This is the first of four parts of a report based on a study towards the end of the year of South Africa during the COVID-19 crisis.
The emphasis is on the pandemic’s implications for democracy and governance. The dislocation caused by the pandemic and the unprecedented government action in response stood to inflict enormous damage on an already fragile society and its compromised institutions.
The study attempts to place the pandemic and its consequences within the broad flow of South African politics, and to sketch some thoughts as to how it will influence the future.
The remaining parts of the report will be published over the next three days.
Part 1: State of Disaster: what the COVID 19 pandemic means for South Africa’s democracy
Introduction
In early May 2020, African Business magazine published an article entitled ‘Coronavirus changes everything for Africa’.[1] As a summary of the sentiments that dominated analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic at this time, it cannot be faulted. This was the case worldwide, and was not limited to the well-discussed questions how the pandemic was forcing modes of work, education and leisure to change. Representing a grave health threat, the pandemic prompted responses in numerous countries that imposed intrusive controls on people’s lives, and severely abridging the everyday freedoms that people had taken for granted in going about their lives.
Concerns began to be voiced that among those things changed forever would be assumptions about personal freedom, autonomy and human rights. That a tightly controlled society such as the People’ Republic of China might impose such far-reaching restrictions was not unexpected. That such measures were being applied to democracies was jarring. Invoking the influential 19th century French diplomat and writer Alexis de Tocqueville’s thoughts on freedom and governance, the Canadian commentator Mark Steyn remarked:[2]
His majesty was an absolute tyrant, in theory. But in practice, he was in his palace hundreds of miles away, and a pantalooned emissary might come prancing into your door yard once every half decade and give you a hard time, but for the most part, you got on with your life relatively undisturbed. In Tocqueville’s words, ‘although the entire government of the empire was concentrated in the hands of the emperor alone, and although he remained in time of need the arbiter of all things, the details of social life and of individual existence ordinarily escaped his control.’ Just so. You were the mean and worthless subject of a cruel and mercurial despot, but even if he wanted to, he lacked the means to micro-regulate your life in every aspect. What would happen, Tocqueville wondered, if administrative capability were to evolve, to make it possible, ‘to subject all of his subjects to the details of a uniform set of regulations.’ That moment arrived in March and it’s not going away and it has less and less to do with public health. It is a uniform set of regulations, but it does not fall uniformly.
In South Africa, the first cases of COVID-19 infection were detected in early March. Two weeks later, on 15 March, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a State of Disaster in the country. A week after that, on 23 March, he announced that that the country would enter a ‘lockdown’, with severe limits on what activities would be permissible. This went into effect at midnight of the 26th of that month. To assist in enforcement, the military was deployed to police the population.
While the lockdown was widely endorsed as a necessary measure to combat the pandemic, as time passed, questions came to be asked about it. What did it mean for the country’s democracy and its much-admired constitutional order? What did it mean for the country’s prized civil liberties and the human rights that were audibly proclaimed as the foundation of the post-apartheid governance order? What did it imply for the country’s future as a free society?
At the time of writing, South Africa remains under lockdown, with some activity remaining regulated. It is unclear when this will cease. It is also unclear what that post-lockdown order will look like. There has been much talk of the ‘new normal’; this may be a disturbing prospect.
South Africa’s promise
To understand the significance of what the country has undergone, it is important to understand the normative foundations of South Africa’s post-apartheid order.
Why does this study frame itself in reference to South Africa’s democracy? In simple terms, this is descriptive of South Africa’s political system, but also speaks to its national brand. South Africa’s transition to democracy in the early 1990s was not only about enfranchising the majority of the population. Rather, it involved a change in the manner in which power was organised and exercised. Democracy, narrowly defined, is primarily concerned with how a people can participate in its governance, primarily through elections and choosing its leaders.[3] The term ‘democracy’, in South Africa, is widely interpreted not only as a descriptor of a political system, but also as a signifier of a set of values. For the present purposes, these are defined as a trifecta of constitutionalism, freedom, and human rights.
