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
