, and the beginning of a new era?
With Ramaphosa at the GNU helm, let us be reminded, his first term in office started with the Cyril Spring, and New Dawn, and such PR platitudes. Perhaps only in 2029 will we begin to get an idea of whether the GNU will be fodder for good, bad, or, no history to be written at all!
II – We are marching to Pretoria sings the GNU minibus taxi of ten party participants
Nevertheless, all of this is following on election results that kicked very many political hornets nests into high gear. At this stage, as at the time of writing, no cabinet of the GNU2 has been announced. But, we do know that a total of ten political parties have by now signed up to join the merry crew already beginning to crowd the minibus taxi marching to Pretoria’s ministerial and deputy-ministerial offices. Or, at least so the party representatives in the taxi hope.
The purpose here is not to speculate on how the GNUs cabinet level musical chairs are to allocated. Nor is the purpose to pontificate on personas from whatever party, that may or may not come to occupy particular portfolios. No. It is to make two points, the first of which has already been made, being, let’s wait for history to pass, second by second, for several years, before we preach about historical moments, and ‘new eras.’ The next point is to ask, whether newly minted GNU ministers will be up to the task of fighting the cancer of corrupt utopianism.
III – Can the GNU exorcise the rot of the proudly South African Democratic Disorder of Corrupt Utopianism?
New problems will merge into view for the GNU, all the time, when confronting the rather multi-hued cow of corruption in post-Apartheid South Africa.
The impotent rage stirred by revelations of corruption, presupposes and exposes utopian wet dreams wherein it is believed that rational actors (politicians and public officials) run the State Apparatus in the interest of society, or, those two very tired words, The People. The greatest abuses in the history of humanity happened in the name of the mythic ‘People’. Pol Pot in Cambodia comes to mind.
The Abstract Machine of Rigid Segmentarity established by the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, and associated mythology of liberation- and democracy, feeds off a much deeper modernism- and latent utopian assumptions regarding the nature of Persons, and the State.
In a perverse way the shock and impotent (out)rage stirred in public debate regarding corruption in the democratic South Africa exposes latent utopianism. This concerns the assumption that the liberated state will deliver on the mirage of ‘a better life for all’. It rests on the modernist puritanical view of the state as enterprise that extracts tax, and subjects Persons/Citizens to its law, in exchange for delivery of peace in the realm- and public goods, like services and roads and water and sanitised crime free cities.
The utopian assumption that the South African State Apparatus will act in a disinterested way, in the interest of the public, evaporates like mist before the sun with every headline of high-life, and the bling bought by graft, nepotism, and incestuous patrimonial political fuzzy logic.
Corruption occurs like measles in Ministerial VIP lounges, and in boardrooms where tender bid evaluation committees cook scores to lean a deal in favour of a pre preferred bidder. Under the previous majoritarian ANC government, and unlike the in-your-face-ness of the ‘Whites Only’ sign in the times of Apartheid, the ‘connected comrades only’ mindset of the ruling classes in South Africa is an ever-present ‘invisible sign’, a force of segmentarity that keeps seats of power occupied by people politically qualified, but dismally under, and unprepared for the job of administering a state function to the benefit of the polity- and not the Person and/or his/her political pals’ pockets & Blingstagram feed. Will GNU deployed multi-party minsters be any different?
Will GNU appointments roll back the corruption, state capture, and political patronage fuzzy logic of the ANC? Only if the South African public, and the newly minted GNU-ers, shed their starry eyed ideas of the South African state. Replacing a full cabinet bench of ANC-ers with GNU-ers, may be a step in the right direction. But, the departments and state entities allocated to whichever party to the GNU will have to contend with the permanent state, which is the bureaucratic state, that is still occupied, controlled, staffed and stuffed with ANC deployees, deplorable sloths, corrupt and fraudulent paper pushers.
For state capture and corruption to have reached the epic proportions it has require enabling networks, syndicates, and criminal cabals that comprise of bureaucrats and officials, executives, board members, and politicians. Will the GNU of this new era have a reliable criminal justice system to root out the rot? Or, will the GNU-ers be so preoccupied with keeping the cobbled together construct in political play, that blind eyes will be turned on the ongoing fraudulent shenanigans of the permanent bureaucratic state? Once again, we shall wait and see.
For the GNU to achieve its lofty historical ideals, it will have to launch a Stalinist purge of the rotten apples of the state capture, and ANC corruption era, before any move on the front of progress for the nation is to be made. So, once again, good luck GNU.