While the previous dispensation had been founded on parliamentary sovereignty, post-apartheid South Africa would be governed according to a constitution. This created a solid set of standards against which state conduct (and also private individuals and institutions[4]) would be measured. The constitution further set out a suite of values and aspirations that would inform governance and societal organisation. These are to be found throughout the document and have been analysed at great length. For the present purposes, a look at the preamble of the constitution suffices. This states that the constitution was adopted with four broad purposes in mind:[5]
- To heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights;
- To lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;
- To improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and
- To build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.
The preamble invokes a raft of ideas. Some of these are standard and instantly recognisable within the liberal tradition, endeavouring to protect the individual and guarantee his or her political rights and civil liberties – hence the references to democracy, the rule of law, constitutionalism, freedom and human rights. It also promises openness, something that is critical for accountable governance. In this, the outline of the trifecta is easily discernible.
But the constitution was written to demand more. This is evident above all in the third objective, ‘[improving] the quality of life and the fee potential of each person’. The constitution would have a political and developmental role, to ensure that people enjoyed socio-economic upliftment not as happy by-product of growth or as a consequence of successful policy, but as a justiciable right.
Such as idea had a lineage in the thinking of the African National Congress, notably in the proposals floated by the party in its 1991 discussion document, Constitutional Structures and Principles of a Constitution for a Democratic South Africa,[6] and an influential book published in 1991 entitled Protecting Human Rights in a New South Africa by the jurist (later Constitutional Court judge) Albie Sachs.[7] Human rights in a post-apartheid South Africa would need to guarantee civil liberties and political rights (first generation rights), socio-economic rights such as education, healthcare, nutrition and so on (second generation rights) and the right to a clean and sustainable environment (third generation rights). Governance, it pledged, would be geared towards achieving these ends, being rights-based and accountable.
South Africa’s constitutional dispensation has received much admiration: in 1998, an American academic, Karl Klare described it as ‘transformative constitutionalism’, a phrase that has been proudly invoked since then. [8] He wrote:
By transformative constitutionalism, I mean a long-term project of constitutional enactment, interpretation, and enforcement committed (not in isolation, of course, but in a historical context of conducive political developments) to transforming a country’s political and social institutions and power relationships in a democratic, participatory, and egalitarian direction. Transformative constitutionalism connotes an enterprise of inducing large-scale social change through nonviolent political processes grounded in law. I have in mind a transformation vast enough to be inadequately captured by the phrase ‘reform,’ but something short of or different from ‘revolution’ in any traditional sense of the word. In the background is an idea of a highly egalitarian, caring, multicultural community, governed through participatory, democratic processes in both the polity and large portions of what we now call the ‘private sphere’.
This too implied an extensive role for the state, and this in turn matched the statist impulses within the ANC’s worldview. Sachs had noted this intention in his book – which said that South Africa would subscribe to a ‘mixed economy in which the state will play an important role’, and that ‘affirmative action’[9] would be a central feature of governance.[10] This was reiterated again and again by leading figures within the ANC.
