For many South Africans, this year has sometimes looked and felt like we are living through Charles Dickens’s “the worst of times”. Load-shedding continues to hammer the economy. Transnet has stuffed up the country’s logistics, with cargo sitting at ports and on inland trains for weeks on end, unable to reach its destination. Parts of Joburg haven’t had water for nearly two weeks. The economy won’t grow by even 1% this year.
Worst of all, corruption-accused former president Jacob Zuma, the Grinch who sold South Africa to the Guptas, is back, playing victim as usual and threatening to reveal lies he has been threatening to reveal for years.
Yet the worst of times can be the best of times too. Much as I share many citizens’ concerns and fears about where we are today as a country, I cannot help but feel positive about the journey we are on. We are in transition and the events around the 2024 election campaigning bode well for South Africa.
There are many reasons for this, but the first and main one is that with the 2024 election our country is becoming a vibrant, multiparty democracy where power is gained and lost and exchanged by different political players. For 30 years we have taken it as read that the ANC will win elections. Those days are gone. Today the polls give us a very different reading of the future.
In the national elections of 2019, the ANC received 57.7% of the vote. In the local elections in 2021 it plummeted to 47% of the national vote. In November, the latest Ipsos poll put it at a miserable 39%. In October the Brenthurst Foundation/SABI Strategy Group poll put the ANC at 41%. The most optimistic picture for the ANC is presented by the Social Research Foundation survey, which said the ANC will likely get only 46% of votes cast in the 2024 national elections.
Power doesn’t always corrupt, but power that resides in one person or party for too long will absolutely corrupt that entity or person. Worse, power will corrupt any leader who does not face the possibility of losing that power.
Much as I share many citizens’ concerns and fears about where we are today as a country, I cannot help but feel positive about the journey we are on
With the kind of results that will surely come out of the 2024 election, South Africa will hopefully be ensuring that it dodges the bullet of becoming a state perpetually dominated by one party. Even if the ANC goes into a coalition at national level and in some provinces, those coalitions will represent only about 55% of the entire electorate, mitigating any radical policies. Radical policies would require the constitution to be changed. A constitutional change would require a 66% vote in both houses of parliament.
South Africa is becoming a truly multiparty, centrist country with contestation for power every five years. It’s becoming a democracy in reality, not just on paper. Even the Zumas of this world, thoroughly disgraced, are coming up with desperate attempts at political relevance through parties like his MK Party.
What excites me even more is the fact that we see the emergence of some refreshing new leaders in the political space. I have written about what a fantastic addition Chris Pappas, the DA’s candidate for premier in KwaZulu-Natal, is to the political landscape. I have been impressed with former corporate executive and journalist Songezo Zibi, whose new party, Rise Mzansi, is making steady inroads in the political space. Even more impressive is how Zibi breaks the mould of the “big man” in politics. In this mould, politicians are always telling us what they are going to do for us.
Pappas and Zibi’s impressive lineup of cerebral comrades are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other interesting new voices — and new ideas — animating our politics as we head towards the 2024 election. They are slowly emerging as alternatives to the fascists, populists, and corrupted, self-obsessed losers we’ve had to choose from over the past three decades.
It might not always seem like it, but we are in an exciting and potentially positive period of change for our country. The old is dying, the new is being born, and of course such a transition is full of bumps. That does not mean that this is the worst of times. It is a time of opportunity for those who can deal with and work through change. The future is ours to shape.
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