Читать книгу A Nation in Crisis - Paulus Zulu - Страница 4

Introduction

A guide to this book

THIS BOOK examines the tension between justice and democracy in South Africa’s transition. From the French revolution to almost all subsequent transitions, ‘revolutionary’ or otherwise, societies have upheld three principles as pivotal to democracy: liberty, equality and fraternity. Liberty refers to the freedom to be human, and to act within specific constraints. In other words, we are free on condition that we recognise and respect the freedom of others. Equality refers to equal treatment of all. In nature and in life, the distribution of natural endowments is arbitrary, i.e. there is no natural law that prescribes equal attributes – physical, intellectual and motivational – so society calls for equality of opportunity as an expression of the principle of equality. In human rights terms, fraternity recognises the freedom to belong, to form and join organisations, fraternities and movements of your choice. However, in moral philosophy, fraternity goes beyond the instrumental social formations and encompasses spiritual aspects of being such as empathy expressed in organic solidarity and the willingness to engage in activities involving mutual benefits and reciprocal relationships. It is critical for democracy that the recognition of these three pillars stems not only from the provisions of a constitution, which is often a negotiated document, but from a concept of justice reflected in the moral conscience of the nation. The rationale is simple. Like all human provisions, constitutions may, and usually do, reflect the power relations operating at a given point and time. So it is necessary for justice to take eminence, providing the gold standard for assessing all values including the three pillars of democracy.

A close analysis of the South African transition shows that, despite the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, there are problems with equality. Our public representatives (both elected and appointed) have engaged with the principle of equality more in the breach than in the observance. Empirical evidence shows that inequalities do not only exist materially, but legally. Surprisingly, the same observations characterised apartheid and, therefore, predate the transition. Which begs the question: what was the struggle to end apartheid for? I was once part of a serious conversation between Peter Berger, an eminent sociologist from Boston, and Fatima Meer, a political activist and an incisive sociologist in her own right. Berger posited poverty as a cause for popular disaffection and probably rebellion. “It is not poverty per se” retorted Meer. “When everyone is poor, people live peacefully side by side. It is when poverty is juxtaposed to wealth that the poor riot.” Nineteen years into democracy, South Africa’s Gini-coefficient – a measure of material inequalities between rich and poor – is at its highest level. While South Africa has historically been a country of mansions and shacks, the post-apartheid persistence of the same inequalities calls for deep introspection.

The most often pronounced term in South Africa is “human rights.” There is seldom if ever any mention of “obligations.” The approach of this book is that a human rights-based conception of democracy without the corresponding obligations could become problematic when pitted against the principles of justice and fairness. In some instances, what is placed under the rubric of human rights are merely social constructs dependent upon time and space. Viewed in terms of justice such conceptions of human rights would be found wanting.

One day I went to draw money from an automatic teller machine. The queue was long. A woman drew money from the ATM. She took the money, opened her bag and put it in, and started to read her statement. She took some time, conceivably long enough for two people to used the ATM after her and completed their business. It felt like an eternity. Bothered by this avoidable delay I intervened: “Would you not have done better to read your statement on the side and saved the queue?” “It is my right,” she responded. Irritated by the shallowness of her understanding of human rights, I decided not to let her get away with it. “It is not your right to delay the queue. What about common decency and a bit of consideration for others?” She sulked and left. This is just a simple illustration of the potential conflict between a superficial and one-sided conception of human rights and justice, as it so often happens in a more serious arena in South Africa.

When South Africa attained democracy in 1994 we achieved freedom and fraternity but lost out on equality, firstly, because it is more difficult to achieve. Secondly, we lost out on equality because democracy is merely an arrangement of systems, and a means to nobler ends or values and not an end in itself. Recognition of equality requires a moral conscience that encompasses obligations within its conception of rights. This calls for nobler concepts such as justice and, in political terms, distributive justice. Lower levels of distributive justice result in higher levels of inequality. This will become clearer in the chapters that follow.