Dullah Omar, for example, who served as justice minister under President Mandela, put it baldly. ‘We have been looking critically at the role of government and have come to the firm conclusion that government must within the framework of the constitution intervene to create real equality.’[11] His cabinet colleague responsible for sport and recreation, Steve Tshwete, declared ‘there is going to be interference by government in every sphere of life.’[12]
In policy terms, state pressure – sometimes exerted through legislation and sometimes informally – was brought to bear on various institutions to ‘transform’ in accordance with the ANC’s wishes. The party formally committed itself to the idea of a ‘developmental state’ in 2007, although it had been attracted to this since the early 1990s.[13] This would – in theory – be an empowering environment. Former president Thabo Mbeki said in 2000 that governance under the post-apartheid regime ‘is targeted at helping us to meet the provision laid down in our Constitution of ‘improv(ing) the quality of life of all citizens and free(ing) the potential of each person.” Accordingly, ours must be a truly developmental state.’[14]
Reality bites…
If the constitutional promise of post-apartheid South Africa put forward a vision of a rights-based society, growing prosperity, rising living standards and servant leadership, the lived experience was mixed. It is certainly true that great strides were made in ‘service delivery’ (housing, water and so on), even if there were shortcomings, and it often went unheralded.[15] The social grants programme had a significant ameliorating impact on poverty.[16]
However, the limitations of constitutional promises became rapidly apparent. In 1997, the Constitutional Court refused to direct the government to provide life-saving medical treatment to a KwaZulu-Natal man, Thiagraj Soobramoney. The court held (as part of its judgement) that since addressing socio-economic rights is qualified by ‘available resources’ to do so, the state was not obliged to provide the treatment he needed.[17]
While it is true that other court judgements have affirmed and extended socio-economic rights – the provision of medication to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV stands out[18] – the Soobramoney judgement threw the practical limits of the constitution’s promise into sharp relief. Bluntly put, improving material conditions takes resources, and these could not be obtained by court order.
This case was emblematic of a broader conundrum. The ‘transformation’ of society – not least here the upliftment of people’s living standards – required success on many fronts. To draw people sustainably out of poverty, employment would be needed on a large scale. This in turn would depend on economic growth, investment, entrepreneurship and an appropriate and business-friendly regulatory system. Small businesses, viewed as a potential driver of growth since the 1980s, would need to be encouraged. Effective and efficient government services in respect of infrastructure maintenance, utilities and regulation would be essential.
Similarly, South Africa needed to ensure the physical security of its people and their property. A dreadfully violent society, crime and the insecurity it bred were had the potential to gnaw away at the South Africa’s constitutional order. Anxieties were expressed early on in the democratic era that the government might be willing to ignore rights considerations to provide the country’s people with the security they craved.[19]
In other words, resources were imperative, but would also not be enough. Sensible policies would have to be implemented and a capable bureaucracy to administer them would have to be developed. This was all the more important in view of the ANC’s statist inclinations and aspirations. Moreover, if it was sincere about nurturing accountable and participatory governance, the ANC in government would need to govern honestly, openly and in the interests of the population.
The trend here has been less than encouraging. Perhaps the seminal process to note has been the deliberate politicisation of the state since the late 1990s; the ANC’s policy of ‘cadre deployment’. In terms of this, party activists would be ‘deployed’ to the ‘levers of power’ in society. These included such institutions as the police, the public broadcaster and the judiciary. [20] This was in blatant defiance of the constitution, which demanded that these institutions be impartial. Prominent ANC activist Carl Niehaus said of this that there was ‘an expectation that the party line and leadership should be followed blindly, and that the judicial and democratic institutions of the state should merely be instruments to carry out ANC policy’.[21]
It should be noted here that this was motivated not just by a pragmatic drive for power, or for the possibilities for patronage that such an arrangement would create (though both were doubtless useful considerations). Beneath this lay a thick sediment of ideology, codified in the so-called National Democratic Revolution. This would see the party (as coterminous with ‘the people’) take over and exercise ‘hegemony’ over the country and its institutions.[22] Psychologically and philosophically, this in turn drew on the ANC’s history as a liberation movement, considering itself no mere political party, but the expression of an authentic national Geist, which conferred on it an historical entitlement to rule.[23]
This did great damage to the state. Author Brian Pottinger remarked on the phenomenon in a book dealing with the years of the Mbeki Presidency:[24]
Hardly had the edifice been crafted than it began to crack, as it inevitably would. The reasons were simple. The ANC did not have the skills base to control its own party efficiently, let alone the nation. Secondly, the deployment of inexperienced party figures into public-service offices led to a diminution of the offices themselves…
But the most serious effects of deployment were to be found when the one party in the (de facto) one-party state fractured in the run-up to the 2007 leadership elections. As the bureaucracy turned to counting who was pro-Mbeki and who was pro-Zuma, the already weakened professionalism of the public service took another nosedive. As directors-general hedged their bets by avoiding action on divisive policy issues, the very function of the public service became imperilled.
