South Africa’s uncertain future: A nation of many possibilities

South Africa, a land of stark contradictions, presents a troubling juxtaposition of prosperity and poverty, giving rise to rampant crime and growing despair. From upscale neighbourhoods where the affluent live in luxury to the destitution and desperation of those who beg for survival, this country is a patchwork of diverse realities. As it heads into a pivotal 2024 election, predictions abound, but the future remains uncertain. South Africans must unite, fostering change to ensure a brighter future and avert the risk of a societal conflagration. The missing scenario? A united civil society taking charge of change.

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SA – A Country of Many Scenarios

By Solly Moeng

South Africa remains a country of many sharp contrasts. Within less than an hour of moving from one part of any metropolitan area to another, one easily gets confronted with images of wealth and ease of life – at least the semblance of them – then those of poverty, toil, deprivation, and naked desperation.

In increasing number of places, the latter leads to violent, brazen, criminality when innocent people get robbed in broad daylight of their belongings: jewellery, smartphones, handbags, backpacks, and other valuables. The armed robbery of security vans transporting CIT (Cash in Transit) and mob attacks on trucks transporting foodstuff and other commercial goods, including combustible cargo, have become commonplace.

Arguably, everything that many people used to bet would never happen in the Republic of South Africa has come to define the corridors of power and the streets of the country. Levels of arrogance and impunity remain very elevated in the corridors of political power.

The post-apartheid dream and vision of building an inclusive, prosperous, South Africa, have not just been deferred; they have been pissed-upon so many times that, probably, the few who remember that they used to exist are becoming an endangered species, dying off or gradually moving to start life elsewhere.

The restless, hungry young ones who are being politically conditioned to blame their sorry lot on, supposedly, a Nelson Mandela betrayal of the revolution, were either babies in the crib or too unborn when the so-called ‘democratic era’ came to be. Their misplaced, often destructive anger serves only as fuel for political entrepreneurs that contemporary South Africa has been turned into fertile political breeding ground for.

In places like Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and no doubt, other economic centres, there are countless people driving around in expensive cars, living in high-end, often gated, residential areas, eating at expensive restaurants without, seemingly, any care about how much the bill would come at, or simply shopping for expensive clothing or homeware in expensive boutiques, buying things they no longer need simply because they can. It is a rose tainted bubble.

The other bubble consists of other images of people – a lot more numerous, locals and immigrants from failed African states – who either earn a pittance from serving the people described above as domestic aides in their homes or in the commercial spaces where they spend, even flaunt, their money.

Another group, also countless, stands on street corners begging for food, small change, or what is referred to as a “piece jobs”, any job, just to be sure they can buy their next meal, feed their dependents, or pay rent. Others simply roam the streets in towns, cities, and suburbs in search of stuff they can steal or forcibly snatch away from those who seem to have them in abundance.

A country of bubbles and scenarios

In truth, South Africa is a country of bubbles, many bubbles that sometimes collide into one other and other times simply coexist in a strange, even scary, dance of bright and dark contrasts. But it is a dance that, one fears, might one day lead to the kind of socio-political and economic conflagration from which it might take decades to recover, if any recovery would be possible at all.

As the country heads to what many believe will be a watershed general election in 2024, many have come out with surveys and books in a macabre race to be the first to predict their outcome. The truth, however, is that the socio-political sands are still shifting and are far from being sufficiently settled for anyone to tell what the much-anticipated elections hold for this troubled land. There are still too many unknowns. Many of the predictions do not consider the still quiet, almost invisible, shifts quietly happening within civil society mobilisation. They rely mostly on what their authors believe will be done by known political formations, particularly in terms of opportunistic political alliances.

The main two scenarios repeated ad nauseam are, 1) a possible coalition between the EFF and the ANC, which many believe would make natural political bed mates, and 2) an apparent, no-longer-so-secret, ANC-DA coalition that is said to be negotiated by the two parties. The reported rationale for the latter is that the DA would, apparently, bring order into the affairs of the South African state – Cape Town style – by acting as national ‘Chief Operations Officer’ of sorts, controlling the public purse and exercising oversight over governance – while allowing the ANC to keep the state presidency almost in a symbolic fashion, with no real power to continue acting as the institutional wrecking ball it has proven to be over the years.

Amongst other scenarios would be one where the ANC, having failed to garner enough votes to continue controlling all policy making and the country’s public purse, would gather some willing small party enablers around it that are known to be hungry for more political influence, such as the IFP, the (so-called) GOOD party, and Al Jama-ah, which seems to remain unconditionally at the beck and call of the ANC. This would enable it to cobble together a government it can control while it avoids overzealous DA governance oversight and extremist, even divisive, demands from the ever-unpredictable EFF, whose leader could easily be mistaken for a spoiled brat with too many unresolved childhood anger and parenting issues.

In truth, there is much academic, journalistic, and commercial speculation out there about what the 2024 elections will herald. No one can tell for sure yet what is going to happen. But South Africans must stop watching events in their own country as if they’re watching a movie in which no roles were allocated to them. Unless they wake-up, unite around a basket of desired future policy and constitutional changes that must be done over time, including the reduction of the toxic over-investment of powers in the country’s presidency, they will continue to be like frogs in a slowly boiling pot of water whose temperature is fast reaching deadly levels.

The 2024 elections must not be just another set of elections in South Africa’s painful march to heal from the abuses of apartheid and the past thirty years of ANC battering. They must also not just be a matter of replacing one political group with another into the same system that is vulnerable for criminal repurposing. They must lead to systemic policy and institutional reviews aimed at ensuring that South Africans never again get to live the horrors of apartheid and the past thirty years.

The missing scenario, for the latter to happen, is one that involves a purposeful, determined, uprising of a united civil society to demand change and be an active partner defining such a change. Much is at stake.