It is a truly extraordinary thing that 2024 offers us so many more parties and candidates to elect from, and yet possibly fewer real choices than we had with the 19 parties that were on the ballot in 1994.
Much of what will be on the ballot papers in 2024 will be splinters from the ANC or offshoots of the National Party of 1994.
In a sad way, our path into the future is hostage to our past. We have versions of the same old solutions we’ve lived with since 1994, and little that is fresh and made for the challenges of 2024 and beyond.
On what might be called the Left and the social democratic side, we have the likes of the EFF, an angry splinter of the ANC which is still pretty much the youth faction of the radical economic transformation wing of the ruling party.
It offers not much by way of inspiring leadership.
Its stock-in-trade is fake anger in municipal council meetings and national parliamentary sittings, where its spectacles of violence no longer impress anyone.
Its leaders speak of clean governance and immediately rush to install blue lights on their private cars, as happened in Ekurhuleni, telling the citizens who pay them to get out of their way.
They speak Left and commit to the poor on public stages and immediately rush to loot the pensioner’s bank, VBS Mutual Bank Mutual.
They are just like their spiritual parent, the ANC, which has not lifted a single finger to bring to book the people who stole from and killed 144 people at psychiatric facilities in the Life Esidimeni scandal.
Those 144 disabled people died of starvation, neglect and criminal incompetence.
The ANC speaks a lot about how it represents black people, yet it kills them at the same time.
The latest entrant to the ANC splinter groupings is Jacob Zuma’s MK Party, which is eating into the ANC’s pie in KwaZulu-Natal.
The party offers nothing fresh for South Africans except for the fact that it is led by a scandal-soaked leader who wants to unleash the construction, transport and other mafias in South Africa.
He is no different from the ANC, which encouraged him, protected him, and was prepared to die for him until he abandoned them on December 16 last year.
Tag along the many other parties — COPE, ATM, even the UDM — and you have the ANC in one form or the other.
Most are just nastier versions of the ANC or just projects by dictatorial leaders of the party (such as Zuma) who want to stay in power forever or gouge some power from the ANC.
Then there are the parties on the right.
Most are versions of the National Party, with the Freedom Front Plus representing what would have been the verkrampte (conservative) version of the party of apartheid while the DA displays characteristics of the verligte (liberal) aspects of the same NP.
Read these two parties’ 2024 election manifestos and you will be surprised at how they have totally forgotten that there was 300 years of colonialism and 46 years of apartheid in this country before 1994.
All they are interested in is getting rid of the ANC’s affirmative action, BEE and other attempts at transformation.
Very little is said about dealing with the pernicious legacy of apartheid except for the laughable hope that the rising tide of their capitalist economic policies will lift all boats from Gugulethu to KwaMashu. Yeah, right.
Then there are the many parties cluttering up the capitalist side of our spectrum, from ActionSA to Mmusi Maimane’s ill-defined BuildOne SA.
These are mainly parties that illustrate the deep frustration with the DA’s engagement with race, or their leaders’ disillusionment after engaging with the DA around race.
Believe me, the DA will demonise them and anyone else who raises the issue, but it will not go away.
Something is wrong when an allegedly liberal party in SA loses so many black leaders so prodigiously.
Many among these newfangled, black-led, DA offshoots resemble the conservative parties of the former Bantustans.
ActionSA, for example, sounds like the party of Lucas Mangope and Oupa Gqozo, Bantustan leaders who had nothing to offer except to say there is a capitalist nirvana out there, and who perpetuated murder and oppression in defence of their personal greed and power.
On the left and the right, most of the parties are just poor versions of the two main parties of 1994 — the ANC and the NP.
Our choices are diminishing — and many of our votes will be lost in the cacophony.
As I scrutinise the manifestos and the leaders presenting them, I will be looking out for fresh ideas presented by credible actors who are prepared to break the 1994 mould.
I will be looking out for an alternative to the tired, recycled, stale, performative nonsense of the many players who crowd the political stage.
Like so many other South Africans, I am looking for something that breaks the stalemate.