The subject of this book is public morality. You could ask what significance public morality has in the sociology and politics of a country or its government. Given that South Africa has experienced both external and internal colonialism for over a period of three hundred years, its attainment of freedom and the way it conducts itself as a democracy is of special significance to itself and to the world. Africa is regarded as the basket case of the world, and, as a beacon of hope, South Africa can ill afford to go the same route. In their book, Adam et al affirm: “Of course a moral discourse on the recent history of South Africa, as well as its current transition, is necessary if only to remind us of the values that have been undermined and the need to reaffirm them for the future, values such as tolerance, respect for life, objectivity, freedom, responsibility, accountability and transparency.”2 The main purpose of my book is to address how the public, the elite and officials have translated and internalised the values of responsibility, accountability and transparency, for these constitute the core values in the allocation and distribution of resources in a society. Adam et al maintain that not only do these values need to be affirmed, but they need constant probing and analysis particularly regarding “their applicability to the problems of transition South Africa is encountering.”3 The intention of my book is to help situate decision-making within the domain of the Freedom Charter as the vehicle that articulates the meaning of what South Africans believe constitutes social justice, or the common good. While the Freedom Charter may not be the moral bible for South Africans, it translates their corpus of values, including what true uhuru means, into wishes and aspirations.

Public morality refers to the values and norms that inform the behaviour of public officials and politicians in the course of their official duties. The colonial experience is pertinent in that during this period a specific moral order determined the code of conduct of public officials, and also prescribed the relationships between colonisers and the colonised. Over this protracted period, South Africa experienced first a comprador public morality imposed by the British colonial experience and later an apartheid public morality sanctioned by a self-protective and self-promoting Afri­kaner ethos. Rooted in the Afrikaner fear of the aspirations of the majority African population, apartheid was an attempt to justify a policy that was pronounced internationally as a crime against humanity. When the new dispensation took over in 1994, a new public morality evolved. It had roots in both the colonial and apartheid experiences, as well as in an internal African ethos tempered by Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman traditions.

Public morality as used throughout this book refers to the moral behaviour of public institutions and public officials. The term excludes the private morality of the general citizenry. The reason for this distinction is that the general citizenry acts for itself, and is not a representative body. There are sufficient institutional and legal mechanisms to address issues of private morality. Our legal systems appear to be more capable of handling transgressions of private morality than when public officials or public institutions engage in acts that the general public deems morally reprehensible. There is often no recourse to, or it is difficult to access, avenues of redress. This disjuncture could be the reason for the perception that the moral problem in South Africa lies in the domain of public rather than private morality.

For instance, in a comparison between Nigeria and South Africa, Ali Mazrui attests: “As for the insidious pathology of corruption, South Africa is still basically at the stage of elite and corporate corruption, rather than pervasive bribery from grassroots to the pinnacle of society.”4 In the light of the above discrepancy he may be right, but in essence the moral problem is pervasive, ranging from a callous disregard for life, a tendency towards rape and theft in ordinary citizens, to bribery, fraud and corruption by petty officials through to the elite and corporates. However, it is to the public officials in the vanguard that we turn our attention.

Ideally, the moral imperatives of service and equity regulate the behaviour of public officials. Because public officials, political or bureaucratic, occupy positions of influence and are responsible for the allocation and distribution of key resources, they exert control on the destinies of the populace. So there is a moral imperative that they discharge this function equitably and efficiently. Also, as public officials occupy positions of leadership, the imperative is that they should lead by example. It is no wonder that their actions, as individuals and as a collective, are subjected to close scrutiny.

As elected representatives, the political leadership faces the democratic imperative to act accountably. It was in this context that Caesar felt that his wife had to be beyond reproach. Indeed, most moral cultures from Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity to ubuntu carry this quality of actual and symbolic cleanliness in respect of their public representatives. With regard to the bureaucracy, it is the quality of justice that is of paramount importance in the course of discharging its duties. Public morality thus demands both honesty and justice as key requisites for public institutions and public officials. It is an interesting observation that the political head of a government department is referred to as “Minister”, a title carrying the concept of service, and in isiXhosa the incumbent is referred to as “uMphathiswa”, literally meaning he or she who is given a task to carry out or to discharge. This implies a relationship of accountability, with the minister as both custodian and carrier of the obligation.

