Chronicle Editor
It is Professor Willie Esterhuyse in his book of 2012; Endgame: Secret Talks and the End of Apartheid, who made the telling observation that when political enemies finally decide to talk, history moves and changes its course. Indeed, political friends belonging to one political party meeting and talking, agreeing on everything, can never move history or change its course.
Only when blood political enemies spoke, representatives of the liberation movement led by the African National Congress (ANC) and spokespersons of the apartheid regime did history move in South Africa and the end of apartheid begin.
It is frank conversations between enemies that stand a good chance to change what Niccolo Machiavelli called “the order of things” in politics. The order of things is what present day political analysts, bloggers, scholars and journalists generically refer to as “the system.” Genuine political change is not when political principals change but when political principles and practices, “the system,” changes. When a political system changes a revolution would have taken place and in that way the future is born. In politics the true future, and the change to the order of things, is a child of enemies not a baby of friends.
Myth and fiction of the end of ANC
Sometime in 2014 Prince Mashele and Mzukisi Qobo wrote a much unfortunate book. The Fall of the ANC: What Next? the book, is a prophecy on the rise of many political alternatives in South Africa.
Since 1994 there is a growing current of thought that has achieved much purchase in parts of the population that with each breathe the ANC approaches its end. True or false? With the recent municipal elections that have seen the ANC drop by 50% in electoral support for the first time since its coming to power in 1994 the myth and fiction of the end of the ANC is strengthening in its persuasive force and more and more South Africans are imagining the Republic without Africa’s oldest liberation movement. One after another, political analysts, the true captains of lazy and easy thinking of our time, are coming up with projections of what the country will look like without the ANC.
A careful philosophical observation, especially that which respects liberation as the goal of all politics, however, shows that with its decline in electoral political support, the ANC is gaining and not losing in its political life and agenda. Just as the movement turned around to talk with the apartheid regime, a move that ushered in an imperfect but real new order of things in the country, it is moving on to engage with and share power with its enemies in shape of opposition political parties.
That all sorts of political formations are rising up, winning some seats, and governing with the ANC is a testimony of the movement’s democratic nature and liberation credentials. In 66 hung councils that arose after the recent municipal elections party coalitions have been negotiated and agreed upon. The ANC is true to its nature as a liberation movement opening the democratic landscape, accepting to win some elections and lose others, and sharing power.
This is the ANC living democracy. Not for the ANC is the dark example of the Nazis that wanted world dominion and to rule in perpetuity. The Nazis refused to bend to competition and opposition and ended up breaking with a holocaust in their hands, military and political defeat. Not to bend in politics is a good preparation for breaking in life, and dying.
Verily the electoral decline of the ANC in South Africa is not political and historical decline but a rebirth of the movement. With the arrival of coalition rule in South Africa the ANC might be weakening its grip on political power but they are tightening their hold on political authority as the authors of change and liberation.
Coalitions: No paradise in politics
The future of the world of politics, anywhere, is a future of political coalitions. Coalitions demand the ultimate political price which is the courage and strength to talk to and work with political enemies. It is not an arena for weaklings but that of warriors of the heart and mind.
Coalitions are naturally fragile and conflictual, and demanding. They are not for extremists and fundamentalists but they are the domain of political philosophers and activists that know and understand the glory of political compromise which is the ultimate victory in the politics of liberation; to win with others, and lose with them too.
Political coalitions are perfect Machiavellian arrangements.
Coalitions are not about winning power but they are about sharing power. The most sophisticated politicians are found in coalitions, practicing dispute resolution and using the highest emotional and political intelligence. Coalition agreements are not legal agreements but political agreements.
They require the finest political gamesmanship and survivalism. They are adversarial in that they involve blood enemies talking and climbing down from being enemies to being adversaries and opponents that can govern together. The rule of opposites in coalition might be the ultimate rule.
The trouble is that the voters on the ground may never like or understand coalitions until they are politically educated by their leaders that politics is not enmity but fraternity. More trouble is when politicians in coalitions spend more time balancing acts and navigating the enemies that have become partners than in the work of governing itself, and delivering to the masses.
Thinkers such as Mike Law and Richard Calland have written much and well to illuminate the contradictions and dilemmas in political coalitions. The dilemmas and contradictions are part of the health and not the death of politics. My submission is that the highest form of politics is coalition politics, which is the future of politics.
Coalition dilemmas and contradictions, the irritations, are the normal and not the abnormal of the political.
The Political: A South African Moment
When political enemies talk, history moves and changes its course. A new order of political things is brought to life. Theorists of the political, which is the politics of politics, agree that when enemies decide to become opponents and adversaries that can work together democracy itself is democratised, and liberation liberated. Coalitions, in my informed but humble view, are a decolonisation of political power and liberation of political authority.
Cetshwayo Zindazezwe Mabhena writes from Gezina, Pretoria, South Africa. Contacts: decoloniality2019@gmail.
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