Crisis after crisis: What we’ve learnt from 3 generations of leaders

South Africa today boasts the most sophisticated society on the continent. With two thirds of its population urbanised and less than 5% of its labour force engaged in agriculture, it is also the most industrialised country in Africa.

Most of South Africa’s sophistication and industrialisation was, however, achieved under the political and economic leadership of Afrikaner nationalists after World War 2. This leads one to ask what African nationalist leadership has achieved in the 73 years since the end of that war.

It is important not to exaggerate the achievements of Afrikaner nationalist rule. While by African standards its achievements may seem impressive, they pale in comparison with countries in Asia that gained their independence soon after World War 2. In 1960, the South African economy was about the same size as that of South Korea, which had a similar sized population. By the end of Afrikaner rule in 1994, the South African economy had fallen way behind South Korea’s in sophistication and industrialisation.

So, what has happened to African nationalists since World War 2? We have identified three generations of African nationalist leaderships during this period. Generation one, which we will call the Mandela Leadership Generation, was made up of the Fort Hare University students who created the ANC Youth League in 1944 with the support of several businesspeople.

Generation one took control of the ANC leadership in 1949/50. They led the struggle against apartheid policies and eventually gained power in 1994. This generation retired in 1999 after Nelson Mandela’s single term as president.

Generation two, which we will call the Exile Leadership Generation, took control of both the ANC and government in 1997/99. Over two presidencies or administrations, the Exile Leadership Generation rule came to an abrupt end in February this year with the removal from power in the ANC and government of Jacob Zuma. Zuma’s predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, was removed from power in September 2008, a few months before he completed his second term.

Generation three, which we shall call the United Democratic Front (UDF) Leadership Generation, took over leadership of the ANC in December and of the government in February under the presidency of Cyril Ramaphosa.

Mandela Leadership Generation

The vision and mission of the Mandela Leadership Generation was to abolish racial discrimination and bring about equal rights for all South Africans through the implementation of Western-style democracy of one person, one vote.

This change was to be brought about through the mass mobilisation of the country’s urban Africans, in the first instance, to demand equality between races. The starting action was to defy racial segregation of public amenities laws being introduced by the National Party regime that took power in 1948.

South Africa’s first democratic election in April 1994 was the culmination of many actions domestically and internationally that eventually compelled the National Party regime to negotiate with its adversaries, chief among them the ANC. The Constitution of 1996 cast in stone the political changes achieved.

The Mandela Leadership Generation, however, never set out to abolish South Africa’s capitalist economic system, a point Mandela emphasised on many occasions in the 1950s and before his arrest in 1962. He repeated this standpoint during the Rivonia Trial, where he said: “The ANC has never at any period in its history advocated a revolutionary change in the economic structure of
the country, nor has it, to the best of my recollection, ever condemned capitalist society.”

The Mandela Leadership Generation was deeply embedded in the South African society of its era. It had a clear understanding of the aspirations of the African population of its time and of its capability to achieve those aspirations. The members of this generation were the offspring of peasants, of traditional leaders and of a sprinkling of mission school graduates and businessmen who had emerged in the latter part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century.

They were Christians, Anglophile and admired the 1854 Cape Constitution that their forebears had hoped the British would extend to the rest of South Africa without the property qualification clause after the British had crushed the Boer republics. That, of course, was not to be, despite many appeals to the British government.

Over time, the Mandela Leadership Generation made common cause with Indian and coloured resistance leaderships, as well as with dissident whites of various ideological persuasions who also opposed racial discrimination.

Exile Leadership Generation

This generation comprised of young people, many of whom were still teenagers, who the Mandela generation had sent abroad from the 1960s onward to acquire military skills to fight the apartheid system, as well as the group that needed to acquire skills that would be required to run a democratic government. It took up to 30 years before many of these exiles could return to the country and put into practice whatever expertise in governance they had acquired. This was both a strength and a weakness of the Exile Leadership Generation – as South Africa was to find out during their 21-year period of leadership from 1997 to this year.

During their many years abroad, the Exile Leadership Generation came to understand some of the complexities of today’s world, especially as they affected former colonies in Asia and Africa. They were exposed to the dynamics of the Cold War and saw first-hand how great powers advanced their interests. They also learnt that small countries could resist being bullied by strong countries. This knowledge would be beneficial for South Africa, though it must be said the Exile Leadership Generation rather spent an inordinate amount of time on foreign affairs.

An important weakness of the Exile Leadership Generation was that it became detached from the people it was assigned to lead due to its many years abroad. It did not understand what the people valued and what their priorities were. South African society had become complex and its economy even more so during their absence.

To make up for its limited understanding or knowledge of the people’s aspirations and for its uncertainty about the depth of its popular support, the Exile Leadership Generation set out to please as many people as it could through the promotion of consumption-driven economic policies. Consumption for the black poor through social grants; consumption for the black middle class through highly paid affirmative action jobs in the public sector; massive creation of credit; protection of standards of living of the whites through inflation targeting; protection of the wealth of the white ultrarich by allowing them to take their companies’ primary listings offshore. Only blue collar workers in the real economy were left out of the feeding frenzy – they were left to the tender mercies of the trigger-happy riot police.

To fund consumption, the Exile Leadership Generation ratcheted up taxes and improved tax collection, thereby transferring resources from the production sector to the consumption sector. Thus starved of investment resources, South Africa’s real economy, especially the manufacturing sector, declined rapidly as a percentage of gross domestic product while imports of manufactured goods ballooned. Unemployment, poverty, inequality and public sector corruption thus rose during the 21 years under the Exile Leadership Generation.

The initial response of the electorate to the consumption-driven policies was ecstatic. The vote for the governing party shot up to nearly 70%. Gradually, however, reality started to dawn about the unsustainability of the feeding frenzy and, above all, about its cost to the welfare of citizens – especially that of the black urban working class. Remember Marikana? Not surprisingly, the electorate, especially urban voters, started to abandon the ANC, leading to the loss of its majorities in all three metros in Gauteng – South Africa’s economic heartland and home to the largest concentration of the black working class. After the 2016 local government elections, the ANC sat with 54% of the vote.

Panic set in among the black political elite that it would lose power in next year’s elections if the Exile Leadership Generation continued to lead the ANC. Thus the UDF Leadership Generation took the helm, albeit with a narrow margin.

UDF Leadership Generation

This generation spent the 28 years after the unbanning of the ANC in 1990 in a supporting role to the Mandela and Exile generations. At last, their time has arrived to lead from the top. The UDF Leadership Generation almost certainly felt aggrieved after having to wait for so many years before their turn to lead, especially as they did much of the heavy lifting against the apartheid regime in the 1970s and 1980s. Political correctness, however, dictated that they wait their turn patiently.

This was their first mistake. Today, they are in a weakened situation – their organisations, especially their once powerful trade unions, are in disarray and many of their leaders are in the pockets of white BEE patrons. Can South Africa expect salvation from this new generation? This remains to be seen, but they are off to a false start with their support of the Economic Freedom Fighters’ insistence to expropriate land without compensation. This is a wild goose chase that seems to indicate that the UDF Leadership Generation has run out of steam before it even started.

• Mbeki is deputy chairperson of the SA Institute of International Affairs, an independent think-tank based at Wits University