Our choices are diminishing, despite the plethora of parties
Columnist
It is a truly extraordinary thing that 2024 offers us so many more parties and candidates to elect from, and yet possibly fewer real choices than we had with the 19 parties that were on the ballot in 1994.
Much of what will be on the ballot papers in 2024 will be splinters from the ANC or offshoots of the National Party of 1994.
In a sad way, our path into the future is hostage to our past. We have versions of the same old solutions we’ve lived with since 1994, and little that is fresh and made for the challenges of 2024 and beyond.
On what might be called the Left and the social democratic side, we have the likes of the EFF, an angry splinter of the ANC which is still pretty much the youth faction of the radical economic transformation wing of the ruling party.
It offers not much by way of inspiring leadership.
Its stock-in-trade is fake anger in municipal council meetings and national parliamentary sittings, where its spectacles of violence no longer impress anyone.
Its leaders speak of clean governance and immediately rush to install blue lights on their private cars, as happened in Ekurhuleni, telling the citizens who pay them to get out of their way.
They speak Left and commit to the poor on public stages and immediately rush to loot the pensioner’s bank, VBS Mutual Bank Mutual.
They are just like their spiritual parent, the ANC, which has not lifted a single finger to bring to book the people who stole from and killed 144 people at psychiatric facilities in the Life Esidimeni scandal.
Those 144 disabled people died of starvation, neglect and criminal incompetence.
The ANC speaks a lot about how it represents black people, yet it kills them at the same time.
The latest entrant to the ANC splinter groupings is Jacob Zuma’s MK Party, which is eating into the ANC’s pie in KwaZulu-Natal.
The party offers nothing fresh for South Africans except for the fact that it is led by a scandal-soaked leader who wants to unleash the construction, transport and other mafias in South Africa.
He is no different from the ANC, which encouraged him, protected him, and was prepared to die for him until he abandoned them on December 16 last year.
Tag along the many other parties — COPE, ATM, even the UDM — and you have the ANC in one form or the other.
Most are just nastier versions of the ANC or just projects by dictatorial leaders of the party (such as Zuma) who want to stay in power forever or gouge some power from the ANC.
Then there are the parties on the right.
Most are versions of the National Party, with the Freedom Front Plus representing what would have been the verkrampte (conservative) version of the party of apartheid while the DA displays characteristics of the verligte (liberal) aspects of the same NP.
Read these two parties’ 2024 election manifestos and you will be surprised at how they have totally forgotten that there was 300 years of colonialism and 46 years of apartheid in this country before 1994.
All they are interested in is getting rid of the ANC’s affirmative action, BEE and other attempts at transformation.
Very little is said about dealing with the pernicious legacy of apartheid except for the laughable hope that the rising tide of their capitalist economic policies will lift all boats from Gugulethu to KwaMashu. Yeah, right.
Then there are the many parties cluttering up the capitalist side of our spectrum, from ActionSA to Mmusi Maimane’s ill-defined BuildOne SA.
These are mainly parties that illustrate the deep frustration with the DA’s engagement with race, or their leaders’ disillusionment after engaging with the DA around race.
Believe me, the DA will demonise them and anyone else who raises the issue, but it will not go away.
Something is wrong when an allegedly liberal party in SA loses so many black leaders so prodigiously.
Many among these newfangled, black-led, DA offshoots resemble the conservative parties of the former Bantustans.
ActionSA, for example, sounds like the party of Lucas Mangope and Oupa Gqozo, Bantustan leaders who had nothing to offer except to say there is a capitalist nirvana out there, and who perpetuated murder and oppression in defence of their personal greed and power.
On the left and the right, most of the parties are just poor versions of the two main parties of 1994 — the ANC and the NP.
Our choices are diminishing — and many of our votes will be lost in the cacophony.
As I scrutinise the manifestos and the leaders presenting them, I will be looking out for fresh ideas presented by credible actors who are prepared to break the 1994 mould.
I will be looking out for an alternative to the tired, recycled, stale, performative nonsense of the many players who crowd the political stage.
Like so many other South Africans, I am looking for something that breaks the stalemate.
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