The relationship between public morality and the qualities of service and accountability is axiomatic and resides in the power relations between leaders and the body politic. The leadership is protected from abuse by the body politic by their power to command the repressive state apparatus. Conversely, the body politic is protected from the leadership withholding their due entitlements, firstly, by the moral precepts operating in society and, secondly, through recourse to the legal system in terms of the constitutional arrangements. Public morality thus becomes the first line of defence for the general population against tyranny, personal greed and other ills by the leadership in instances where the latter gets corrupted. Public morality exists within a normative system informed by the philosophical and religious traditions of a people, and it is these traditions that provide both the norms and guidelines that proscribe the behaviour of public officials thus laying the precepts for civic relations. Admittedly, this approximates an ideal situation. But there has to be an ideal against which the actual is measured and evaluated otherwise the concept of standards would not exist. In practice, there have been and still exist leaders who by universal ethical guidelines have been immoral. They might have commanded popular support within their polities, but generally they have not been able to withstand universal moral approbation. This is probably the main attribute that separates political from moral legitimacy. Political legitimacy may or may not be permanent; moral legitimacy is both transcendental and permanent.

There is a sense that both the colonial and apartheid public moralities evolved from and were also expressions of a culture of entitlement. The question is: to what extent would the politics of transformation develop a contending culture of entitlement that would impact upon public morality? Two postulates have been developed in this book. The first is that public morality determines the quality of government including its responsiveness to the wishes and wellbeing of the electorate. In a country like South Africa, political will to effect the much-needed transformation of a society emerging from centuries of oppression and exploitation, together with the consequent poverty and powerlessness that the two entail, is contingent upon public morality. A further postulate is that transformation can only be achieved through genuine selfless commitment to service. Therefore, it cannot be measured by the GDP purchasing power parity since this is not a redistributive attribute, but rather by the absence of beggars in the streets, a demonstration of the overall wellbeing of the population.

Commenting on the high Gini coefficient in South Africa, Adam et al state: “It is ultimately a moral and political judgement as to how much effort should be made to bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots, which still overlaps largely with race in South Africa.”5 The moral and political judgement referred to rests with the ruling elite entrusted with decision-making powers in a democratic context. This is essentially so in the African context where colonialism and, in the case of South Africa, apartheid have oppressed and alienated the majority population. That is where public morality plays a decisive role and this is what the struggle was about.

While it is almost axiomatic that politics is a dirty game, there have equally been men and women in public office, whose moral rectitude has been exemplary. Personalities such as Nyerere, Man­dela, Churchill and Lincoln, to name just a few, have had a tremendous impact in the positive transformation of their societies. On the negative side, Parish posits: “Across the centuries we find an enduring and surprisingly resilient belief that of all the scenes of human life, perhaps the hardest to play one’s role with true moral dignity is the sphere of public action.”6 Parish suggests that, while by nature it is difficult to act morally, in politics moral dilemmas compound the situation. The key question is: why? Parish’s reply is that significant moral dilemmas arise more in public life than elsewhere, and politics falls within the public domain. However, Parish offers another explanation inherent in political behaviour. “Power seems to invite its practitioners to do what would be unthinkable to them in ordinary life” and proceeds, “Indeed, it often seems to insist that doing the unthinkable has, because of their public responsibility, become not only their prerogative, but their duty.”7 What Parish describes is a publicly driven moral dilemma where public representatives, acting in the name of and for the public, have to commit acts which might or do appear morally questionable. He continues, “It often seems also that one must lie, betray, compromise, abandon, mislead, manipulate, coerce, or otherwise act in ways that, were one not to claim one’s political responsibility as an excuse, would seem vicious and corrupt.”8 But what if political actions are committed in the name of private rather than public interest? Do the same imperatives operate?

Before we proceed to consider this contentious puzzle, perhaps we should ensure that we have the same understanding of what we mean by politics and political action. Political scientists describe politics as the authoritative allocation of values to society. Political action would then encompass everything that has to do with the allocation of values both tangible and intangible, including public goods and services. Governance, therefore, since it concerns rules and regulations as well as the allocation of public resources, is by definition in the sphere of politics, hence public office. Both public representatives (elected officials) and appointed functionaries (the bureaucracy) fall into the public domain. In a democracy there are expectations that public representatives and public functionaries serve. The concept of service cuts across cultures but Cicero, in ancient Rome, articulated this most succinctly. In Rome, public service was an honour and a prize to strive for.