Expose after expose of corruption clearly show that it is most definitely not the case that the State Apparatus in South Africa is a neutral conveyer that delivers public goods, in a disinterested way, in the public interest. The latter is not only not the case, but, evidently a better life is destined only for the ‘connected’ few. Will a GNU undo the intricate syndicates, the networks of political profiteering and plunderous influence that have infested the state apparatus during three decades of ANC governance decay?
The crash of the national airline – South African Airways, the derailed train systems supplied to the public by a fundamentally broken PRASA, and the blackouts brought to you by the energy behemoth, ESKOM, provide ample evidence of the extent to which well intended institutional, regulatory, governance and legal arrangements have been rendered utterly meaningless. Ministers, Boards, and Executives have been found in their own unique ways acting like syndicates, or individual micro State Capturers.
IV – Politicians, board members, legislators perpetrating highway robbery tactics in fancy suits
In the previous six ANC dominated administrations empty words, counter-corruption policies, and “governance codes” abounded. It is well justified if some might want to exclaim: To hell with the lofty and oft-praised King Code of Corporate Governance. Add to the ESKOM, PRASA, and SAA sagas that of Steinhoff and KPMG, and it becomes clear that it is better to label it as: King Code of Corporate Cover-ups. All of the above clearly show that in a democratic South African State Apparatus, like in its evil Apartheid predecessor, the rot starts at the top. Will the new parties appointed to the ‘top’ of the state/government pyramid be able to stem the tide of decay? Who knows, or will it be new talking heads at the top fomenting new forms of rot infecting the body of the state, and its administration?
Board members are appointed with much aplomb to guide and provide ‘oversight’ over the machinations of their appointing entity. Yet, those very Porsche Cayenne’d and be-Gucci’d members are often the clandestine sharp end of the corruption stick. A stick used to pry the public purse open, to puncture the pipelines in which public moneys flow to syphon it to destinations other than the intended ‘public goods’ it was supposed to buy.
Those lofty and self-important serial boardists, appointed to ‘govern and monitor,’ to ‘protect and maintain,’ the interests of a public or private entity, are more often than not, in South Africa’s corruption soapie, those who are first found wanting- and guilty of gang-land style highway robbery tactics perpetrated in fancy suits. The rot sets in from the head, and from there it is a quick few steps down to find organs in the institution’s body to infect and ‘corrupt’.
V – Slay the modernist utopian assumptions about the state in South Africa
If the modernist utopian assumption of the State Apparatus as a benign set of structures and systems, ready to be leveraged in the ‘public interest,’ is not flayed and slain on the doorstep of the National Assembly in Cape Town, the South African polity may yet be the revolution that will not only eat its own children, but will further enable the plague of locusts to chomp any new growth coming from this parched drought prone land.
If the ‘democratic’ State Apparatus in South Africa is to survive, it, as well as its populace, will have to shed their gullible starry eyed utopian faith in the neutrality, and modernist purity of the state as conveyer- and purveyor of the public interest. The State Apparatus is, in and of itself, the original battlefield of the societal nexus. Imagine Viking hordes swinging axes and hacking flesh plundering a way through pre-modern Europe.
In a democracy the theory is that the public votes a party into office, who then, proceeds to implement its policies and programs of action through the structures and institutions of the State Apparatus. In a way the regular cycle of elections, and theoretical changes of government, is an institutionalised form of ongoing capture of the State Apparatus. The administration and the body of inert institutions of the state thus precede any party or president at the helm of government. A president and ruling party’s goal within the first one hundred days is to lay claim to- and impose ‘control’ over the State Apparatus.
Benign as it may be, and explained as part of the normal political process, the ‘agenda’ of the ruling person or party, can only be executed if the organs and all the machines of the state are re-coded, controlled, and captured in order to implement the incoming Ruluiners’ plans of political/policy action.
Whether for corrupt, or ethical governance purposes, the fact is that the State Apparatus is only useful when it can be captured. But, while the party or president may effect change to the State Apparatus, they are mere tinkerers re-wiring some of the engines embedded in the bigger state machine. State capture is therefore not a singular incident as in the case of the Zupta assemblage, but, is something Persons, as citizens, have to be awake to at all times in the life-cycle of a democracy, and at all conceivable levels of the ‘System’.
At this stage, all we can say is that history will tell whether this GNU is a government of unity, or national undoing. One thing that is for sure is that if it cannot slay the dragon of corrupt utopianism, it will most likely end up as government of national undoing.