Youth, age and skill in South African politics

As the government continues to commemorate Youth Month older people are carrying out their usual pre-election tradition of wondering aloud why younger people are not politically active and don’t vote. At the same time our country is about to go through an important generation transition as several long-time leaders are clearly near the end of their active careers.

In a country where the average age of our people is under 30, it is astonishing how many of our national leaders are old enough to be nearly the grandparent of a 29-year-old.

President Cyril Ramaphosa is 73, the person who has been the dominant personality over the DA for the past decade (and is its current Joburg mayoral candidate), Helen Zille, is 75. MK leader Jacob Zuma is 84 while IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa is more than 20 years younger at 61.

Among our current leaders only DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis is under 40 (and then only until December).

Even Julius Malema, the leader of a party that concentrates primarily on younger people, is a not-so-young lion at 45.

There are important reasons for this.

Probably the most important is that the ANC, which dominated our politics for so long, allowed people to remain in Cabinet and in national leadership positions long past an age that would be acceptable to most private companies.

People like Thabo Mbeki and Zuma wanted people of their generation, people they had known for a long time, around them.

And for many of those people, they presumed that their position in Cabinet would be the last job they would have. Such is the nature of our society that they might have had children and other family members dependent on that salary, and to give it up or to retire might have had consequences for many people depending on them.

The consequence of this was that ANC leaders in provinces realised they could not break through to national politics. So, they stayed in the provinces longer than they might have liked.

That then cascaded, and people in local politics could not move up to provincial politics.

As a result it became easier to build a fiefdom in a small area rather than follow a more ambitious course in national politics.

Dynamics that developed in certain councils became entrenched, as people would not leave their positions. Thus, situations like the developments around Ditsobotla in North West, involving rivalries between particular groups in the ANC, became entrenched and impossible to shift.

The result is a group of politicians who appear to make politics unattractive to younger people. Certainly, they appear to demonstrate that politics in South Africa is a game for insiders, often at the expense of those outside it.

They may also make our politics quite tough for younger people who come into it.

When the DA selected Liam Jacobs to be an MP much was made of the fact he was only 23 (he must have been one of the first MPs to be born in this millennium).

However, after he gained attention for his political eloquence, he was somehow convinced by Gayton McKenzie to leave the DA and join the Patriotic Alliance. How McKenzie did this is not publicly known, but it appeared to happen very quickly, literally overnight.

Jacobs has now, he says, turned his back on the PA and must have had to ask if he could rejoin the DA.

While they have accepted him back he is unlikely to ever be fully trusted, both by DA leaders and by DA members. Even if he were to challenge for a leadership position in 20 years it is likely that this episode, in which he was presumably taken advantage of by an older politician, will be used against him.

There is a long history of this in our politics, particularly in the ANC.

The ANC Youth League has long been used by senior (if not more mature) politicians for their own ends. Zuma used the league and its leader at the time, Fikile Mbalula, to ensure he won at Polokwane in 2007.

When Malema became leader of the league he publicly opposed the ANC’s leadership and was expelled for his trouble.

While he did then form the EFF, the message to younger people considering joining the ANC must have been clear: toe the line or else.

There may be other reasons younger people find it hard to penetrate the upper levels of our politics.

There is an old saying that applies to those who have endured the tussle of the contact point of a rugby scrum: “Youth and kill are no match for age and treachery.”

Politics is very often about the treachery, the deals, the strategy, the manoeuvring. All of these are skills that generally develop with age. As people go through life so they get better at managing people, getting what they want from them.

They also, sometimes, get wiser. This means they are better able to deal with the problems that politics can throw up. And as their knowledge of the country gets wider and deeper, and as they know more people, so they are better at the jobs of politics and governance.

This gives them an advantage over younger people who might try to contest against them.

It may be impossible to assess this, but there might also be a social bias towards older leaders.

It has often been remarked that in political systems where candidates contest directly against each other, a female candidate may lose simply because of her gender. The claim is that someone like Kamala Harris lost some votes because Donald Trump was a man.

The same may apply to age – voters may not explicitly say this, but they may inherently trust older people.

At the same time, because treachery matters in politics, those at the top of a system, who become available for election, tend to be of a particular age in the first place.

While this may make some younger people despair that our politics will ever change, it should be remembered that being younger does not necessarily make you a better leader.

Rishi Sunak was the youngest British prime minister yet (apart from Pitt the Younger – and no, I’m not making that up). No one will remember his accomplishments.

Neither does history remember David Cameron fondly, after he foolishly promised a Brexit referendum, with consequences he failed to appreciate.

Of course, the one leader from a younger generation many people will remember is Barack Obama. Certainly, for large numbers of people who felt structurally excluded from US politics, his election was a sea change (and it was not just in the US, it did appear to inspire people around the world).

However, perhaps because of events and dynamics beyond his control, and perhaps because of a lack of wisdom on his part (on a deliberately critical reading of his presidency, looking back now it seems likely there was always going to be a huge reaction to his breaking down of the ultimate barrier) his terms in office also led to the election of Trump.

Looking at our politics it is clear that the current generation, and our current politics, cannot endure forever.

While Deputy President Paul Mashatile is a different generation to Ramaphosa (he is 64), he does not explicitly espouse a different type of politics. Certainly, there has been no deliberate appeal to younger people.

At some point something will have to change. And that change is likely to involve a younger person who is able to properly articulate the hopes and dreams of potential voters.

And, it is entirely possible that they will emerge from a type of politics we have not yet seen.

This is because the vast majority of potential voters will be under the age of 40, and thus will speak a completely different political language to our current politicians.

But by the time that happens, when their chance comes to lead Youth Month commemorations, they are unlikely to still be classified as “youth”. DM