There are moral dilemmas in democracy, and they relate mostly to the relations between public officials and the general citizenry. The dilemmas centre on the allocation of public resources and arise from the limited quantity and scarcity of these resources which must not only be shared equitably but have also to be preserved both for a rainy day and for future generations. It has become self-evident that democracy is the best system of governance to provide the fairest allocation and distribution of finite and scarce resources, which is why it has become the norm for nations to strive for this system. The consensual respect of the principle of accountability inherent in democracies means that public officials are accountable to the general electorate, and this shapes and restrains their moral behaviour.

Part of what is expected from a democracy is equality in the allocation and distribution of resources, at individual and group level. Proponents of equality argue for equal access, but in the allocation of finite goods and services the principle of limited quantity is critical. There is a growing outcry in South Africa, as demonstrated by frequent media reports, that public officials are increasingly allocating to themselves disproportionately large portions from the finite pool of goods and services. For instance, as the watchdog of our democracy, the media has reported a number of instances where public officials have bought themselves luxurious and expensive cars, accommodated themselves in elaborate apartments and used expensive modes of travel while alternatives exist. The Mail & Guardian carried the headline: “Protest Nation: Why South Africans are up in Arms”, and within the publication there were three articles dealing with protests against a lack of delivery of basic services. Another entitled: “The Fat of the Land” presented details of salaries, allowances and other perks for parliamentarians. The perks included generous pension, travel, accommodation and medical aid allowances. Some of these, such as free air travel, applied also to the parliamentarians’ spouses and children. The article went on to state that former ministers and deputy ministers enjoyed luxurious travel benefits of up to forty business class domestic air tickets a year.9 These articles and comments are not limited to the media; Government itself has had to defend or explain the actions of profligate officials against public outcry. When public officials treat public resources as their personal fiefdoms and enrich themselves at the expense of the public, citizens respond in the manner they deem appropriate. For example, in Sakhile, Diepsloot and the Joe Slovo informal settlements, during the week of the 16th to the 22nd of October 2009, violent protests culminated in the removal of local government officials accused of misappropriating resources.

Government has always justified the perks alluded to above as part of the conditions of service for state officials and, therefore, policy. However, this is in stark contrast to homelessness, food insecurity and inadequate public facilities, and does not sit well with democracy. Indeed, this negates the basic principle of equal access to public resources. Moderation seems to have escaped our consciousness, let alone our revolutionary consciousness. There have also been scandals on a bigger scale than individual transgressions. Where does one locate ‘Oilgate’, ‘Travelgate’, ‘Nkandlagate’ and other similar episodes? And where in the moral rankings do the actions of public servants who advance their private interests by manipulating the government tender process fall?

South African politics faces a serious dilemma. Government operates within an environment heavily influenced by contending cultures of entitlement. Practices carried over from the previous system of government (for instance, privileges which accrue to political office together with the system of remunerating political office bearers over and above their packages) run counter to redress (such as effecting equity through Black Economic Empowerment). And all this affects the allocation and distribution of finite and scarce resources. The South African experience brings in its own imperatives. This is just the legal domain, and yet it is riddled with moral puzzles. Illegal acts by public officials are not even part of the equation and warrant separate treatment although this too falls within the moral or ethical domain. In a democracy, when citizens perceive themselves as wronged, short-changed or exploited in the allocation of public resources, they either vote their representatives out of office, or resort to protest behaviour. Over the past few years South Africa seems to be experiencing protest action more frequently than during the first five years after liberation. It appears as if the goodwill that characterised uhuru has disappeared. The question is why?

