Time for nation building, not reconciliation

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It has become common for the political settlement that delivered the 1994 elections and ushered in democracy to be labelled a sham, a swindle. 

This claim is often made by young people who live with the constant fear of socio-economic exclusion, unemployment and poverty.

Even some of the well-to-do make the same claim. These are people who, despite their success in terms of income security or even business success, feel that it is still not enough because white people and white-owned institutions still control the lion’s share of South Africa’s economy.

The buzzwords of the first five years of democracy, “reconciliation” and “the rainbow nation”, depending on who is in the room or what the occasion is, can be read as an insult. 

Broadly, the argument is that Nelson Mandela and the ANC should have insisted on ensuring that the economic spoils of apartheid were shared with black people, and they weren’t.

Even the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu does not escape criticism for his efforts, including chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). He is often blamed for the commission’s amnesty recommendations, or the fact that those it recommended be prosecuted were never prosecuted.

I have almost endless sympathy for this resentment, even though I do not agree with those who oversimplify the circumstances of the time. It is objectively true that the face of exclusion and poverty remains black, the same as it was in 1979, for instance. 

This is despite many material improvements to many black people’s lives since 1994, which are now being reversed by the ANC’s corrupt and uncaring government.

Of course, hindsight gives all of us perfect vision, and colours the tint of the glasses with which we view the past. As a result, there seems to be an assumption that the apartheid government surrendered, and the forces of liberation had enormous leverage to extract a more acceptable arrangement. This is objectively untrue. In many respects, the struggle was hanging by a thread.

The main prosecutor of the struggle, the ANC and its allies in the Mass Democratic Movement, were facing enormous financial and political strain. The Soviet Union was collapsing and bankrupt (it collapsed before 1994), leaving Sweden as the main financial backer.

Operation Vula, the last military operation launched by the ANC, was exposed and blown apart by the apartheid government, resulting in the arrest of some of its senior commanders such as Siphiwe Nyanda and Mac Maharaj.

The armed struggle was also almost impractical to pursue without money or geographic proximity. The ANC’s military camps, which suffered from significant deprivation and poor conditions, were far away in Uganda after the Angola settlement. South Africa itself was engulfed in extreme violence, which many young people cannot even imagine.

It is fair to conclude that the only leverage left was the ungovernability of the country, and the fact that apartheid had bankrupted the state, but it retained a militarised white population, a powerful army and a brutal police force. Absent of a settlement, the only option was oblivion, which is easy to advocate if you are not living through it.

This brief detour is necessary to show that things were not simple, which does not mean the settlement was perfect. I am just saying that the balance of forces was complex, and the orgy of violence on the streets was extreme. In such circumstances it is almost impossible for anyone engaged in negotiations to extract what they want, otherwise there would be no settlement at all.

Although it is unpopular now, the reconciliation mantra was popular at the time because there was hope that things would get better. For a while they did. For example, homes were electrified and household income support in the form of child, disability and old age grants were delivered to millions. Unemployment also fell from about 33% at the dawn of democracy to just over 21% by 2006, a huge achievement.

That said, I also think that the time has come for us to move past and beyond the concept of reconciliation, anyway. We now need justice in many different forms. We also need to deliver real political power to the people. This also means we must be prepared to make new trade-offs, write new political rules and set new norms to enable the country to become a nation.

In other words, we must focus on nation building.

The struggle for democracy was premised on the idea that the people must feel their power through and between elections. For this reason, I continue to believe that we need to evolve our political institutions through a more representative electoral system. This will enable parliament to exercise its powers more, and to make the executive more accountable.

A more representative system may also begin to bring politics and political representatives closer to the people, and deepen democracy.

Second, we need to put justice at the centre of all we do. For example, we need to choose land redistribution over land restitution. The former enables us to provide a solution to all South Africans in the present instead of trying to unscramble an egg after centuries of scrambling. It is no longer practical.

A necessary element of this project is expropriation of private land by the government for a public purpose in ways that are not arbitrary and capricious, otherwise many abuses will continue to happen.

Third, we must target problems with clear outcomes, not the airy fairy policy-speak we often get from politicians, political parties or the government. For instance, we must work out how we are going to re-educate and train the millions who have never completed matric. 

It is not possible for such South Africans to achieve economic freedom if they do not even have the basic skills to help them to find decent work. All talk of “job creation” in such circumstances is mere talk, which is why it is difficult to sustain any talk of reconciliation when people are hungry. People cannot eat reconciliation.

Fourth, we must recognise that effective politics and government are fundamental to achieving anything for the nation. A corrupt, inaccessible political system cannot deliver socioeconomic justice when the government it produces is weak and directionless.

This is often why some political parties resort to nationalistic tropes. They also tend to blame the Constitution — in other words, blame everything and everyone except the political system that has created and sustained the problems we are experiencing.

Finally, we must accept that the country does not want for technical solutions. Instead, we have lost any understanding of how important vision is, which is how leadership and its effectiveness must be measured. In other words, do we know what our national vision is, how to get there and how far we are doing? My guess is that most of us have no idea, and that is the problem.

It is difficult to hold anyone accountable when we cannot describe the future we are building. To get to a vision, and the values that bind us all, we must forget the idea that we are still reconciling. We must build a nation, and that needs everyone’s input, not just politicians and their parties.

Songezo Zibi is the leader of a new political party, Rise Mzansi.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian