MASILO LEPURU
South Africa has recently registered a rise in a tendency towards coalition politics. Several major metros are being fought for by political parties such as the DA, ANC and EFF.
The ousting of Mpho Phalatse and her replacement with Thapelo Amad is a case in point. There is no consensus regarding the significance of the possible dominance of coalition politics. There are people who welcome this change in South African politics. But there are those who are sceptical about it. Myriad reasons are offered for this positive and negative reception of coalition politics.
At the core of the negative reception of this tendency is the question of ideology. This is because the basic assumption is that different political parties represent different ideologies which inform their relevance and political visions. African nationalism, Liberalism and Marxism-Leninism are some of the things that come to mind when thinking about these political parties that are contending for political power through coalition politics.
A perfunctory reading and understanding of these ideologies make it clear that to a great extent, they are irreconcilable. If this is the case then how do we account for the semblance of co-operation between these different political parties? Well, there are several things that they share in common. These are in addition to the fact that they all seduce voters into voting for them by offering seemingly different things.
The first and most fundamental thing that they all share is the history of a white settler colonial republic called South Africa. The condition of possibility for these parties’ existence is the conquest of the Indigenous people in wars of colonisation since 1652 and the racism behind it and the founding of South Africa as a political formation based on exclusive white nationalism à la Jan Smuts.
Their political context, namely white South Africa, is a racist product of European conquerors who became white settlers through land dispossession and epistemic violence against the indigenous people who are now their voters.
The conquest since 1652 did not only result in land dispossession as the fundamental historic injustice but entailed the imposition of the epistemological paradigm of the European conquerors as white settlers. This violently imposed paradigm manifests itself in many ways such as culture, law and politics. In this case the most relevant way is politics.
European conquerors as white settlers imposed their liberal constitutional democracy since at least 1853 with the Cape colony constitution and its nonracial franchise. The European conqueror’s epistemological paradigm in the form of liberal constitutional democracy violently supplanted the Indigenous epistemological paradigm which was in power since time immemorial.
The ideas of ubuntu, molato ga o bole and Kgosi ke Kgosi ka batho are some of the terms of order of this indigenous epistemological paradigm. Due to the conquest liberal constitutional democracy of white settlers has been a dominant framework within which politics in South Africa is practised. It is in this sense that the Marxist platitude that “the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas” is relevant in this context of coalition politics.
Coalition politics is practised within the framework of liberal constitutional democracy which has nothing to do with the indigenous people who are a majority both demographically and in terms of voting. This type of current politics is a shift away from liberation politics to politics of efficiency. This is why the pseudo-revolutionary EFF is bold enough to claim that it will be the best should it get a chance to govern. Best at efficiency within the epistemological paradigm of the white settlers as opposed to being best at liberating the indigenous people from this violently imposed foreign paradigm.
The “racist” DA as the party of white settlers is ideologically in power since white settlers are the ruling class. The triumph of liberal constitutional democracy during Codesa implies that ideologically white settlers as represented by the likes of Helen Zille are in power.
The anti-black ANC as a product of the epistemological paradigm of the European conqueror through missionary indoctrination and Western miseducation reinforced the hegemony of this paradigm since 1994. As a civil rights movement, the ANC pursued the democratisation option which sought the extension of rights to the indigenous people.
As Archie Mafeje warned us, some black nationalists within the ANC accepted the hegemony of white liberals in intellectual and political thought (something the previously useful PAC resented and rejected). This is how the ANC and the DA are “strange bedfellows”. Since the EFF consists of angry Charterists it is a mere extension of the ANC. The useless idea that the ANC abandoned the Freedom Charter and that the latter needs enforcement to gain economic freedom makes the EFF also a “strange bedfellow” (eg, Malema working with Zille).
The second thing these coalition political parties share in common is the hegemony of nonracialism. It is in this sense that their political vision is of a white settler colonial republic called South Africa belonging to all who live in it, black and white … a ridiculous but stubborn fantasy. Coalition politics within liberal constitutional democracy symbolises for now the victory of what Francis Fukuyama called “the end of history”.
The vulgar politics of efficiency and pragmatism opportunistically embraced by black leaders within the EFF and ANC implies that they are liberal constitutional democrats thus reinforcing the ideological hegemony of white settlers in South Africa. The conquered indigenous people urgently need liberation politics which will continue the pursuit of the decolonisation paradigm as pursued by Poqo (Azanian People's Liberation Army).
This paradigm seeks “the end of South Africa” and the restoration of a New Africa/Azania on the basis of the epistemological paradigm of the indigenous people. The indigenous people must pursue an alternative to the liberal constitutional democratic “last men and the end of history” coalition politics. In the persistent spirit of decolonisation, they must recall Frantz Fanon’s revolutionary idea that “the last shall be first and the first last”.
This is the only way “to end the history” of white settlers and their epistemological paradigm. Until then it is not yet Uhuru.
Masilo Lepuru is a Junior Researcher at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation.
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