The big question advanced in this book is this: is there a developing climate of moral incoherence in the public conduct of the ruling elite, leading to social and economic contradictions? And, flowing from this: has this climate created a political and civic culture that threatens the realisation of the main aspect of the dream of liberation – the promotion of a democratically integrated socio-economic and political system? At an empirical level, the argument goes, this climate translates into poor service delivery accompanied by a measure of self-righteous political arrogance, a disregard of conventional norms of integrity in the political conduct of elites, corruption in conducting the business of government, a majoritarian culture in parliamentary and legislative work, patronage and clientelism. All these militate against the realisation of the dream, i.e. the common good, and point to an absence of a coherent value consensus regarding the moral duties and obligations of representative governance. Admittedly, some of these ills have become common cause such as when in his address at the ANC’s 51st Conference in 2003, Motlanthe, then secretary general of the ANC, referred to corruption and a lack of a service culture among cadres, this was an observation echoed by President Mbeki in his address at the same conference. Five years later, at the 52nd Conference, President Mbeki devoted a significant section of his address to the problem of corruption and a poor culture of service among officials in government. Interestingly, this is not a new development in South Africa. The National Party was notorious for using its majority in parliament to pass unsavoury legislation. Also, by definition and in practice, apartheid was a system of patron-client relations where the volk comprised the beneficiaries. In addition, the problem of a public morality that is riddled with elite dominance, patronage, corruption and favouritism is not peculiar to developing polities of which South Africa is a part. Rather it operates universally but is more visible in developing countries especially where behavioural norms for conducting political and governance work have either not been fully institutionalised or are being contested, and where the consequences to the poor majority are devastating. This is compounded by the powerlessness in the majority of the population where there are problems of literacy and the consequent lack of access to information.

In South Africa, the causal factors of this apparent incoherence in public morality are closely interlinked with the immaturity of political institutions: first, the absence of a clearly defined break between the liberation movements and political parties; and second, the lack of separation and independence of the state from society where society-state relations overlap. Added to this is the capacity problem besetting a great number of spheres in government and in the management of state business. Universally, the institution of politics is in itself either corrupt or corruptible but, where political institutions are developed to a level of distinct functional differentiation, and accepted norms of conduct govern the operation of political institutions, there are mechanisms of containment. The first precondition of a distinct functional differentiation, a clear separation of powers between the various spheres of government, exists in South Africa. The second, i.e. the existence of accepted norms of conduct governing the operations of government, is heavily disputed by organs of civil society. However, where these institutions are partially diffused within other social institutions, such as the state, the party, the lineage and the history, normative confusion arises and corruption and corruptibility are likely to be exacerbated.

For instance, there seems to be a general belief in South Africa that transformation and capacity are synonymous, such that when genuine opportunities are presented to individuals, they will rise to the occasion. Such a belief is accentuated by the systemic inequities under apartheid. The oft-repeated refrain is that since apartheid denied the majority opportunities for self realisation, the imperative for redress surpasses all other considerations. There is no denying that the ultimate goal of transformation is to address these very inequities. Nonetheless, what is at stake is that this could be at the expense of performance and could lead to what sociologists refer to as a structural fallacy, i.e. a belief that the fixing of the structure of inputs will make individuals respond. That has not always been the case, and the result is that a tension has developed between the calculus of transformation and the imperatives of performance. But because of the contradictory expectations from disparate constituencies raised in opposing cultures of entitlement, the normative conflicts become more pronounced.

The second causal factor is a product of the Messianic cult that developed during the colonial and the apartheid days. Over time, and because of the severity of the oppression and the consequential hopelessness among victims of discrimination, political leaders assumed the status of saviour and were deeply revered. This response derived from the reverence of the liberation movement to which the leaders belonged. One negative development emerging from this pertains to the process of selecting incumbents to office. The operational belief is that liberation heroes make the best managers of change. Selection is predicated on the incumbent’s record in the liberation struggle, at the expense of a proven ability to perform in a number of instances. Such linkages instil a sense of sanctimonious arrogance predicated on political immunity from conventional scrutiny. While it can be argued that in established democracies leaders would be nervous of public opinion and would perform to expectation or face removal from office if they failed to do so, in the post-apartheid era an absence of nervousness on the part of governing elites to the reactions of ordinary people has developed. There is a creeping system of patron- client relationships – a civil society beholden to the political elite has gradually lost the ability to counter-organise against the elite in politics and in government. Counter-forces to elite nonchalance such as the churches and other organs of civil society have, in the main, been co-opted into the dominant cult of the political saviour.

The third factor relates to leaders in key positions of authority, what Ali Mazrui refers to as the monarchical tradition, which, although universal, is more common in African politics.10 This tradition manifests at four levels. At the first level, the leadership has the quest for “aristocracy and demonstrates social ostentation as a show of power. Leaders thus engage in conspicuous consumption because the expectation is that power and wealth are synonymous. Part of conspicuous consumption is expressed in profligacy where public representatives and officials either acquire expensive artefacts or patronise a host of clients and admirers, which necessitates large spending that is usually financed from state or public sources. The consequence of such behaviour is that the elite engage in acts of corruption in order to accumulate the requisite resources.

