The democratic state formation or transformation of project South Africa is dwindling. We lack a state; this is evident in our civil service which continues to fail in just tackling day-to-day socio-economic challenges. It also evident in the lack of a philosophical state identity that would influence our policy directions. We have a youth community that is heavily marginalized in economic participation and an incumbent government that has investigated itself in the involvement of crime and corruption more than once in a decade. We have a pandemic of gender-based violence targeting women and the brutality is unbearably inhumane. Therefore, we lack a state, and this is a concern.
The democratic state transformation process can be easily summed up as a process of transformation were a state transforms from a non-democratic state system to a democratic state system. This process usually materializes through democratization of political power, forming of independent institutions that do the checks and balances in the system, or a constitution guaranteeing civil liberties and competitive elections. As project South Africa, we have easily satisfied this common definition of the democratic state transformation process since 1994. However, we have not done the same with regards to forming a civil service that serves the people regardless of the incumbent. Rather, we often blur the line between the state and the party in power. The African National Congress (ANC) cadre deployment policy is a classic example of such.
The Rainbow Nation verses The New Dawn
Following our experience with apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu gave our state a philosophical identity of the Rainbow Nation. This identity of the state became the pride of our newly formed democratic state carrying high hopes of justice, equality, and other antidotes of the social ills created by the apartheid regime. In this moment, we had a state with a strong uniting philosophical identity which by the way we never took to public policy as a framework and never attempted to adopt it as a guiding policy implementing mechanism.
Therefore, the cracks started to show. The undealt with racial-economic fragmentation increasingly grew stronger and the rainbow ceased to exist. In May this year we witnessed the presidential entourage to Washington which had to face a “white farm murder” narrative and this at least created the impression that our state is far from a rainbow nation at this stage. Also in June this year, Freedom Front Plus (VF Plus) Dr Boshoff claimed that “farm murders and statements about the extermination of whites indicate that genocide has already begun in South Africa”. To infer his argument, he quotes the Genocide Watch institution claim that white farmers in South Africa are in stage six of the ten indicators of genocide. This race case alone amongst others is reference to how deep the cracks in the Rainbow Nation have developed overtime.
Another race case which is worthy of attention is the recent contention around the Broad Black Based Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) statute. In our high hopes of the Rainbow Nation, I believe the call for affirmative action in the economy was unavoidable. BBBEE therefore was though off as an administrative affirmative mechanism that aimed at transforming the racially segregated economy of South Africa. What we witnessed thereafter is a formation of a petite black bourgeoisie class and no meaningful transformation of the racially segregated economy 31 years into the democratic state project. Matters worsened upon the realization that the newly formed petite black bourgeoisie is the incumbent government of the people. Prof. William Gumede’s research on black economic empowerment statute concludes that it has only benefitted a politically connected few which only increased the social ills of inequality and poverty in the democratic project state transformation. The argument I’m interested in is that of revealing how deep the Rainbow Nation cracks have grown to collapse the philosophical identity of the democratic South African state transformation project, not the relevance of BBBEE per se.
The incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa coined his own identity of the state when he took overpower from his predecessor President Jacob Zuma. To deal with the corruption of “state capture”, President Ramaphosa termed his state as the “New Dawn”. This was his state’s philosophical identity which wasn’t separated from the “renewal” vision of his party the ANC. From 2019 till now, it is clear that the new dawn too has collapsed both as a philosophical state identity and a policy directive in the 6th administration of the republic. This means we have had two philosophical state identities in 31 years which have both collapsed with no meaningful contribution to the democratic state transformation project and this is why we lack a state.
The Pragmatic State at Present
The 7th administration is even more lacking in a state identity and directive. Formed under the reminisce of 1994 “Government of National Unity (GNU)”, it has been rather a classic case study of coalition politics 101 than a government that is in unity. This year’s budget saga alone tells the story of where the main focus of the present government is, it’s not unity evidently, rather it is power and its inherent benefits. The 25-point statement of intent which binds GNU members is not a state policy directive. In fact, it is an idealistic government identity devoid of the real challenges the country faces. One element to point out is the lack of a foreign policy directive which came under scrutiny when the entire world had to deal with the Trump tariff protectionism, a gift to the African continent. The two biggest faces of the GNU not only spoke differently when addressing the question of these tariffs but also pragmatically employed different channels to deal with tariff matter. The United States therefore saw two different governments it had to recognize to find a trade deal.
We lack a state, and this is a concern. The student-youth community has to understand that it has a twofold duty if they aspire a functioning civil service state with an identity. Firstly, the student youth-community must fully submerge itself in state matters so to find an identity consensus that would guide the future brewing state. Second, it has to curate a civil service society amongst itself which will be involved in the operationalization of the state on a day-to-day basis. In a word, this piece is an abstract opinion thought on how hollow the South African democratic state project has turned out. The conclusive contentious argument here is that we lack a state, both in philosophical and political abstract terms.
-MediaHouse150