Race-based policy accompanied the political capture of the state. If vague assurances and a commitment to ‘non-racism’ were interpreted as a basis for a society in which race would play a declining role (and would not be a moral signifier), by the late 1990s, it was clear that this was no longer the case. Policy increasingly came to demand explicitly racial considerations, even if the country no longer had an official system of race categorisation. ‘Non-racism’ came to be presented as a species of race consciousness, and as a counterpoint to ‘colour-blindness’.[25] Excising racism was a constantly-reiterated goal, and South African history and society gave many real or presumed platforms for this. Literally dozens of pieces of legislation today expressly demand recognition for an open-ended timespan of racial criteria in their execution.[26]
This racialised perspective on society is not confined to the government, but has become popular among many in South Africa’s academic and media elite.[27] Indeed, it may reign even stronger among them. Intellectual fashions from abroad – Critical Race Theory in particular – have encouraged this. The critique of ‘non-racism’ among particular activists has gone beyond the redefinition of the concept in government. Non-racism has increasingly come to be regarded as inadequate in dealing with racism (which is itself held to be omnipresent), if not implicated in it.[28] Where the idea of a ‘non-racial’ society might once have been endorsed as a goal, this is now widely rejected among thought-leaders in favour of asserting racial and other ascriptive identities. Even the idea of human rights – something rooted in the recognition of the primacy of the moral worth of each individual – has found itself compromised: a senior official at the South African Human Rights Commission declared that racist transgressions from black and white people were dealt with differently by the body, ‘because of the historical context’.[29]
These phenomena coalesced with particular intensity during the tenure of Jacob Zuma as president. His presidency had the misfortune of coinciding with the fallout from the global financial crisis, but it was a combination of bad and unsettled policy, mismanagement and corruption that more or less ensured South Africa would not see a return to the 5%-plus growth that characterised the high-point of President Mbeki’s era. In 2011, South Africa recorded 3.3% GDP growth, but in no year following has it been able to breach 3%. This was the case even as the National Development Plan, adopted by President Zuma’s government, envisaged 5.4% as a level that would start to make inroads into unemployment.
Meanwhile, the scale of malfeasance became a cause of severe public concern – even though corruption had long been a major public issue, and President Zuma had entered office under a cloud of serious allegations (his way to office had been cleared by a very doubtful decision of the prosecuting authorities not to prosecute). The ANC’s claims to being the party of the poor and disenfranchised took a severe tarnishing when the personal residence of the president was upgraded at a cost of close to a quarter of a billion rand[30] along with bizarre justifications for doing so.[31] The Zuma presidency became synonymous with the suborning or ‘hollowing out’ of state institutions – so-called ‘state capture’ (this concept was inherent in the cadre deployment regime, but the connection seemed to elude most commentators).[32] South Africa was not only failing, but was being consciously engineered not to succeed.
