Reading Professor Eddy Maloka’s Book – South Africa’s Second Chance – The case for a Second Republic, conjures images of someone writing furiously and passionately to convey messages to people who may have heard the ideas many times but decided to remain tone-deaf. A committed ANC member, Maloka pierces through the failures of government with refreshing openness, forthrightness and candour. With his sweeping and exhaustive, yet compact historical accounts, he makes an important intervention on how to deal with current challenges. Each Chapter ends with a short conclusion, as a way of a summary.
To ensure that certain terms are not misunderstood, Maloka explains a number of conceptual frame-works including what he means by the ‘Second Republic’, different from the so-called ‘Second Transition’ advanced by some ANC and Alliance partners around 2012. He also posits the idea of the ‘Re-foundation of the state’. Maloka rejects the ongoing euphoria about South Africa becoming a ‘failed state’.
In arguing for a Second Republic, among many things, Maloka calls for the crafting of a new governance paradigm based on three pillars: A self-reliant mind-set; a technocratic state, not political braskap (friendship) and substantive people’s power through street committees and direct election of public representatives. Giving an example of self-reliant mindset he argues that: “the state is de-skilling communities, eradicating their ability to do things for themselves. We see this all the time: a leaking pipe in a community and residents jumping over it to avoid soiling themselves and waiting for days for municipality to send someone to fix it while there are unemployed plumbers loitering around…or dumpster piling up at a corner waiting for municipal garbage removal truck. Cemeteries and public parks that have grown weeds …when …unemployed youth sitting patiently for government to bring them jobs…”
“A technocratic state should be about merit, competency, integrity, personnel that is performance-driven and leaders who take responsibility and have internalised the importance of accountability…”
The Book is not just politically thought-provoking, but erudite, educative and informative with an urgent analytical sweep of 30-years of South Africa’s democracy and the long historical path that laid the foundations for the country’s geographical space from which its sovereignty derives. As a history scholar, Maloka takes the reader through an illuminating tour de force of earlier times to the formation of the 1910 Union of South Africa, then the democratic era.
As we know, before 1910 South Africa was nothing more than just a figurative expression. From the 1830s, the term South Africa referred mainly to a region from the Cape to well beyond the Zambezi River and the meaning of the term remained inchoate, being used the same way as the contemporary phrase, southern Africa.
Driven by imperial objectives, both Cecil John Rhodes and Lord Milner viewed a South African colony that stretched from Cape to Central Africa. And despite their differences, both the British and the Boers were united on the need to seize more and more of indigenous African lands. From 1895, Jan Smuts also entertained a ‘grandiose dream’ of a Union of South Africa that would include the current independent countries of Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique and possibly stretching to the Equator.
Nudging readers to view certain ingrained assumptions in context, Maloka asserts: “The nation-state is an artificial creation. From its borders, nationalism, identity, citizens, the flag, national currency, to the national anthem, national history, sometime even to national language – all are invented by their creators, the elite.”
Accordingly, the 1994 settlement “was also an elite decolonisation pact to manage conflicting visions of competing nationalist groups over the future of South Africa. Most of these elites then wanted a unitary state and those on the apartheid side preferred a federal model. There were disputes over land question, the future status of different languages, over religion and how different faith groups should be protected, over the rights of minorities and how the country’s national wealth should be equitably shared. These are just few examples…”
Precisely because many of these issues have not been fully resolved, Maloka strongly advocates for discussions around the possibility of the Second Republic, so as to find better mechanisms to address these issues that are a stubborn legacy of a long history of the country. Yet, there would be other people who may argue that the country has not sufficiently used the current constitution to deal with the many legacies of the past.
Going back in history, after the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer War, the British shaped South Africa ‘in the image of their dominion colonies’. Interestingly, as a sovereign South African state was created, debates about the unitary or federal nature dominated discussions, with the unitary option winning the day. This was to come back during the CODESA negotiations. Amidst all the debates, the 1910 state formation was bound to fail because it excluded the indigenous majority. This history, which has been imposed on the democratic South Africa is something that Maloka believes must inform the deliberations for a ‘Second Republic’.
Further, Maloka gives some attention to the issue of the form of the state: “The unitary-federal debate of today is racialised and very polarising. Political parties are divided over this issue and the divisions are based on race and ethnicity…” After giving some extensive views on the debates around unitary and federalism, he quotes the fourfold policy objectives of ANC’s “Ready to Govern”, one of which says: “To strive for the achievement of the right of all South Africans as a whole to political and economic self-determination in a united South Africa.” As to the state of the nation today, the reader is taken back to a 2008 document, South Africa Scenarios 2025: The Future we choose; with three scenarios: Not Yet Uhuru; Nkalakatha and Muvango. In Not yet Uhuru: “A government strongly committed to accelerating economic growth struggles in the face of deteriorating global conditions and several ecological challenges.” For Nkalakatha, “determined to play a more central role in the economy, government prioritises poverty reduction and skills enhancement by articulating a national vision and fostering partnerships.” For Muvhango, “despite an initial resurgence of the economy, and positive world conditions, the government battles to govern well”. The Muvhango scenario took its name from the SABC TV drama “that chronicles the fortunes and misfortunes of a divided family torn apart by jealousy, betrayal and the quest for money and power.”
Out of these scenarios, where is South Africa today? Clearly Muvhango! Among others, there are failures to fully address the legacies of the past; no economic transformation that empowers the black majority; unemployment and poverty affect mainly black people. Hence, Maloka’s call for a Second Republic!
In a candid and robust way, Maloka lays the blame for many of these problems to his party, the ANC. Yet, he does not think that the white-dominated DA is better: “(The DA) is still stuck in the past, obsessed with defending minority interests who constitute the bulk of its membership. It continues to view policies aimed at eradicating the legacy of apartheid in hostile terms.”
To the large degree, multiple state crises find their genesis in the factionalism within the ANC, comparing it to a period in China of antiquity, of Warring States, when rival states incessantly fought each other for three centuries over territory and dominance.
Because of the many problems within the ANC, Maloka reserves some harsh words for the organisation, which, he believes is largely responsible for countless failures in the last few years. While he acknowledges the advances made by the ANC government earlier in our democracy, he decries the unacceptable malfeasance, corruption and fraud that has now taken firm root. He says: “South Africa’s liberation struggle intended to establish a post-apartheid state based on people’s power. Instead, over time after 1994, state power was gradually appropriated by those who came to be known as ‘LEADERSHIP’. These are our leaders who don’t have to serve but should be served. They portray services delivered by the state as their own act of benevolence towards society. We see politicians doing policing for self-glorification instead of the police commissioner or her police foot soldiers… During festive holidays and times of national disaster, the LEADERSHIP dish out food parcels acquired with state resources to the needy as if these were bought with their own money. Some of them appropriate the resources of the state to buy space on billboards to use their faces to advertise government services…”
The Book starts with some Creation stories by the Gods from different societies. It ends with how, when the Dutch arrived in South Africa, they could not work out what a particular antelope was, but confused it with a cow. They thus called this antelope – the wildebeest. But the Khoi people had long called it gnu because of the grunting sound that a male makes when mating with a female.
Every serious reader must rush to get a copy of Eddy Maloka’s Book.