Both Lester and Moeletsi point to a South Africa inevitably engulfed by social revolution and both put the blame squarely on the ANC government; particularly its policies on globalization and liberalization of the economy. According to these two authors, it is a zero sum game – one in which the ruling group is portrayed as incapable of shaping the future in a sustainable way.
The Gloom and Doom Scenario
Lester Venter wrote as follows:
‘South Africa has now experienced a political revolution, and is confronting the early stages of a social revolution. The first prepared the way for the second’.
He highlights the widening ‘chasm between the privileged and the desperate’, the two worlds that make up South Africa—the first world and the second. He then goes on to say:
“The change has still to come. And come it will. Moreover, change will not come primarily through the actions and policies of government. It will come from underlying forces to which governmental action will usually be a confused response”.
Vester posits several questions – among them;
• When the magic of Nelson Mandela is no longer here, will the dream live on or will it become a nightmare?
• What will life look like in a new society?
• What is the future for politics, the economy, jobs, crime, education, health services and the environment?
Moeletsi’s article is very much an echo of arguments made more than a decade ago by Lester.
For instance; in Lester, the climax arrives 20 years after his publication, when ’the sons and daughters of the next generation are not going to accept their fate of unfulfilled expectations’. At that point, change would have taken place – ‘from a race based oligarchy to a non-racial democracy...However, the process of change would have turned out to be greater than the change itself…far less auspicious. In Moeletsi, the time frames are similar. ‘The year will be 2020, give or take a couple of years’.
Moeletsi opines;
“The year 2020 is when China estimates that its current minerals-intensive industrialization phase will be concluded. For SA, this will mean the African National Congress (ANC) government will have to cut back on social grants, which it uses to placate the black poor and to get their votes”.
According to Lester;
“…the ANC’s condition is more precarious today than it has ever been before. The great unifier – opposition to apartheid – is gone. The second great unifier – Mandela – is going” pg 94.
Moeletsi builds on this scenario;
“…the ANC inherited a flawed, complex society it barely understood; its tinkering with it is turning it into an explosive cocktail. The ANC leaders are like a group of children playing with a hand grenade. One day one of them will figure out how to pull out the pin and everyone will be killed".
Lester and Moeletsi: Seemingly oblivious of government efforts and likely social impacts
The social revolution predicted by Lester and Moeletsi came a long time ago; that is if the series of service delivery protests around the country since the country's first democratic elections on 22 April 1994 are anything to go by. That because apartheid divided South Africa into separate and unequal spaces and that this design remains imprinted throughout the country, protests were thus expected.
In April 2010 during the debate on the budget vote of the local government ministry, deputy minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Yunus Carrim said that the protests had "structural, systemic, political, economic, governance, psychological, emotional and other dimensions".
Carim added:
"Most of the protests are about service delivery issues. But they are not just about that. Many of the protests have been taking place in better performing wards and municipalities where there has, in fact, been significant service delivery. The protests are also about a range of other municipal issues, including maladministration, nepotism, fraud, corruption and the failure of councilors and administrators to listen to residents”.
The question that arises: ‘Unlike, in Tunisia, and most recently Egypt and Libya, what has kept the street protests in South Africa from boiling over’?
The answer may lie in the pre-emptive salient processes already underway in South Africa. Faced with protests, the country has not resorted to shutting the internet; nor the ordering snipers to fire ‘live bullets’ on protestors.
Aubrey Matshiqi is a senior research associate at the Centre for Policy Studies. He argues South Africa is facing a different challenge. He notes that an estimated that 60% of SA’s population is under 30 and concludes;
‘while this…comes with its own challenges when it comes to national planning, what it also means is that South Africa still has the opportunity to unlock her social and economic potential. If the country plans well and implements its plans successfully, the twenty-first century may become a South African and African century, as was predicted by former President Thabo Mbeki. If South Africa succeeds, the country might become the gateway to Africa, not by mere proclamation but through her contribution to the social, political and economic development of the continent’.
A range of salient efforts by government are noted in a number of areas, particularly in the area of increased participatory democracy and in governance issues. Reports of President Jacob Zuma and his ministers making un- announced visits to poor local communities are common and so has been the general transparency in governance. For instance, the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs launched on 12 August 2009 an “Operation clean audit 2014” campaign.
Efforts like these are partly responsible for South Africa’s move into the top spot out of 94 countries for its national budget process in terms of transparency and accountability, according to the International Open Budget 2011 report.
This was an important move up from second place in 2008.
The open budget survey uses internationally recognized criteria to give each country a transparency score on a 100-point scale called the open budget index.
SA is one of a few countries in the world that provide extensive information about the government’s budget, according to the International Open Budget report, released by the International Budget Partnership - an initiative designed to undertake budget analyses in order to improve governance and reduce poverty.
A people centered democracy?
The government’s priority since 1994 has been meeting the basic needs of the millions of South Africans living in poverty. This target has been a cornerstone of government’s redistribution and poverty-eradication effort. In line with the Millennium Development Goals, government’s target is to ensure that by 2014 all households have access to the minimum standard for each basic service.
A related 2014 goal is to halve unemployment and poverty. Through procurements of services and by using labor-intensive methods to maintain and build infrastructure, municipalities both broaden participation in the local economy and create work opportunities for the poor.
President Zuma already stated in his 2011 State of the Nation Address that government was considering alternative service delivery models and that positive political leadership and optimal communication, particularly at local government levels would be critical. Former President Thabo Mbeki also understood this point.
In spite of all these efforts by the current government administration, both Lester and Moeletsi are not dissuaded from their vision of a future SA characterized by gloomy and doom. While raising crucial socio economic indicators and government shortcomings, the two are seemingly blind to the salient features of enhanced good governance currently inherent in SA’s democracy experiment and how these features constantly structure political responses by the South African masses.
Indeed, the ANC led government has had its flaws that might come back to haunt future generations and development challenges are huge. However, in the same breath, the good that this government does now must be acknowledged and strengthened and these efforts are likely to diffuse potential revolts in the future.
Of-course, admittedly, social variables are not easy to fathom, and thus it is difficult to predict the future with precision. And yet it can be argued, the future is like clay. It can be molded. It does not have to end the way Lester and Moeletsi envisage it.
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