At the second level, the political leadership personalises authority and this generally leads to a personality cult where the leader is above criticism. Such reverence of political leadership renders criticism of the same leadership as disloyalty. To some extent, participation in the struggle for liberation accords such reverence to the political leadership, and promotes individuals to the status of demigods. After all, how can individuals who have made such serious sacrifices as to go to jail or be forced into exile not occupy positions of prominence in the state and in government? Such positions carry the attributes of compensation for the sacrifices made and recognition for their role in liberating the masses.

At the third level, authority is sacralised: leaders assume a sacred position of power in the political domain and, once sacred are beyond moral reproach.

At the fourth level, and especially in Africa, the political leadership demonstrates a quest for a royal historical identity. Credentials in the struggle for liberation bestow this identity in the case of South Africa and probably elsewhere in Africa and in the world where leaders assume the status of icons: Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Nyerere, Mandela and Lincoln to name a few. Liberation movements possess a royal aura and the leader tones it down or rises above it in humility, in accordance with their personality. Unfortunately, the humble leaders of the Kenyatta, Nyerere and Mandela era are creatures of the distant past in the current hubris of the political elite where the politics of power and material acquisition appear to be the order of the day.

Transformation has, therefore, assumed a completely different context and has come to imply compliance with a national agenda that is determined by the new morality as interpreted by the political and economic elite. While the original conception of transformation would have implied an inclusive change where the promotion of the common good would have been the principal objective, in its present parlance transformation has come to mean the benefits reaped by an elite cadre of the faithful. This is more evident in areas such as black economic empowerment (BEE) where, because of this realisation, the new emphasis is shifting to broad-based black economic empowerment (BBEE), both of which will be discussed in detail in the ensuing chapters.

The transformation of South Africa from an apartheid state into a non-racial democracy brought with it huge expectations from the general populace. What we had become oblivious to was that we were a nascent nation crafted from disparate and, in the main, contradictory value systems and experiences. Besides the contending cultures of entitlement, generated and nourished through three centuries of colonialism and apartheid, other subcultures whose main building blocks were political, ideological, racial, religious and experiential had also evolved. The normative base from which the new democracy would operate was to be informed and coloured by these disparate and often contradictory heritages; or the same heritages could be used as explanation and justification of the different registers from which contending elites in politics, government and in the private sector would draw. In the absence of a shared value base, new contending moral hegemonies developed. This left the Constitution, hailed as one of the best in the world, as the point of reference from which the day to day resource allocation and redistribution processes were to be informed. However, the Constitution is only a document, which, unless honoured in spirit by those entrusted with the responsibility of implementing it, can be interpreted subjectively. Progress made so far in bringing about things hoped for, and fulfilling expectations of what freedom would usher in, shows a degree of incoherence around liberation, particularly at the level of political values and public morality.

However, before the close of the century, six years from the attainment of liberation, fears that the politics of power would replace the idealism of liberation began to develop. Real politics had come to replace the liberation rhetoric and had developed its own momentum, determined to a large extent by political forces quick to invoke the same Constitution when it suited them. It was upon the realisation of this general social, political and cultural moral pluralism, and in recognition that a constitution, no matter how great, was an abstract document unless backed by consensus in basic values that Nelson Mandela, the first president of a democratic South Africa, advocated a reconstruction and development programme (RDP) of the soul. Backed by a group of religious and private sector leaders, Government founded the Moral Regeneration Movement as the starting point in building value consensus among South Africans. It took almost a decade before the Charter of Positive Values drawn by a panel of academics and individuals selected from some of the Chapter Eight institutions in South Africa, working under the Secretariat of the Maurice Webb Race Relations Unit of the University of KwaZulu-­Natal, was adopted by representatives of government and organs of civil society at Midrand near Johannesburg in August 2008.

It is not clear at this point how the Charter will be implemented in order to inculcate the positive values enshrined in its corpus. What is distinctly clear is that we are in need of the RDP of the soul if we are to build a common South Africanism. The honeymoon of 1994 is not eternal and we cannot live by the rhetoric of slogans and clichés of the past.

