Democracy at a crossroads: Time for recalibration?

Prof. Sipho Seepe

ON April 12, 2025, I had the privilege and honour of being invited by the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) to its celebration of its founder former President Jacob Zuma's 83rd birthday. The MKP sought to use the occasion to not only celebrate his life but also to reflect on his achievements as the country’s former president.

Reflections of his accomplishments come at a time when proponents of the so-called ‘nine wasted years’ of his administration are grudgingly revisiting their earlier mischaracterisation.

As I have argued in my book, Unmasking the Politics of Mass Deception, the characterisation of Zuma’s administration as “nine wasted years’’ was no accident, and neither was it an outcome of poor analysis.

It was a contrived campaign purposefully manufactured to expunge any positive development during the Zuma administration. Indeed, there were missteps along the way. My interest was, however, not in this easily falsifiable mischaracterisation of Zuma's presidency but in the failure of South Africa’s post-1994 democratic experiment.

It suffices to mention that attempts to diminish former President Zuma’s stature have failed. Reflecting on the outcomes of the 2024 general elections, Fikile Mbalula, the current Secretary-General of the ANC stated the obvious. “EFF, DA, all small political parties combined did not defeat the ANC, Jacob Zuma did, coming out of the ranks of the African National Congress”.

Zuma’s achievements in government stand as monuments against his detractors. It was under his administration that HIV/Aids ceased to be a death sentence. During Zuma's presidency, three new universities—Sol Plaatje University, Sefako Makgatho University of Health Sciences, and the University of Mpumalanga—were established.

Funding for students through the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) grew from R2.4 billion in 2008 to R15 billion in 2017, supporting 460,000 students. It was during Zuma’s administration that free higher education became a reality for households earning less than R350,000 annually.

A simple search of post-1994 infrastructure spending would reveal that under Zuma, the country witnessed a huge infrastructure investment totalling over R1 trillion in electricity, roads, rail, and harbours.

The above notwithstanding, South Africa has failed to break the back of the apartheid architecture. Thirty one years since the 1994 breakthrough, the democratic experiment has not delivered on its promises.

Instead, it has earned the dubious dishonour of being a poster child of global inequality. The country's challenges can be traced back to the fact that Africans failed to transcend the 1994 political compromises. This failure is due in part to black people’s naivety on the one hand, and poor theorisation of the post-1994 political dispensation on the other.

For a start, black people misread the political breakthrough. The breakthrough represented nothing more than a strategic retreat by forces of resistance. It was foolhardy of Africans to assume that the people who have benefited from their oppression would willingly forgo the privileges accrued from that oppression.

The second major misstep relates to the reframing of the anti-colonial struggle. The struggle was reframed as a human rights struggle. Land is at the core of any anti-colonial struggle. Reclaiming the land would have been the first order of business. The failure to address the land question has resulted in the current situation where land remains in the hands of beneficiaries of apartheid colonialism. Statistics regarding land ownership are depressing. According to the most recent land audit (2017), White South Africans own 72% of the total farms and agricultural holdings by individual landowners, despite them constituting only 9% of the population. Africans own about 4% despite constituting almost 80%.

For all the celebrations and claims of progress, this reality is scandalous by any measure. Africans must hang their heads in shame that this reality persists under their watch. Africans are in a no better situation than they were a hundred years ago when then Secretary-General of the ANC, Sol Plaatje, exclaimed, "AWAKENING on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African native found himself, not actually, a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth.” This is the second bitter truth.

The third major misstep was to reduce apartheid as individual acts of gratuitous brutality meted out to black people. While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission assisted in exposing some of the heinous acts perpetrated in defence of and the advancement of apartheid, it unwittingly ended up exonerating the beneficiaries of apartheid. By limiting its probe to receiving testimonies by individuals, the TRC underplayed the systemic impact of apartheid.

Fourth, the projection of the political breakthrough as an outcome of a miracle hoodwinked Africans to fall into the trap of thinking all South Africans are in the same boat. 

At the moment of conception of the democratic transition, the apartheid system was no longer profitable. The system had been rendered unworkable. South Africa had become ungovernable. The new political dispensation assisted it by giving it a new lease of life. Thirty years into democracy, except for a few microwaved instant millionaires, African people continue to live in conditions of squalor. 

South Africa’s socio-economic environment needs a total overhaul. More of the same would not do. Unless this is done, the democratic experiment will remain a sham. 

Fortunately, young people who form the ground forces of parties on the Left have understood this message quite well. They are no longer prepared to swallow the tranquilising pill of gradualism. They demand socio-economic freedom in their lifetime.

To achieve this, they cannot rely on the BEE brigade that is being used as a buffer between apartheid beneficiaries and the masses that continue to be exposed to the harsh reality of joblessness, landlessness and hopelessness.

Left-leaning parties like the MKP should as a matter of urgency revisit and re-theorise the post-1994 political dispensation. This would require a recalibration of political thought.

Professor Sipho P. Seepe is a Higher Education & Strategy Consultant