Every election, at any level, has the potential to become a point of rupture or continuity. Pundits, observers, insiders and outsiders, as well as statisticians, join faith healers and boardwalk fortune tellers with their projections and attempt to tell readers, listeners or viewers what to expect from elections.

Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong. All these efforts, however noble the intent, are lost like tears in the rain. The fact is that most of the time, elections are a crapshoot. The publicum, especially those who do not run on the inside tracks of politics, can do no better than hold their breath and hope for the best. We would imagine, nevertheless, that each time is different.

With the ANC’s 54th elective conference in December, this time may well be different. The outcome of the December conference, where Cyril Ramaphosa will be challenged for leadership of the ANC, will provide a foretaste of the next general election scheduled for 2024. That is a relatively easy claim to make if you ignore everything else that is going on in South African politics.

What is impossible to predict (not that I am given to predictions; if I were, I would be a wealthy person) is what the outcome would be. The best we can do is speculate.

Nevertheless, given the hurricane that is South African politics – and we probably always say this – the December conference will mark a turning point. 

Every election since 2007, whether it was the general elections of 2009, 2014 and 2019, or the ANC’s 2012 elective conferences at Polokwane or Nasrec, has been marked by the tension between rupture and continuity. We have learnt as much from the evidence of the decade after the ANC’s 52nd elective conference in Polokwane in 2007.

A brief reminder is useful.

In Polokwane, Thabo Mbeki was defeated by Jacob Zuma, a victory which marked a distinct turning point – a rupture to be sure – that led to almost a decade of decay, hastened State Capture, systemic corruption and a hollowing out of the state.

Zuma’s re-election to the presidency in 2014 represented continuity and more of the same followed. This lasted until February 2018. When Cyril Ramaphosa took over the country’s presidency, likely emboldened by his victory at Nasrec, there was enough interest, public opinion and effort – like the creation of the Zondo Commission and the appointment of Shamila Batohi to head the National Prosecuting Authority – to ensure that there was a decisive break with the Zuma era and a move towards greater accountability, transparency, coherence, stability and continuity in state and society.

None of this takes into account the birth, rise and populist disruptions of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and the birth, rise and populist disruptions of what we now refer to as the Radical Economic Transformation (RET) faction.

The RET faction is under the putative leadership of former president Jacob Zuma (and some of his children) and the ANC’s former secretary-general, Ace Magashule. It also has the irrepressible Carl Niehaus running around like a revolutionary without a cause.

They are joined, in a sense, by Julius Malema, a short man in search of a balcony, a growing band of xenophobes and convicted criminals (Andile Lungisa, Tony Yengeni) making out like bandits, but nobody knows how.

What binds these fellas together is opposition to Ramaphosa and the “constitutionalists” (constitutionalists are said to be counter-revolutionary) and they demand access to and control of two main institutions that were not “captured” during the Zuma presidency – the South African Reserve Bank and National Treasury. 

In Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, this loose affiliation may have found a challenger to Ramaphosa at December’s elective conference.

Visit Daily Maverick’s home page for more news, analysis and investigations

The choices seem clear

If Dlamini Zuma and Ramaphosa are the main contenders in the ANC’s leadership race, then the choice between rupture and continuity is fairly clear. 

Jacob Zuma has urged his followers to throw their weight behind his former wife, with Magashule in the mix. Should Dlamini Zuma beat Ramaphosa – carried as she may well be by the RET faction – we may see a sudden halt, if not a rolling back, of some of the anti-corruption initiatives that are in place.

Enter the EFF.

The only thing that stands in the way of a political merger between the RET faction and the EFF is the difficulty of seeing Julius Malema taking instructions or orders from anyone. This, notwithstanding, and with Ramaphosa out of the way, Malema will have strong allies among the RET faction and the influence they surely would have on Dlamini Zuma. 

Should all of this come to pass, the country would be set back ideologically, which I will discuss very briefly below.

Should Ramaphosa prevail, he will be emboldened to continue battling corruption (and his own demons), but (and I have it on good authority) constitutional amendments are not out of the question. These amendments to the Constitution may be necessary, especially on land and possibly on reducing the powers of the president (which were originally written with Nelson Mandela in mind) and on proportional representation, but they could also be political. Ramaphosa may offer them as an olive branch to his detractors.

If Ramaphosa prevails, it will, surely, only increase the noise, performativity, fractiousness and the vituperation so characteristic of the EFF. It remains difficult to see RET supporters crossing the floor and joining the EFF, but we cannot rule out the possibility. 

Either way, between rupture and continuity, we will see change after December – and more so after the general election of 2024.

The urge to go back to the drawing board

The greatest danger – at least the way I see it – is that the EFF-RET Axis takes over the control panels of state and society, and resets the country to South Africa’s own Year Zero. This is a difficult one. Think of where countries like, say, Ghana, started ideologically and in terms of political economic policies after independence.

Ghana’s immediate postcolonial period was that country’s Year Zero. The comparison with South Korea has often been used. So, let us consider that, at Ghana’s Year Zero – say in 1957 – that country had the same annual per capita gross domestic product as South Korea. Three decades later, South Korea’s (annual) per capita purchasing power was about 10 times that of Ghana.

The problem, as orthodox and reliable analyses explain, is that Ghana’s economic retrogression was sparked by polices that let loose hyperinflation, overregulation, production disincentives and a deterioration of human services. It has taken Ghana about 30 years to change course and focus on macroeconomic stability and administrative reforms – more or less where South Africa has been since the Mbeki presidency.

This decline notwithstanding, in the imaginaries of the EFF-RET Axis, the first 30 years of Ghanaian independence was “necessary” to rid the country of lingering international or colonial interference or influence. That is to where the Axis would like to take South Africa back – never mind that the country has a sophisticated political economy, aspects of which are functionally integrated to global networks of exchange.

The Axis wants to change that purely on the basis that, as things stand, “white monopoly capital” or “non-Africans” have too large a say (and stake) in public policymaking and in business.

And so, the Axis would want to start over, as it were, because the political compromise and settlement at Codesa, the 1994 election, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission enabled continuity; most of the people and privileges that prevailed before 1994 continue to flourish almost 30 years later. 

There is truth in the latter, but the choice is between a wilful, destructive rapine and revenge, and gradualist change and shoring up the superstructure that comprises an independent judiciary, central bank and media in a fairly liberal republican polity.

The choice, then, seems clear. On the surface, it is a choice between rupture and continuity. Either way, there will be changes. This time may really, actually, be different. DM