The editor of TimesLIVE sneers at ‘a party living off its reputation for removing waste’, but his identity politics only promises more misery.
Like many South Africans, Makhudu Sefara, the deputy editor of the Sunday Times and editor of TimesLIVE, is disillusioned with the African National Congress (ANC).
In his column on Sunday (paywalled), he says the ANC ‘messed up’, calls Jacob Zuma a ‘wrecking ball’, and doubts Cyril Ramaphosa, with scandal hanging over him, is the right leader to take South Africa forward.
Yet for Sefara, the worst conceivable election outcome would be if the Democratic Alliance (DA) wins. That, he writes, would be ‘peeing on the shallow graves’ of the people who died in pursuit of freedom.
He believes the DA is ‘right-wing’ and ‘led mainly by a group of white males with palpable disdain for transformation’.
I disagree. While I cannot dispute that its leadership is not demographically representative of the country, it is centrist, liberal, non-racial, and the most multi-racial party in the South African political pantheon. Rejecting the DA on the basis of race is, well, racist.
‘I think that, as much as the ANC may have fluffed a 30-year opportunity to restore the dignity of our people,’ Sefara writes, ‘the DA has failed in those three decades to be relevant to the biggest voting bloc in the country.’
Quite right. The DA has failed to attract enough new voters to significantly grow its share of the vote. But a major reason for this failure is people who think like Sefara.
Let me explain.
Removing waste
Sefara derides the DA as ‘a party living off its reputation for removing waste’.
‘We should not mortgage our votes and our being on the basis of someone having a reputation for removing waste in a timely manner or making sure potholes are filled and traffic lights work.’
So, clean and effective government – which is about more than traffic lights, potholes, and waste removal, but certainly starts with basic service delivery – is not sufficient to earn Sefara’s vote. So, what is?
‘While services are important, our votes often express who we are and what we yearn for, rather than what we get.’
I’ll let him elaborate: ‘And who are we? We are descendants of victims of colonial subjugation and deliberate racist exclusion. It is not by mistake that our places of abode are outside the country’s active economic areas, forcing us to spend much of our earnings on transport and food. We remain the most discriminated against and the most disadvantaged, even though we are the majority in our land. We are born of Peter Nchabeleng, Onkgopotse Tiro, Steve Biko, Sabelo Phama, Chris Hani, Oliver Tambo, Solomon Mahlangu, Victoria Mxenge, Walter Sisulu and Robert Sobukwe. We are not the ones whose votes you buy by simply collecting refuse timeously. You need to do much more.’
As eloquent as this appeal to identity is, it remains an appeal to identity.
Identity politics
The reason South Africans keep getting shafted by the people they elect is because they vote not on the basis of performance in government, or on the basis of the principles of good governance to which a party aspires, but on the basis of their identity.
They vote for people who look and speak like them and come from the same places. They vote on the basis of ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and tribal nationalism. They vote on the basis of skin colour. They vote on the basis of divisive, us-versus-them rhetoric like that paragraph of purple prose from Sefara.
And they do all that in the belief that people who are like them are more likely to have their best interests at heart, even if the ANC comprehensively disproves this, time after time.
Superficial identity is a very poor reason for choosing who should form a future South African government.
Sefara clearly is not satisfied with what his black nationalist votes in the past have achieved, and yet he preaches more black nationalism. If you vote for more of the same, then expect outcomes that are more of the same.
He extends the circle of parties for whom people that share his identity may vote only as far as ‘Songezo Zibi’s Rise Mzansi’, ‘Julius Malema’s EFF’, and ‘Mmusi Maimane’s Build One South Africa’.
He doesn’t even acknowledge that these parties are ideologically about as far apart as parties can be: the EFF being on the fascist hard left, Rise Mzansi floating aimlessly left of centre, and Build One South Africa’s liberal principles being quite close to those of the DA. (What Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA has done to merit being omitted from Sefara’s list of sufficiently black parties is anyone’s guess. Maybe he was too successful during apartheid.)
Populism
Sefara’s divisive style of identity politics is the very basis of populism, of both the left-wing and right-wing variety. Populism makes a distinction between the people, who are portrayed as morally justified, and a corrupt, self-serving elite that would like nothing more than to exploit the people and trample on their rights.
