Roots of our political warfare

Commentator Xolela Mangcu asked last week what Mandela would think of the current political warfare. The answer can be guessed. But there’s a more profound question to consider: How would he, and we, analyse the way democratic debate has deteriorated into devastating factionalism?

One answer lies in Mbeki’s penchant for a centralist style of power. He brooks little criticism, and surrounds himself with like-minded rather than independent thinkers. The signal this sends out is: “Don’t challenge, don’t critique.”

The president’s personal irony is that he himself takes a dissident view when it comes to HIV/Aids and Zimbabwe. But then he ensures that these particular positions become the orthodoxy within the ANC, even while being at odds with mainstream sentiment at large.

Many would trace this conformism within the liberation movement to its exiled history. Partly due to the example of the Eastern European backers of the movement, and partly due to the pressures of operating underground, “democratic centralism” came to characterise the ANC’s style in the 1970s.

In conditions of struggle back then, it wasn’t easy to substitute a command-and-deploy ethos with the luxury of debate and critique. The 1980s inherited this pattern and portrayed the ANC’s pronouncements as gospel.

It was assumed that because the movement had survived repression to lead the fight against something as evil as apartheid, its leadership’s decisions were unquestionably right (and if even they weren’t, the motivations were).

With the rank-and-file resisters enduring censorship and clampdowns inside the country, and with daily challenges of living in the military camps outside, it was only to be expected that a wise ANC leadership would and should set down “the line”.

Buoyed by transition, the first half of the 1990s overshadowed this history with a flowering of political debate. But Mbeki’s record, as opposed to his rhetoric, supplanted this with attempts to stamp central authority on the body politic. For instance, the RDP was replaced by Gear without public deliberation.

The old history that informs Mbeki’s approach may be understandable, but it also very clearly something linked to an expired era.

Most significantly, his centralist political style has also — over time — given rise to resistance. It became a simple recipe for contestation outside of the realm of debate.

The logic of “the line” becomes one where if it’s not the Mbeki “truth” that is supremely triumphant, then JZ is waiting in the wings with his. You end up with intolerance as to which side can claim to be correct.

And with the centre coming to view opponents as actual enemies, it followed that politics increasingly became “gloves off”.

The contemporary result is political manoeuvre rather than political debate. What decides things is naked power, and hidden power, and who wields these instruments.

In contrast, South Africa needs a lifting of the lid, and allowing decisions to emerge out of unfettered public debate.

It may be too late for the president to change tack now. But let’s hope that any successor will recognise that South African democracy is inevitably corroded by a centralist political style.