In the realm of security, the initial focus on community policing and linking the battle against crime to social upliftment rapidly fell out of favour. Around the turn of the Millennium, probably in response to public frustration with ongoing insecurity, a more aggressive approach was back in vogue. Calls for police officers to use deadly force against criminals became strident (in 2008, the deputy minister of safety and security caused a stir when she said that they must ‘kill the bastards’,[33] while an incumbent police minister employed even more colourful language in 2017 that police should ‘crush balls’, and if necessary ‘break the law progressively’[34]) and a process of remilitarisation of police culture got underway. Yet the impact on crime control was questionable – in the view of one analyst, critical areas such as detective skills were neglected[35] – and mistrust of the police service remained widespread, not least because of the high incidence of corruption.[36] In both a substantive and symbolic sense, this reached a low point in August 2012, when police shot and killed some 34 striking mineworkers at Marikana near Rustenburg.[37] The incident and its antecedent events raised a number of issues concerning policing in South Africa: the failure to negotiate a way out of the tense situation, hubris and indifference on the part of senior officers, the resort to lethal force, and the preparedness to deal with labour protests. Despite a commission of enquiry into the massacre, and recommendations that the conduct of police officials be investigated with possible prosecutions following, this has not happened.[38]
All of this signified a failure to live up to the country’s constitutional promise. This was matched by active questioning of the constitutional order. The most visible expression of this was arguably the Fallist movement at the country’s universities, which drew on frustration with the perceived alienating cultural environment of campuses, along with dissatisfaction at fees (this is a very truncated account); it was extended into a critique of the entire dispensation, the ‘failed transition’, and so on. As a Facebook post by the Rhodes Must Fall group at the University of Cape Town put it, the movement called ‘into question the neo-colonial situation and the rainbow nation mythology that is suffocating our country.’[39]
If the Fallist movement represented a rejection of sorts of the legitimacy of South Africa’s constitutional order, another sort of rejection arose from within government itself. This took the form of blaming governance and policy failings on the constitution, with the implication that – stripped of constitutional restraints – more effective governance and redistributionist programmes would emerge. There had earlier been some speculation that the ANC might formally amend the constitution to remove protections against the use and abuse of power,[40] but this accelerated under Zuma. A seminal statement of this came from Ngoako Ramatlhodi, then a cabinet minister, who wrote that South Africa had been saddled with ‘a Constitution that reflects the great compromise, a compromise tilted heavily in favour of forces against change.’[41] In 2012, President Zuma remarked in an apparent reference to legal systems that Africans should not follow the ‘white man’s way.’[42]
This has not been a mere matter of rhetoric. Two streams of legislation seem to point in this direction too. One of these is the so-called ‘Bantustan Bills’, the Traditional and Khoi-San Leadership Bill and the Traditional Courts Bill. They would subject large numbers of rural South Africans to the authority of traditional structures, which observers fear would create an extra-constitutional space in South African administration – depriving them of equal citizenship, property rights and the very protection of the constitution.[43]
The second is the drive towards Expropriation without Compensation (EWC). This has at its root the ambivalence that some within the ANC and aligned movements felt towards the protection of property in the final constitution (Section 25). The ANC settled for a clause that accepted the principle of private property, but allowed relatively wide latitude for the state to intervene on matters such as land reform. Other interest groups, such as the erstwhile National Land Committee – a body pushing for agrarian reform – were more strident, demanding the exclusion of property rights from the constitution altogether. To include them would be to entrench the ‘racially discriminatory results of colonial conquest and apartheid land laws and policies’.[44] Variants of this line of thinking have cropped up from time to time, sometimes from within the ANC and its coalition partners. Section 25 has been described by a senior economist associated with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) as a ‘sunset clause’, implying a temporary arrangement that was always going to be repealed, and which – in its existing form – would make appropriate redress impossible.[45]
Between 2007 and 2020, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has identified more than 30 attempts – policy, regulations and legislation, actual and proposed – by the ANC and government to abridge private property rights. This ANC’s efforts culminated in the current campaign to amend Section 25 of the constitution. This would be the first amendment of the country’s Bill of Rights.
It is noteworthy that both the Bantustan Bills and the EWC drive took place under the leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was hailed as a ‘reformist’ successor to Zuma, and in whom great hopes to arrest the country’s decline were invested. Yet these processes illustrate that much continuity exists between the ideological and policy orientation of the government under Mr Zuma and Mr Ramaphosa. Indeed, it has been argued that the dogged commitment to EWC helped destroy South Africa’s prospects of benefiting from the positive sentiment attached to Mr Ramaphosa’s accession to office.[46]
In 2018, South Africa managed a paltry 0.8% GDP growth and in 2019, an even more distressing 0.2%. At the beginning of 2020, unemployment stood at over 30%. In the period between April 2019 and March 2020, 21 325 people were murdered in South Africa, amounting to around 58 a day.[47] The country’s frayed institutions remained a point of existential concern.[48] Counterproductive policy proposals were being seriously considered – indeed, there were indications that the ANC would seek not only to push through the amendment to Section 25, but would do so in a manner that removed much of the protection afforded by the courts to those facing expropriation.[49]
And so, when March 2020 saw the COVID pandemic reach South Africa, it was a country under stress in multiple ways. These stresses denoted a society whose promises were failing. This in turn was raising questions about the country’s prospects as a free, constitutionally governed society, and consolidation of ‘a culture of respect for and protection of basic human rights.’[50]
The author would like to thank his colleagues at both the Institute of Race Relations and Centre for Risk Analysis for sharing their invaluable insights with him. The Institute would also like to extend its heartfelt thanks to the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty, without whose generous support this project would not have been possible. The Institute would like to add that the views expressed here are those of the author, and not necessarily of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.
