You will never vote yourself out of the NDR
The ability to make decisions is an essential element of every possible solution to South Africa’s myriad problems. Knowing what needs to be done is of no value whatsoever if you have no means by which to implement your plan, however inspired it may be. Academics have summed this up in one word: agency.
Nobody understands agency better than the ANC. It is the essence of their infamous ‘National Democratic Revolution (NDR)’. The ANC has been extraordinarily successful in structuring South Africa to ensure the success of the NDR, even if the ANC itself now appears to be increasingly weakened.
The saying goes that the Devil’s greatest trick was to convince the world that he didn’t exist. The ‘demise’ of the ANC will do nothing to derail the structural legacy of their NDR, notwithstanding that African nationalists achieved a greater share of the vote in 2024 than they did in 1994.
The NDR established South Africa as a majoritarian ‘winner-takes-all’ unitary state and crushed all federal aspirations. It stripped traditional communities and their leaders of the little authority they still possessed. It loaded the judiciary to ensure that the Constitutional Court’s interpretation of the Constitution followed the NDR’s playbook on pivotal ideologies such as demographic representativity. It implemented cadre deployment in the public sector and BEE in the private sector to ensure both stuck to the NDR script. And in the GNU it has ensured the ANC controls presidential assent and all key ministries.
In short, the NDR has rendered South African communities, and especially ideological and cultural minorities, utterly powerless. Tragically, many still elect to cling to the illusion of power.
Deprived of agency
There is only one tonic to this skilfully designed structural conundrum — the unquestionable and inalienable right of all people to self-determination.
The greatest political taboo afflicting South Africa today is the unwillingness to confront, despite overwhelming evidence, the reality that South African communities cannot vote themselves out of their constitutionally mandated impotence. This, even if they unanimously agree on their preferred course of action. They have been systematically and intentionally deprived of agency.
Traditional tribal authorities have had their power usurped by the Department of Co-operative Governance and gender quotas imposed upon them against their will. Afrikaners have fought in vain as the schools and universities they built have progressively marginalised Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, and provinces like the Western Cape have been actively prevented from enacting the will of provincial voters on issues such as policing.
Very few of South Africa’s long list of problems cannot be solved in very short order if the actions upon which the overwhelming majority of global experts agree are implemented. The problem is that the people who know how to fix South Africa, in part or whole, are purposefully denied the opportunity to do so.
Self-determination = agency
The biggest error being made by the political parties (and traditional authorities) who want to pursue these solutions on behalf of their constituents is that they continue to play by the rules of a game designed to ensure that they perpetually lose.
How many times have you heard the gleeful incantation, “that’ll require a two-thirds majority and the support of six out of nine provinces”? This is the gospel of the NDR
Self-determination is its antidote. Its powerful potency is that it is already in the South African Constitution, and that by definition it does not require the consent of the national majority.
In South Africa, ‘Agency = Self-determination’.
Self-determination can empower traditional communities to be governed according to their custom (providing they respect universal human rights), Afrikaners to take back control of their cultural institutions including places of learning, and the Western Cape to claim far greater autonomy than is currently provided for in the Constitution.
In the case of the latter, it is noteworthy to recall that the Western Cape Provincial Parliament’s (WCPP) own legal advisors have stated in a written legal opinion that the people of the Western Cape can assert their desire for self-determination by bringing a simple motion in the WCPP. This is something that the Democratic Alliance can do at will with their outright majority.
Constitutional foundation
The concept of self-determination was conceived and developed to address precisely the problems that South African communities have found themselves in. Its purpose is to ensure that one group does not force its will upon another against theirs. Over the course of the last century it is a right which has consistently strengthened, and today it is a fundamental human right which all states are obliged to honour (jus cogens), and which the international community has an obligation to enforce where any given state refuses to do so (erga omnes). It is not a right the NDR, the ANC, or even the South African Constitution can legally derogate.
The South African Constitution addresses self-determination both directly and indirectly, and like most other constitutional democracies, it is mindful of not contradicting international law on the issue.
In section 235, the Constitution leaves the door open for all forms of self-determination stating that communities may exercise it “within a territorial entity in the Republic, or in any other way”.
In section 231, it recognises the legal authority of international agreements signed by South Africa, and when it comes to the right of self-determination, since 1994 there have been three: the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). All guarantee the right of “all peoples” to self-determination, and all three have been ratified by the national parliament.
In section 232, the Constitution recognises the authority of customary international law which includes the right of all peoples to self-determination, while sections 39 and 233 compel that South African law be read in a manner consistent with international law.
At the risk of labouring the point, sub-national South African communities including tribes, cultural communities, and provincial electorates have a right to self-determination, which, if asserted, South Africa is legally obliged to honour. If they want it, they can have agency.
Notification then negotiation
The political future of South Africa is extremely uncertain. At best minority political interests will find themselves as frustrated participants in deadlocked coalitions preserving the status quo, at worst as the horrified subjects of the NDR’s coup de grâce. There is no scenario in which South Africa votes itself into a genuinely federal dispensation, and calls time on the unitary state and the other crippling vestiges of the NDR.
Asserting self-determination does not prevent communities from continuing to contribute to the national discourse should they so wish, or even wielding power at a national level if they can achieve the necessary votes.
Critically, what it offers is the ability to take the actions necessary to solve South Africa’s problems in those communities which wish to do so, and a potentially invaluable exit clause should things take a dramatic turn for the worse under a future ‘Doomsday coalition’.
Pertinently, claiming self-determination in South Africa does not require some grand act, or the achievement of some impossible threshold. It requires the community concerned to notify the national government of their wishes, upon receipt of which, the government is mandated to negotiate in good faith with the international community standing guarantor. Many commentators have falsely asserted that section 235 requires parliament to agree to self-determination. The Constitutional Court has already ruled differently.
It is time for those who genuinely want to change South Africa for the better, and who know what needs to be done in the communities where they hold a mandate to act, to recognise that without agency, they are doomed to failure.
In South Africa, ‘Agency = Self-determination’.
This article was first published in Politcisweb: https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/you-will-never-vote-yourself-out-of-the-ndr
