‍

One of the hardest things in South Africa is to offer a balanced analysis while motivating people to be appropriately concerned.

We read gruelling statistics every day now, and have become inured to them. You can point to communist-style reforms, but these are complicated by strange and corrupt ties to big business.

Analysts in academia will use phrases like “hybrid regime” to describe South Africa, but a hybrid of what and what exactly?

From my perspective, I can see elements of post-Leninist government (i.e., Soviet Russia, Maoist China), elements of fascist/national-socialist government, and elements of “neocolonial” liberal-democracy. But none of these gives a clear working model.

Perhaps the easiest way to describe it is to say that it is quintessentially Southern-African – you can see it in Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique and Lesotho. A dominant-party electoral system sustained by constant tweaks in a liberal-democratic constitution, which runs the economy as a piggybank for its ruling party cadres by embedding them in big business and coopting the unions into a ethno-corporatist patronage system.

We could just call it Ubuntu.

But the ANC understands this in a particular way – the Freedom Charter has influenced the direction of policy since 1955, and while most in the party do not read theory papers or high-level party briefs, the logic remains in place – the seizure of the economy, release of restrictions on land ownership for those who wish to take it, and centralisation of the political system under one umbrella.

These promises were given shape by a strategy known as the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). While most don’t read it, the plan was based on Lenin’s theory of two-stage revolution, in which a political revolution seized the state, and then used its power to achieve socialism.

The ANC achieved the first over a long period from 1994 until the present, when gradually all independent checks and balances in the state were eaten away and replaced with loyalists to the ruling party ideology, now seeing the judiciary almost completely subjected to these ideas of transformation.

Ramaphosa, upon receiving the Presidency, announced that, after 25 years, it was time for the “Second Phase”, in which grand sweeping reforms would be implemented to achieve true socialism. He has had to juggle these promises to subordinated with promises to foreign financial backers of liberal-economic and green-energy reforms.

This has created confusion, but the latter promises have been much less in evidence than the former. The socialist reforms are now coming forth in a series of dramatic policy reforms which are scary enough on their own, but taken together form a clear picture of a final nosedive into Zimbabwefication.

‍

Double government

Many look at the ANC and see a party corrupting the state. But from the ANC’s perspective, the Party is first, and the liberal-democratic constitution is a corrupting influence on the Revolution. They operate the state as an outside structure to be manipulated for the party’s ends.

The Soviet and Chinese systems work/ed similarly, but more totally – they of course do/did not allow political competition, but the key similarity is in this two-level, parallel-governance system, which some Soviet scholars (Steven Kotkin in particular) have called “double government”.

The Party would have a whole team of commissars responsible for shadowing each and every department in the formal government and keeping all policies aligned with Party discipline and ideology. This meant each and every office had a double in the Party.

In South Africa, we have the Deployment Committee, a body responsible for placing ANC loyalists in key positions supposedly tasked with impartially employing the most merited and skilled bureaucrats to the civil service, in a system called “cadre deployment”.

This much is not news. But Ramaphosa has created a new policy to handle increased political competition from opposition parties and local rogue elements, as well as the chronic problem of failing municipalities.

It is called the District Development Model (DDM), and is already in place in three pilot districts. The DDM is a system which aligns implementation of development policy (infrastructure, mainly) between all three spheres of government – national, provincial and municipal.

This means that the constitutional checks which allow a modicum of autonomy in procurement and economic planning between the different levels of government are to be swept away for committees run by the national government.

Resistance has been marginal at best, partially because the opposition is getting hopeful they can seize the reigns, and partially because there is little they can do about it. While the constitution places limits on authority, it places no limits on “cooperation”, which can be made a necessary precondition of the government grants necessary to develop the fractured national infrastructure.

DA-run municipalities like Drakenstein are already very eager to work with the ANC for grants to afford their pet projects, like the waste-to-energy generator they have lied to the public about for the few years.

The opposition party will not be able to tell them to stay away.

‍

Land reform

The main threat from land reform appears to many to be the Expropriation Bill, which has passed both houses of Parliament, and is currently sitting on the President’s desk like a ticking time bomb. Allowing for the remuneration of expropriated property along similar lines to “eminent domain” in the West, but making the process for appeal post-hoc rather than preventative. It also removes the right to compensation down to zero.

While there are some superficially reasonable conditions for this expropriation in the Bill, the fact that it can only be challenged after the fact gives the state an enormous stick to wield. Appeals processes in South Africa can take months or years.

This is an obvious threat to property rights, and empowers the state to threaten anybody with destitution any time they like, from judges to farmers to opposition members.