In tomorrow’s instalment, we interrogate South Africa’s response to the pandemic.
[Picture: Discott, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88923567]
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[1] Thomas, D, ‘Coronavirus changes everything for Africa’, African Business, 7 May 2020. https://africanbusinessmagazine.com/sectors/health-sectors/covid-19/coronavirus-changes-everything-for-africa/.
[2] ‘Nuking the realm of manners’, The Mark Steyn Show podcast, 10 September 2020. https://www.steynonline.com/10620/nuking-the-realm-of-manners.
[3] Readers are reminded of the work of Fareed Zakaria. He argued in the 1990s that the growth of democracy in the sense of opening up electoral competition was expanding rapidly, but this was not accompanied by the basket of values and governance principles that had become associated with politics in the established democracies – the rule of law, civil liberties, and so on, which he collectively described as ‘constitutional liberalism’. Zakaria, F, The Future of Freedom : Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, New York: WW Norton & Co, 2004.
[4] The South Africa constitution binds not only the state but also natural and juristic persons in upholding rights (Section 8). See Chirwa, DM, ‘The horizontal application of constitutional rights in a comparative perspective’, Law Democracy and Development, Vol 10, Issue 2, 2006, p. 21-48.
[5] Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, Preamble.
[6] African National Congress, Constitutional Structures and Principles of a Constitution for a Democratic South Africa, 1991. https://dullahomarinstitute.org.za/about-us/our-historical-publications/anc-discussion-document-on-structures-and-principles-of-a-constitution-for-democrcatic-sa.pdf.
[7] Sachs, A, Protecting Human Rights in a New South Africa, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1991.
[8] Klare, K, ‘Legal Culture and Transformative Constitutionalism’, South African Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 14, 1998, p. 150.
[9] The sense in which he used it suggests wide-ranging remedial action, rather than narrow ‘employment equity’.
[10] Sachs, op. cit., p. 19-20.
[11] Quoted by by Ms Brigitte Mabandla, Minister for Justice and Constitutional Development, at the Southern African Developed Community (SADC) Lawyers’ Association annual conference and general meeting, Benoni, 24 November 2006. https://www.gov.za/b-mabandla-southern-african-developed-community-lawyers-association-annual-conference.
[12] Quoted in Jimlongo, M, ‘Failure to transform sport shameful’, Daily Dispatch, 19 April 2011.
[13] Gumede, V, ‘South Africa’s Journey towards a Democratic Developmental State’, Africanus: Journal of Development Studies, Vol 49, No 2, 2019.
[14] Mbeki, T, Speech on the Occasion of the Consideration of the Budget Vote of the Presidency, National Assembly, Cape Town, 13 June 2000.
[15] Institute of Race Relations, ‘Zuma correct on service delivery successes – Institute’, Media release, 11 September 2012. https://irr.org.za/media/media-releases/Media%20release.%20Zuma%20correct%20on%20delivery%20success%20-%2011%20September%202012.pdf/view.
[16] Rossouw, J, ‘Social grants matter: they support 33% of South Africans’, University of the Witwatersrand, 20 February 2017. https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/in-their-own-words/2017/2017-02/social-grants-matter-they-support-33-of-south-africans.html#:~:text=Grant%20payments%20redistribute%20income%20to,provision%20and%20free%20water%20allocation..
