JACOB Zuma's MK Party, the EFF and the SA Communist Party are spitting fire, especially on social media, over the ANC allegedly jumping into bed with the “neo-liberal" DA and hijacking the “revolution".
The SACP's Solly Mapaila ranted this week: “It will be better to be irritated by the EFF in cabinet than to be irritated by the neo-liberal forces who want to be dominant and take control of the revolution!"
Julius Malema: “We reject the racist pact between the ANC and the DA and will never sell out black and African people.” MKP's rhetoric was equally crude, hyperbolic and race-driven.
But recent research in Rwanda confirms a thesis that citizens are not swayed by such populist sentiments and slogans if they are satisfied with what the government is doing for them.
Rwanda's Tutsi minority has been in power for 30 years, but a study finds ethnicity doesn’t matter to people if their needs are met.
Two academics from the University of Antwerp, Réginas Ndayiragije and Marijke Verpoorten, gauged the attitudes of Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda 30 years after the genocide of 1994.
Leaders of the Hutus, the largest ethnic group in the country, were behind the genocide, but the Rwanda Patriotic Front of Paul Kagame, a Tutsi movement, took over the government afterward and still rules.
For a long time after 1994, it was predicted that ethnic conflict would inevitably flare up again.
Ndayiragije and Verpoorten, who specialise in political representation in post-conflict countries, have now found that the Hutus are not resentful of their government being dominated by the Tutsi elite.
“Our findings illustrate that even when ethnicity is an important political identity, what matters for citizens is not only their ethnic group’s proportional representation in state institutions. More importantly, it’s the extent to which the ruling system acts on their fundamental needs.”
The Kagame government has gone out of its way to improve infrastructure and health services for everyone and to grow the economy — by 8% in 2023. Efforts have been made to make Hutus feel they are a full part of the Rwandan state.
Just a bit further east, in Kenya, there are fewer ethnic sensitivities and only small ideological differences, yet there was a national uprising a few weeks ago that even led to the storming of parliament. Forty people were shot dead by the security forces.
The mostly young Kenyans from various ethnic backgrounds protested against increased taxes, the greed of government politicians and the insensitivity of President William Ruto’s government towards the lower middle class and the poor.
According to the latest Afrobarometer survey, conducted in December 2022, 83.9% of South African respondents said the government is on the wrong track. The main problems they identified were unemployment (25.9%), crime and security (19.3%), electricity (10.3%), water supply (5.7%) and infrastructure and roads (4.7%).
Only 1% highlighted discrimination/inequality and 0.2% identified political division and ethnic friction. This is extremely significant.
It supports a finding in an earlier Afrobarometer survey that most South Africans would even be willing to give up their personal freedom and democracy if it means they will enjoy better services from the state and a better quality of life.
This aligns with a survey by Victory Research last month which found that many more South Africans of all races were in favor of a coalition government between the ANC and DA than a coalition of the ANC and the EFF or MKP.
The optimism towards the GNU is, according to all indications, built on the hope that the end of the ANC’s hegemony and the contributions that cabinet members from the DA, with its good governance record, will lead to a much more effective and cleaner government — thus, better services for citizens.
It is far too early to judge, but the first few days of the new cabinet hold much promise. Several ministers, not just those from opposition parties, have announced actions and plans that indicate new energy and commitment to concrete results.
The first cabinet lekgotla was by all accounts a positive exercise — President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke of the “great synergy” in the room.
There is much criticism that the GNU is actually just a coalition government because the third- and fourth-largest parties are not part of it, but the fact that 10 diverse parties, from the PAC to the Freedom Front Plus, are participating and all population groups can say they are properly represented, justifies the designation in the eyes of probably the vast majority of South Africans.
Ramaphosa is the architect and the project manager of the GNU, with DA leader John Steenhuisen as his right hand. It is now in these men's hands to get the executive authority to pull together as a team and ensure that party interests and approach and policy differences are not allowed to disrupt the “synergy”. The closer we get to the local elections of 2026, the more difficult this will be.
The populists of the MKP and EFF will be even more marginalised if the GNU is more effective than its predecessors. The EFF can protest as much as it wants, but the further revelations that it was indeed part of the theft of billions of rand from VBS Bank have done great damage to the party.
It is difficult for even loyal EFF voters to accept that Malema, his deputy, Floyd Shivambu, and the secretary-general, Marshall Dlamini, live like millionaires with the stolen money while pretending to be the foremost champions of black poor people.
This week, I and many other South Africans listened to heartbreaking interviews with older women whose savings were stolen by the VBS crooks. Stokvels' investments also disappeared.
Ndifelani Tshidavhu, a vegetable vendor, said for example that she can no longer even send her children to school because all her money invested at VBS was stolen. She no longer sleeps well and has high blood pressure. “It broke my spirit forever,” she said.
Another informal trader, Portia Namadzavho, said when her elderly mother heard all her money was gone, she became ill and shortly thereafter died. “VBS destroyed me.”
The MKP’s claim to be champions for the black masses is equally thin after the revelations about state capture and the role of the Guptas, and after it became known that the biggest crooks from that era are now MKP leaders.
If the GNU is successful and effective, it can change the entire dynamics of South African politics.
♦ VWB ♦
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