This book is not a review of the performance of South Africa in the first decade of democracy. A number of such reviews have appeared already.11 Rather, the book seeks to explain the present position in South African politics, especially with regard to the philosophical and moral thinking on governance, democracy, nationhood and the common good. In the process, this might help to explain how and why South Africa’s transformation has partially achieved and partially failed to fulfil the dream of social and economic liberation as envisaged by the founding fathers and mothers; as enshrined in the Freedom Charter in 1955 and repeated in the various manifestos proclaiming the ushering in of a post-apartheid South Africa. A key assumption in the prevailing discourse is that the dream of full political and economic liberation has been deferred. Empirically, there are disturbing features in the evolution of South Africa as an integrated post- apartheid socio-­economic system. Notwithstanding the achievements in the creation of a democratic nation state on the ashes of a centrifugal, oppressive and immoral apartheid system, new social and economic contradictions have surfaced on the political landscape of the nascent democracy.

The framework of discussion

The model of analysis adopted in the book is premised on the thesis of political entrepreneurship as postulated by Joseph Schum­peter and propounded by Anthony Downs. This is complemented by the concept of political instrumentalisation of disorder posited by Chabal and Daloz in their analysis of political developments in Africa. Downs (1965) following Schumpeter’s postulation, presents political actors as driven more by personal entrepreneurship than by the national interest as they often claim. The often-­pronounced community service imperative is only of secondary importance. In this regard, Downs cites Schumpeter who maintains that:

“Political parties in democracies really behave just like competing private entrepreneurs. They are not directly motivated to pursue their social functions. Rather their private motives are separate from those functions. The social function of General Motors is to produce automobiles and trucks, but its leaders and pioneers are motivated by making profits. A similar division of social function and private motivation exists with democratic political parties. Their social function is to formulate and carry out government policies, but their motivation is different. It is to get elected and to remain in power so as to enjoy the prerequisites and privileges of office as long as possible.”12

The framework is hypothetical to the extent that empirical evidence of a dream deferred, together with the posited moral incoherence in the ruling elite as a causal factor, rest on the observations made in various areas of performance and not necessarily on proven motives. Chabal and Daloz’s framework presupposes a calculated and purposive exploitation by African leaders to achieve premeditated objectives. In the case of South Africa, one can only pose questions at this stage and let the data demonstrate the operational motives. Chabal and Daloz refer to the political instrumentalisation of disorder as “the process by which political actors in Africa seek to maximise their returns on the state of confusion, uncertainty and sometimes chaos.”13 According to these two authors, disorder does not necessarily mean the absence of order in the conventional context, but refers rather to a rational process where “personalised infra-institutional relations through which the business of politics can be conducted and on access to the means of maximising the returns which the domestication of such disorder requires.”14 In this way the boundaries between the political, the legal and the social become porous. Flowing from the hypothesis, the question becomes: is the apparent existence of moral grey areas in the fabric of South African society, spaces that are prone to exploitation by political and economic elites, a function of this political instrumentalisation of disorder? Part of the purpose of this book is to attempt to integrate popular wisdom into a sub- or second thesis: that post-apartheid society is dominated by a sense of moral ambiguity and discord, both of which are products of the political struggle for human rights, where human rights and democracy became ends in themselves instead of means to greater ends – social justice and the common good.

A few questions flow from the paradigm of the political instrumentalisation of disorder. The first: could the ANC, as the governing party and ipso facto the leading definer in the creation of a new society, be attempting to weaken the existing institutions, thus rendering porous the operational boundaries between the political, legal and social domains in order to reconstruct a new social order based on the new political morality and in contradiction to institutionalised norms and practices?

The second: to what extent are the conflicting interpretations of norms in governance a direct function of the political instrumentalisation of disorder? In other words, is there a direct manipulation of norms on the part of the governing elite in order to achieve self-interest, and is the Constitution simply an instrument which can be manipulated to this end if circumstances permit?

And finally, is the gap between expectations and reality in the dream deferred a function of moral incoherence resulting from the apparent new politics of power as described in the opening paragraphs of this chapter?

A brief sketch of each chapter

Over its seven themes or chapters, including this introduction and overview, the intention of this book is to shed light on the above questions. The first chapter traces the roots of the moral authority of the state in general and locates the historical determinants in the evolution of public morality in South Africa.

