The ANC currently rules at the national level, fulfils the executive functions
outright in seven of the nine provinces, leads coalition governments in the
Western Cape and KwaZulu Natal, and rules in 68% of South Africa’s 248
municipalities. This achievement naturally emboldens the party and
reinforces perceptions of ascendance. This can not be considered their “fault”
and need not precipitate rumblings of imminent democratic doom. However,
the dominance of the party in South African governance, and in politics more
broadly, is self-evident, and brings into sharp focus the implications of the
health, or lack thereof, of the party for society at large. In the context of an ongoing political, social and institutional transition, and for the realisation of the constitutional imperatives for an accountable, transparent and participatory system of representative governance that
delivers substantively to its citizens, it follows that an ANC that is organisationally weak and lacks participation, or representation, and fails to account to both its constituents and society more broadly, is a normative bad for South Africa. Given the dominance of the party, and the manner in which it straddles the institutions and politics of our developing democracy, it means
that the strength or weakness of the outcomes of this democratic project
depend in very real ways on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the
ANC itself. It's high time for concentrating power within opposition forces, and portend a paradigm shift away from corrupt thin democracy and patronage, towards a deliberative social democracy teeming with solidarity and interaction, and diminshing of 'local-versus-provincial-versus-national-versus-regional-versus-continental-versus-global' relations within polities.
outright in seven of the nine provinces, leads coalition governments in the
Western Cape and KwaZulu Natal, and rules in 68% of South Africa’s 248
municipalities. This achievement naturally emboldens the party and
reinforces perceptions of ascendance. This can not be considered their “fault”
and need not precipitate rumblings of imminent democratic doom. However,
the dominance of the party in South African governance, and in politics more
broadly, is self-evident, and brings into sharp focus the implications of the
health, or lack thereof, of the party for society at large. In the context of an ongoing political, social and institutional transition, and for the realisation of the constitutional imperatives for an accountable, transparent and participatory system of representative governance that
delivers substantively to its citizens, it follows that an ANC that is organisationally weak and lacks participation, or representation, and fails to account to both its constituents and society more broadly, is a normative bad for South Africa. Given the dominance of the party, and the manner in which it straddles the institutions and politics of our developing democracy, it means
that the strength or weakness of the outcomes of this democratic project
depend in very real ways on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the
ANC itself. It's high time for concentrating power within opposition forces, and portend a paradigm shift away from corrupt thin democracy and patronage, towards a deliberative social democracy teeming with solidarity and interaction, and diminshing of 'local-versus-provincial-versus-national-versus-regional-versus-continental-versus-global' relations within polities.
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