[17] Soobramoney v Minister of Health (Kwazulu-Natal) (CCT32/97) [1997] ZACC 17; 1998 (1) SA 765 (CC); 1997 (12) BCLR 1696 (27 November 1997)
[18] Minister of Health and Others v Treatment Action Campaign and Others (No 2) (CCT8/02) [2002] ZACC 15; 2002 (5) SA 721; 2002 (10) BCLR 1033 (5 July 2002).
[19] Sarkin, J, ‘The Development of a Human Rights Culture in South Africa’, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol 20, No 3, 1998, pp. 628-665.
[20] African National Congress, The State, Property Relations and Social Transformation: A Discussion Paper towards the Alliance Summit, 1997.
[21] Quoted in Gumede, W, ‘Building a Democratic Political Culture’ in Gumede, W, and Dikeni, L, (eds), South African Democracy and the Retreat of Intellectuals, Johannesburg: Jacana, 2009, p.29.
[22] The NDR has been extensively discussed. A redacted source document can be found here: SACP, The National Democratic Revolution, 1963. https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/the-national-democratic-revolution. For critiques, see Jeffery, A, ‘What the media don’t want you to know’, Biznews, 16 November 2016. https://www.news24.com/fin24/biznews/anthea-jeffery-what-the-media-dont-want-you-to-know-20161116. Myburgh, J, ‘How I came to understand the ANC’, Politicsweb, 16 September 2020. https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/how-i-came-to-understand-the-anc.
[23] For a discussion of this see Southall, R, Liberation Movements in Power: Party and State in Southern Africa, Pietermartizburg: James Currey, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2013.
[24] Pottinger B, The Mbeki Legacy, Cape Town: Zebra, 2008, pp. 38-39.
[25] For an analysis first published in 1998, sketching the growth of race-based policy in the early years of the country’s democracy, see Pereira, P, ‘Returning to race politics’, Daily Friend, 28 February 2020. https://dailyfriend.co.za/2020/02/28/returning-to-race-politics/. At around the same time, the opposition Democratic Party released a document which mapped out such measures. While it received a mixed reception (with many commentators dismissing it on political and ideological grounds), it is difficult to dispute the factual material it presented. Democratic Party, Death of the Rainbow Nation: Unmasking the ANC’s Programme of Re-Racialisation, February 1998. https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/death-of-the-rainbow-nation.
[26] Malan, K, ‘Observations on representivity, democracy and homogenisation’, Journal of South African Law / Tydskrif vir die Suid-Afrikaanse Reg, Voll 2010, Issue 3, Jan 2010, p. 427 – 449.
[27] For a fairy typical example, see De Vos, P, ‘“Race” and the Constitution: a South African perspective’, Verfassungsblog, 26 June 2020. https://verfassungsblog.de/race-and-the-constitution-a-south-african-perspective/.
[28] Kendi, IX, How to Be an Antiracist., New York: One World, 2019.
[29] Hlatshaneni, S, ‘My ‘combi-court’ rant wasn’t racist, Mazibuko tells SAHRC’, The Citizen, 14 April 2019. https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/general/2119286/my-combi-court-rant-wasnt-racist-mazibuko-tells-sahrc/.
[30] Makatile, D, ‘High cost of Nkandla exceeds R246m’, IOL, 7 February 2016. https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/high-cost-of-nkandla-exceeds-r246m-1981002.
[31] Pilane, P, ‘Six bizarre explanations for the Nkandla “fire pool”’, Mail and Guardian, 31 March 2016. https://mg.co.za/article/2016-03-31-six-bizarre-explanations-for-the-nkandla-fire-pool/.
[32] Alence, R, and Pitcher, A, ‘Resisting State Capture in South Africa’, Journal of Democracy, Vol 30, Issue 4, October 2019, pp. 5-19. https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/resisting-state-capture-in-south-africa/.