Chapter two examines the performance of government in the nineteen years of democracy and sketches the public response to the dream deferred. The chapter presents a selection of performance indicators in the domains of political democracy, education, the economy and in the delivery of basic infrastructure such as water and sanitation, housing and electricity. It concludes by discussing and analysing public responses particularly in the areas of basic infrastructural services and the economy where overt protest behaviour against poor service delivery, low wages and poor conditions of employment have manifested.

Chapter three examines the role of Parliament in exercising its oversight function and compares the South African system to that of the British parliament as the mother of democracies. This comparison is particularly relevant because there are strong parallels between the South African and the Westminister parliamentary systems. South African citizens, like their British counterparts, expect accountability from their public representatives.

Chapter four links the absence of moral leadership to the chaotic nature of everyday politics in democracy. It draws from examples in the behaviour of political parties and organisations during critical moments such as in the election of office bearers by political parties and in the demonstrations and protests against salaries, wages and conditions of service by organised labour, including professions, to demonstrate how ordinary South Africans are denied democracy in practical expressions such as the right of access to health, work, education and the freedom of self-­expression and self-realisation through the use of violence, intimidation and organised disorder.

Chapter five addresses elite embourgeoisement through participation in the state and through black economic empowerment as an engine of equity. It narrates and discusses the politics of greed played out through the use of the political instrumentalisation of disorder where the political and bureaucratic elite exploit their positions in the polity for self-enrichment by manipulating the remuneration system as well as by abusing government tender processes. The contention is that this has been at the expense of the dream of liberation as the resultant economic and social disparities have polarised both the society and the body politic.

The sixth chapter addresses the question of contested registers especially in the domain of the rule of law and the role of legal institutions in the execution and administration of justice. Four case studies are pivotal in this notion. The first two relate to the influence of the National Intelligence Agency in judicial processes and focuses on two cases. The first case traces the charges of corruption, fraud, money laundering and tax evasion against Jacob Zuma as former deputy president of the country and current State President. The second deals with the charges of corruption against Jackie Selebi, then National Police Commissioner. The third case study on contending notions of justice relates to how Judge Hlophe, the Judge President of the Western Cape, challenged both the Constitutional Court and the Judicial Services Commission, the former being the highest court in the land and the latter a body charged with overseeing the judicial system in South Africa. The three cases are exemplars of contending interpretations of justice and illustrate the tension between ethics and public morality. The fourth case study discusses how politics impinges in the administration of justice and narrates how two politically connected individuals, firstly Tony Yengeni and secondly Schabir Shaik, went on parole under suspicious conditions thus effectively having their jail sentences drastically shortened.

The seventh and concluding chapter revisits the moral question and discusses the philosophical and theoretical modalities in the construction of the morality of transformation operating in politics. The chapter describes how, despite practical attempts by the political elite to construct a new social reality on the basis of contested registers, the moral and intellectual hegemony still rests with critical morality. This is evident in the retreat by the political elite into defensive modalities as a symptom and demonstrable effect of the cognitive dissonance caused by the contradictions between the ideal of liberation and material greed. The present reality is that South Africa is at a moral impasse. How long such an impasse lasts is contingent on a vibrant civil society where organised labour is a constituent part. The chapter describes how civil unrest, labour strikes and a vocal media stand between the rape of democracy and the triumph of justice and the common good.

The common thread that runs through the chapters is that of conflicting norms that inform political conduct and guide the behaviour of political and management elites. These norms are bolstered by an electoral system that favours political party dominance over civil society, resulting in an undermining of social institutions that normally act as moral stabilisers. The objective is to determine if a political system fraught with normative contradictions in the assumptions regarding what constitutes morally appropriate norms of conduct can redeem the dream deferred. The argument is that despite cultural relativism, democracy is predicated on the recognition of universal rights, which incur corresponding obligations. A rights-based culture alone is not a sufficient precondition for democratic accountability. Democracy and freedom translate into a simple dictum of “live and let live.” This is in recognition of a basic moral value that exists independently of power politics, and so cannot be subjected to moral expediency. The Constitution recognises this as the framework for our governance. The common good calls for an integrated moral authority.