It is based on simplistic and crude stereotypes, rather than on sophisticated political analysis. It’s the same old Marxist class struggle but draped in a cloak of racial nationalism.
For Sefara, accolades won during the liberation struggle weigh heavier than an honest assessment of the likely future performance of candidates for government. For Sefara, how people live matters less than being true to their identity and their history.
While Sefara spits on the DA’s ‘reputation for removing waste’, it is exactly that – and efficient payment of social grants, paved streets, functioning healthcare services and schools, working streetlights, clean drinking water, hassle-free permitting and licensing, effective policing, prudent financial management, filled potholes, and above all, vigorous economic growth – which citizens ought to expect from a would-be government.
‘Sick joke’
The ANC has demonstrated, over and over again, that it is unable to deliver on these essential needs for a decent, dignified life.
The DA, by contrast, has a fairly decent track record with good governance. Its record is far from unblemished, but it is streaks ahead of the ANC, and indeed any other South African party with any kind of record to speak of.
Sefara writes: ‘Sadly and unforgivably, this democracy they [South Africans who died fighting for freedom] risked their lives for has become a sick joke.’
That is true, and yet his only response is to persist with voting on the basis of identity and race loyalty.
I would have thought those who died for our freedom would want to see a South Africa in which all its citizens could, if not all living in luxury, at least have reason to be optimistic about their prospects for a better life.
Economic growth
Every political and economic objective – from poverty reduction to jobs growth, from education to healthcare, from redress for past injustice to economic inclusivity, from reconstructing failing infrastructure to addressing environmental concerns, and from keeping a lid on corruption to improving race relations – depends upon rapid economic growth.
Redistribution, in the long run, makes nobody richer and makes everyone poorer. For everyone, even the poor, to get richer, an economy must be free to create wealth.
Therefore, the most important measure by which to assess the election manifestos of South Africa’s political parties, is on their ability to deliver a high rate of GDP growth.
I recently analysed the ANC and DA manifestos, with a singular focus upon growth, and the result was as you might expect. (See Growth prospects of the African National Congress manifesto and Growth prospects of the Democratic Alliance manifesto, or watch a 50-minute presentation here.)
ANC vs DA
The ANC’s manifesto is one of continuity. It promises to fix things that were broken by ANC policy, or neglect, or corruption, in the first place. It promises to double down on the pursuit of the National Democratic Revolution. It prioritises transformation over economic growth. Its well-intended promises are undermined by the failure of the ANC to fulfil nearly identical promises in the past.
South African does not need continuity. A 2022 opinion survey by the Brenthurst Foundation found that 80.1% of respondents felt that the country was heading in the wrong direction. A poll conducted by the IRR in 2023 revealed that 71.7% of respondents said their lives had not improved over the previous five years.
The per-capita GDP of South Africans, which closely tracked the global average between 1994 and 2008, has stagnated. Unlike global GDP per capita, which weathered every economic storm, South Africa’s GDP per capita hasn’t risen at all since 2009, indicating that the economy isn’t even keeping up with population growth.
If the ANC retains its grip on power, which seems likely at least in coalition at a national level, South Africans should brace for further economic decline.
The DA’s manifesto is far from perfect, and doesn’t prioritise economic growth in and of itself, as it should, but it promises a rescue plan, which the country desperately needs.
It is brimming with growth-friendly proposals that will – if implemented – achieve significant improvements in the economic performance of any governments, provincial or national, run by the DA or in which the DA is able to play an influential role.
Identity vs growth
Some of the smaller parties also have good ideas, but their ability to deliver on these ideas as small fry is virtually nil.
In tomorrow’s election, don’t vote for people who look like you, or speak like you, or come from the same place as you. Unlike free, growing economies, identity politics, racial nationalism, and populism have never delivered prosperity for the masses.
Instead, vote for a party that can make a material difference in the living standards of South Africans. Vote for a party that can deliver rapid economic growth. Vote for a party that can deliver a ‘new dawn’. Vote for a party that, in Sefara’s sneering words, has a ‘reputation for removing waste’.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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Image: GCIS, South Africans cast their votes in Laudium, Pretoria, during the National and Provincial Elections of 2019
A correction was made to reflect that Sefara is the editor of TimesLIVE, not of the Sunday Times.