[33] ‘Shoot to kill, South African minister tells police’, Reuters, 10 April 2008. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-safrica-crime/shoot-to-kill-south-african-minister-tells-police-idUSL1037339420080410.
[34] Mabena, S, ‘“Crush criminals’ balls and make them drink urine‚” Mbalula tells cops’, Timeslive, 29 September 2017. https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017-09-29-crush-criminals-balls-and-make-them-drink-urine-mbalula-tells-cops/.
[35] Altbeker, A, A Country at War with Itself: South Africa’s Crisis of Crime, Johannesburg and Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 2007.
[36] Motala, S, ‘The terrible consequences of police corruption in South Africa’, Voices for Transparency, 11 July 2019. https://voices.transparency.org/the-terrible-consequences-of-police-corruption-in-south-africa-294e6fd8922.
[37] For an account of this, see Marinovich, G, Murder at a Small Koppie, Cape Town: Penguin, 2016.
[38] Sidimba, L, ‘Concern over lack of Marikana prosecutions eight years later’, IOL, 16 August 2020. https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/news/concern-over-lack-of-marikana-prosecutions-eight-years-later-b53117c4-85ef-46d8-8d2f-82519af18e97#:~:text=Johannesburg%20%2D%20The%20slow%20progress%20of,on%20the%20Covid%2D19%20pandemic.&text=%E2%80%9CTime%20and%20again%2C%20organisations%20such,be%20seen%20to%20be%20done..
[39] https://www.facebook.com/RhodesMustFall/posts/the-rhodes-must-fall-statement-read-out-at-todays-mass-meeting-and-before-the-re/1565923540349805/.
[40] As Secretary General of the ANC, Kgalema Mothlathe declared that a two-thirds majority (the majority required to amend the constitution) would enable it to rule ‘unfettered by constraints’. Paton, C, and Schmidt. M, ‘Two-thirds Majority: ANC wants “Unfettered Power”‘, Sunday Times, 3 May 1998.
[41] Ramathlodi, N, 1 September 2011. ‘ANC’s fatal concessions’, The Times, 1 September 2011. http://school.r2k.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Ramathlodi-2011.pdf.
[42] ‘Zuma: solve problems the African way’, News24, 2 November 2012. https://www.news24.com/News24/Zuma-Solve-problems-the-African-way-20121102.
[43] Claasens, A, ‘“Bantustan bills” trample on the rights of rural people’, Daily Maverick, 4 November 2019; https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-11-04-bantustan-bills-trample-on-the-rights-of-rural-people/#gsc.tab=0. See also https://stopthebantustanbills.org/.
[44] Spitz R and Chaskalson M, The Politics of Transition: A Hidden History of South Africa’s Negotiated Settlement, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2000, p. 319.
[45] ‘“Sunset” clauses have lapsed’, IOL, 7 August 2012, https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/sunset-clauses-have-lapsed-1358390.
[46] Grootes, S, ‘How land expropriation could work in SA without destroying the economy’, Financial Mail, 31 January 2019. https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/features/cover-story/2019-01-31-how-land-expropriation-could-work-in-sa-without-destroying-the-economy/.
[47] ‘South Africa crime stats 2020: everything you need to know’, BusinessTech, 31 July 2020. https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/421424/south-africa-crime-stats-2020-everything-you-need-to-know/#:~:text=Murders%20in%20South%20Africa%20remain,35.8%20people%20per%20100%2C000%20population.
[48] ‘A decade of “state capture” has damaged South Africa’s institutions’, The Economist, 25 April 2019. https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/04/25/a-decade-of-state-capture-has-damaged-south-africas-institutions.
[49] ‘Major change in plans for land expropriation in South Africa: report’, BusinessTech, 26 January 2020. https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/368178/major-change-in-plans-for-land-expropriation-in-south-africa-report/.
[50] Drawn from State v Makwanyane and Another (CCT3/94) [1995] ZACC 3; 1995 (6) BCLR 665; 1995 (3) SA 391; [1996] 2 CHRLD 164; 1995 (2) SACR 1 (6 June 1995).