GUSHA XOLANI NGANTWENI | National dialogue must rewire our politics and governance

SA needs a multiparty, multisector national convention to negotiate our second transition. Other voices supporting the idea include former statistician general Ntate Pali Lehohla. He counsels us to postpone the upcoming elections rather than “elect and regret”.

Seemingly political elites do not understand the rationale for a convention; otherwise, we would have held it by now. They show no sufficient vigilance against the wrong direction that we are taking as a nation. In my party, the ANC, the leadership has long been in denial about its overall failures. They would rather retain the diminished power that the party may have after the next elections than admit to internal deficiencies that negatively impact its governance at an inclusive convention.

Such an admission will strengthen the party. A venue-based national dialogue must rewire both our politics and governance outcomes. It must highlight the failures and limitations of our political and governance systems. The Multiparty Charter for SA is the closest we have come to such a convention. But its approach is fundamentally flawed.  Member parties of the charter are united by excluding the ANC and the EFF from power.

How do you achieve that, when those two parties together garnered over 65% of voter support in 2019 and about 55% in 2021? Around the 2009 to 2021 elections, the ANC committed governance failures that would have unequivocally lost it power in other democracies. The Codesa resolutions that ushered our transition, and the mixed ANC governance record are due for a thorough review.

We now know that our regular elections are insufficient as a tool for rotating governments. At the sixth five-year cycle, 13 opposition parties per the 2019 national election results told us that the will of the voters was not for an opposition-led dispensation. However, the ANC’s track record, of caring and fighting for the marginalised, make it the best party to lead all our governments, with the parties that already constitute the elected opposition at each level, innovatively embedded inside it and its governments.

If we fail to hold a convention before our imminent elections, our society will further suffer horribly. Among others, we will play into the hands of the ANC’s bad elements and those parties that are salivating to share power with it should it lose its majority, but whose partnership with the ANC will worsen governance and further alienate critical constituencies, harming our collective progress. A national convention agenda will have burning national issues.

The following five are critical to have a look at: If we do not unite across the political spectrum, we will remain victims of political disintegration. The latter traps us with governing parties everywhere that have terrible blind spots and that have no sufficient leadership depths. Our Western electoral model as is, is overrated for a young post-colonial African nation. The model needs an African touch, political communalism.

The plethora of parties is a trick for their leaders to have salaried seats, not always to improve governance. The convention must encourage many state-salaried political leaders and salaried employees of political parties to exit active politics and for the state, the private sector, and civil society to employ them in roles that they qualify for.

So that the unity project goes ahead without their hindrance. All our governments need faces of change that will positively impact our many crises and problems, is labour-driven, inclusive, decentralised, rapid and sustained economic growth. To achieve that, business confidence must be high. Crime suffocates local economies, communities, and families.

The state lacks adequate resources to fund more crime prevention and the criminal justice system. The system needs wider community service, including at least 250,000 police reservists. Education is the famed great equaliser. There are major interventions needed, from early childhood development up to doctorates. Our people need more training that equips them to work for themselves or as competent employees.

We need a massive roll-out of short learning interventions that reach larger numbers of young people. We must intellectualise indigenous African languages, with some schools, colleges, and universities designated as African-language medium-only institutions. We are a majority indigenous African nation. Colonisation and apartheid systematically attacked our very civilisation. 

That assault continues, now presided over by us Africans. We will never erase Western influence in our society, but we must decolonise and re-Africanise as far as possible. There is enormous scope to do so. Everyone in SA must learn to a level of fluency, one African language from the nine listed as official languages.

A national convention must resolve these issues, inspire our collective energies, and set a tone for shared prosperity and reconciliation in our next 30 years. To give political parties, the state, the business sector and civil society the space to prepare and dialogue, our elections should only be in August at the earliest. 

• Ngantweni is a member of the ANC uMzimvubu Branch/Ward 27 Nyandeni, OR Tambo, Eastern Cape He writes in his private capacity