But the accompanying Land Courts Bill is a far more pernicious piece of legislation. By changing the character and rules of the Land Courts, the government has made oral testimony equivalent in value to any form of written testimony, meaning that hearsay now has as much weight as any other form of evidence.

A kangaroo court is now on the cards, in which any and all claims heard before our judges steeped in the ideology of transformationism and decolonisation can deprive anyone of property they see fit, and give any compensation they like, down to zero.

This is not a slippery slope, it is a greased precipice over which we are about to be pushed.

The government can dangle these reforms over our heads indefinitely, and can wield them whenever or however they see fit to defend their power or make money.

‍

National health insurance

The NHI Bill which has just passed the upper house of Parliament and awaits the President’s signature, is just as bad as everyone is saying, though it is worth mentioning that all of our big business interests supported it, right until the last minute, in the hopes of getting cut in on the administration of the lucrative national monopoly.

Discovery is a prime offender – they and the Rothschilds’ Martin Kingston at Business for South Africa (B4SA) were ardent supporters for the Bill, but wanted to be cut in on the program and allowed to shape policies. Adrian Gore supports the scheme, but wants it to be implemented slowly, on an opt-in basis, making time to bargain for a national contract. If you ever see Adrian Gore in person, do not forget to spit.

Essentially, the government will establish a department that will directly control all hospitals, clinics and GPs, whether public or private, and set procurement standards and contracts to allow maximum looting opportunity. This will quickly drive out healthcare professionals, who will seek foreign shores.

Your choice of hospital will be dictated by the national department, and you ability to receive any form of medical care will be dependent on a weeks-long waiting period, for which you might not get permission.

All coverage of healthcare costs will be taken from a central fund, to which state officials will have access, again, for looting.

This is set to be implemented next year, so brace yourselves.

‍

“Privatisation”

One of the biggest issues with the privatisation schemes many foreign investors have gotten their hopes up for in recent years, is that they retain all the gatekeeping functions that state monopolies provide, but with the additional benefit of massive corruption.

The subcontracting of Pier 1 in Durban to a Filipino company seem on paper to be a step in the right direction, but the ruling party maintains their control, just as they do for the petrochemical and gas generation deals done recently. The formation of a national petroleum company, the new independent power producers (IPPs), and the numerous other little schemes are not a new development, but an expansion of the current tenderpreneurs system with foreigners becoming the main beneficiaries.

Now, since the COP28 conference, most of the energy sector reforms are funded by foreign debt. This is bad.

But what they are doing each and every step of the way, is ensuring that cadre deployment is applied to the BEE contract system. Every company doing business in SA must be BEE compliant, and foreign contractors are no different. Their partners are selected from within the ruling party’s inner circle, and end up looking like they have a big communist tumor on their shoulders.

For example, take Exxaro Resources. Several members of its board of directors are either an ANC member (Mvuleni Geoffrey Qhena, Geraldine J. Fraser-Moleketi, Vincent Zwelibanzi Mntambo), or is directly related to an ANC member (Mxolisi Mgojo, son of Rv. Khoza Mgojo), while Andiswa Ndoni is a former member of the Judicial Selection Committee. Qhena in particular was chosen by the ANC to be placed in the position, which as the CEO of the state-owned Industrial Development Corporation, was a position he was well-placed to leverage. Isaac Malevu was also hired from within the IDC.

And so the capture of the private sector mirrors, perhaps less the communist world than it does the practices of Nazi Germany, where all state-owned enterprises were privatised, but placed under the control of senior party members, so that the economy remains at the beck and call of central politics.

‍

Solutions

There is not much time left to act, and few avenues for escape. While civil society insists on fighting each of these bills, we have been doing that for 30 years, losing ground every day.

There are only a very select number of organisations capable of acting, and a very select number of policies available.

From what I can see, the Solidarity Movement (Solidariteit, Afriforum, etc) are well-placed to enact radical change, but they will need to make drastic moves in their new Federal Plan, which will begin drafting on the 15^th of January.

They have the opportunity to resettle Afrikaners to safe areas, back Cape independence, and even carve out Pretoria as its own autonomous city, free from Tshwane jerrymandering control, if the opposition coalition plays ball on district redrawing.

There are other more radical options available to them if they have the balls for it, including a tax revolt and civil security takeovers of small towns. These strategies together could form the basis for a parellel state, under which nobody need pay taxes or obey laws set by black nationalist rulers.

But this will take 5-10 years to implement, and short of drastic measures like these, the only part of the country possible to save is the Western Cape.

So we had better hope the Referendum Party manages to pull the votes in next year.