(RACIAL) PRECARITY AS PART OF CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICA . Guest Feature by Vivid Gwede

Looking at the recent SA and US diplomatic engagements in Washington, one cannot help but notice the delicacy of the contemporary idea of South Africa both domestically and internationally. 

This is true as long as the idea of South Africa is premised on stable racial unity and reconciliation.

Recent developments seem to question the unimpeachability of this equanimous idea of South Africa.  

Firstly, it has been challenged by internal politics in the mould of the EFF, and later the MK, and their revival of a radical idea of black empowerment, premised on the supposed failure of the current political settlement to address questions of inequality, unemployment and, more sensitively, the ownership of the means of production, particularly land.

Secondly, and more recently, the idea of South Africa and supposed unity, has been called into question by a white flank alleging white insecurity and disputed farm ‘genocide’. 

The developments show how the recent rise of the global right may be unsafe for delicate inclusive societies such as South Africa.

Both SA’s radical blacks and radical whites from the look of things are fringe. 

But making the contemporary idea of South Africa more precarious is the decline of its chief political guardian, the ANC, which is facing unprecedented levels of unpopularity or at least a fall in electoral support. 

During the last elections, the ANC for the first time failed to garner a two-thirds majority garnering about 40% of the vote.

This has forced it into a GNU, and its choice of main partner reflects the broader wish to allay fears of a breakdown in the post-1994 democratic political settlement. 

The GNU involving the ANC as the biggest voice of the black population and the DA as the voice of the white community partly re-enacts Mandela's experiment of a rainbow nation in the 1994 GNU. 

In some sense, though necessitated by the ANC's omissions and commissions in government for the past 31 years, it also appears as a frantic effort to save that rainbow nation experiment.

And nowhere was this united front on display like in the Washington diplomatic engagement between US President Donald Trump and SA President Cyril Ramaphosa. 

ANC leader Ramaphosa and DA leader John Steenhuisen were at pains to show a united and cordial front. 

Following largely disputed allegations of mistreatment of whites, Ramaphosa, to emphasise SA unity, repeatedly invoked the name of Nelson Mandela, the father of the current political settlement – though the icon now sounded like a distant memory than a present influence.

Steenhuisen was even unambiguous about the current GNU's importance in serving the post-1994 political settlement from its radical opponents like the EFF’s Julius Malema who given the chance may unravel it. 

He may be inadvertently right because South Africa’s economic and geopolitical standing will be fundamentally altered by radical policies – never mind their philosophical, material and ideological justifications. 

But a doing-nothing-approach will exacerbate social tensions.

This will probably escalate racial and social conflict which since Mandela never really went away but somewhat remained under check. 

Everyone recognizes the fragility of the situation. 

Following Madiba’s demise there was palpable “white anxiety” over SA’s future. 

What is even more complex is whether SA’s internal harmony can be externally guaranteed without correcting its underlying basis and one wonders whether Mandela would have approved of it.

The fact that blacks and whites in the Rainbow South Africa need separate parties to represent them reveals the failure of integration rather than democratic diversity. 

But should the current stress test that South African society is undergoing prove too much to be withstood, who would be to blame? 

Allegations of failure to address South Africa's underlying social crisis have been levelled at both the ANC and the white community. 

The ANC has been blamed for incompetence, corruption, and failure to quicken development and social transformation leading to widespread dissatisfaction and inequality overlapping with violent crime. 

The former white beneficiaries of the Apartheid’s uneven development have been blamed for failing to relinquish their privilege. 

At the end of the current GNU, will this social and racial precarity necessitate the desire to extend inclusive governance structures? 

Or if the ANC regains its full dominance, will the end of the GNU spell more instability and disaffection among sections of South African society? 

Whatever happens, the contemporary idea of South Africa feels precarious – except it has always been that way.

A central promise of Mandela’s reconciliation was shared prosperity and it has to be addressed if racial and social precarity are to be minimised.

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