ONGAMA MTIMKA | Effective leadership needed to make 2024 our 1994, not election results

Pundits and politicians share an interesting catchphrase for this election year: “2024 is our 1994” !

The potential of the election to usher in a new political system, the multifaceted socio economic crisis the country faces, and the dire need for a new deal, all present striking similarities with the period before the dawn of democracy in SA.

While this conceptualisation is largely accurate, SA needs leaders who would not only have enough courage to chart the course for our future but also a great degree of humility in leading through ambiguity.

Although many are eager to see election results that will accord the country a chance to reset the order, the results per se are only a part of the volatile and ambiguous process.

The times we find ourselves in are characterised by “volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity”, the VUCA phenomenon coined by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus in the 1980s.

My addition to the ongoing national discourse is to emphasizse the role of effective and situational leadership to truly deliver a reset.

The phrase “2024 is our 1994” is said to have emerged within the circles of Rise Mzansi, the new political kid on the block in our political landscape. This catchphrase has now become popular across the political spectrum. It has been used by members of the Economic Freedom Fighters, including their leader Julius Malema, as well as a handful of other opposition parties.

In many ways, 2024 resembles 1994. It follows a period in which we have technically experienced what feels like an economic stagnation made worse by an apparently intractable problem of insecurity of energy. Our economy has exhibited sluggish to negative growth, ranging from slightly below zero percent to just above 1% since the global economic crisis.

The challenge of limited growth in a country characterised by significant inequality, like ours, is that the reality for many South Africans is worse than what GDP figures paint.

In terms of employment, we remain in the same or worse situation that we found ourselves in then, with a  25,2% average unemployment rate since 1995-2022. Structural unemployment became a big phenomenon in the 1970s in SA, partly because of legislation that had precluded black people from acquiring the skills that the economy, which was rapidly industrialising, needed.

Despite 30 years of investing in education, our educational outcomes still keep us in the same situation 30 years into democracy. Many individuals in the highly educated 12% of the population have gone to secure employment but not according to desired levels as many languish with their degrees jobless. Even though the post-matric education rates increased to 12.2% in 2022 from 11.8% in the 2011 census.

With respect to inequality, data shows that black, KhoiSan, mixed-race, and Malay people continue to be the worst affected by poverty and exclusion, lagging far behind their white and Asian counterparts. This disparity extends to both wealth and income inequality.

Lastly, the socio political and economic system simply does not work for all. There are high rates of crime, along with murder rates widely regarded as mirroring war zones.

Politically, in the last 15 years under a dominant party there have been attempts to collapse some of the institutions the country prided itself on. Chief among these is the disbanding of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, the Scorpions. It was not the only one though, metropolitan municipalities, which initially developed their competencies to varying degrees of success during the early years of democracy, experienced purges and restructuring. This trend was also observed in provincial and national government departments. Local municipalities were always lagging even from the onset and became worse under a political culture burnt on repurposing the state for private gains.

This multifaceted political crisis in the state did not start with the advent of coalition governments but rather with an internally divided governing ANC. The state was a casualty of the attempts to eliminate the two centres of power phenomenon abhorred within the governing party. Attempts were made to bridge the divide between party and state, emboldened by an enabling resolution from the 52nd National Conference of the ANC in Polokwane. The change to coalition governments since 2016 did not bring about stability.

This brings me to the point I add in this discourse about 2024 being our 1994. We have already seen as a country that political change per se does not deliver different performance dynamics in big metros. That is simply because leadership in these times meets the VUCA features mentioned above.

Beyond election results, we will need leaders who are deeply committed to the greater cause of creating not only a stable political society but also one of shared growth and inclusion.

Achieving this necessitates both courage and humility. Courage is essential for leaders to pursue the vision of a thriving society, while humility to recognise that power is no longer vested in a controllable structure that creates an overbearing leader. It calls for leaders equipped with the skills and humaneness to negotiate complex and conflicting political and economic dynamics to bring others along to deliver better results than the last 30 years.

The current times dictate the kind of behavioural complexity that allows leaders to be both bold and assertive but also humane and humble enough to bring others along, partly in the fashion of Nelson Mandela.

• Dr Mtimka is a lecturer and political analyst at the department of history and political studies in the faculty of arts at Nelson Mandela University and executive chairman at the South African Political Risk Institute. He writes in his personal capacity