TK POOE: This is the era of political creative destruction, not coalitions

One of the most insightful scholars in the study of change, economist Joseph Schumpeter, developed a theory that captures the essence of uncomfortable transitions — “creative destruction”. This theory speaks of “innovation ushering in new ideas/products and eliminating old ones”. 

While Schumpeter’s creative destruction theory is mainly associated with innovation in the realm of technology and machinery, its fundamental tenets are applicable to the prevailing political landscape in SA after the elections. This is all thanks to a political entity registered just nine months before May 29. 

The destructive nature of this political entity is summed up by its grand performance in the elections, something few saw coming. The uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party was able to amass 4,584,864 votes, 14.58% of the national total, which translated to 58 seats in the National Assembly. This feat has never been achieved before by any new entrant, but interestingly, previous new entrants perceived to have hived off the ANC, such as the EFF, COPE and the UDM, received a combined 53 seats in their first elections. 

Political creative destruction is not primarily concerned with whether the MK party as a political entity is good or bad, but that its performance illustrates the waning hopes and aspirations ushered in by the “1994 miracle”. The performance of the party indicates that those who voted for it, and probably many of those who choose to stay home on May 29, demand new thinking and new ideas about this country’s socioeconomic future.

The government of national unity (GNU) that has been formed is in fact a grand coalition between the ANC and DA, with the GNU concept used to avert questions about why the governing party has chosen to work with the DA rather than MK and EFF. 

The invocation of a GNU, while historically tantalising, holds little academic and theoretical standing on two grounds. First, GNUs are traditionally formed when a state has gone through civil war or some other catastrophe, or there are deeply seated irreconcilable ideas about society’s trajectory and the distribution of power. 

While SA has many problems, to compare it to Afghanistan, Sudan and the like obfuscates the question of who is responsible for SA’s current man and woman-made policy errors. Second, and quite absent from the current analysis of the GNU, is the failure to properly understand that the overriding problem is the ANC, and not the SA state. 

This lack of perspective denies us the ability to realise that a GNU is not required. From a strategic perspective and political communication front, the ANC needs to be given some credit for steering the conversation away from its shambolic elections results towards the government formation and the concept of a GNU. 

Regardless of the composition of the cabinet and government apparatus, this grand coalition faces an uphill battle in addressing the phenomenon of political creative destruction. This is owing to it having been created by the failures of the ANC government to address pertinent socioeconomic and institutional problems. 

While numerous commentators and South Africans of goodwill believe it is critical to get behind this grand coalition and extend support to it, many admit it is a bizarre set of relationships. I cannot but wonder whether the elites who promote this idea are merely avoiding substantive reform. 

Those who believe my views are overly pessimistic need a memory recap on how the same fervour was peddled by elites in the name of the “New Dawn” and “Thuma Mina-mania”. Despite the fervour, the ANC continued its decline. This fate is not an exclusive preserve of the ANC as other established parties that are party to the GNU suffered a similar fate, bar the IFP. It is for this reason that I believe the grand coalition might not prosper. 

Owing to the composition and inherent weaknesses and challenges confronting the parties involved in this grand coalition, I argue that three problems stemming from the development of political creative destructive will further hinder this proposed grand coalition.

• Lack of the actual centre leadership in politics and economy. One of the often-cited concepts in SA politics in the late 1990s and early 2000s was “the centre must hold”. The concept’s history can be argued to emanate from WB Yeats’ 1919 poem The Second Coming, or even the book edited by Yair Zivan, The Centre Must Hold, which had contributions from Tony Blair, Malcolm Turnbull and Michael Bloomberg. It simply refers to political leadership being able to manage several competing interests with varied impact, and processing those into a coherent and solid synthesised outcome — even at the expense of upsetting the competing interests. In the context of this proposed coalition, who (leadership) or which political entity will be the centre? Both the ANC and DA in their current guise might be ongoing casualties of political creative destruction rather than actual actors in reversing it. In short, there is a general leadership vacuum in government and in the private sector, suggesting the absence of an actual centre entity to lobby the nation behind it.   
• Constitutional exhaustion. More controversially, I contend that a thorough reading of manifestos from newer nontraditional parties such as MK party’s “The people’s mandate”, the PA’s “Turnaround strategy”, ActionSA’s “Only action will fix SA”, and others, point to the fact that constitutional exhaustion seems to have set in around the often labelled “best constitution in the world”. Moreover, certain GNU actors’ own visions for SA correctly challenge the supremacy of the constitution — think the IFP and the Freedom Front Plus.  

• Shrinking economic policy imagination. Finally, many of the grand coalition participants’ manifestos when it comes to the economic development angle have correctly identified the leading enemy of SA — unemployment. However, the methodological approach to resolving it illustrates limited economic policy imagination. For instance, on page 13 of the DA’s manifesto it simply jumps towards privatisation as the sole answer for poor performing state-owned entities (SOEs). This is a solution that fails to appreciate the prevailing global experiences as numerous states globally are now repurposing and re-empowering their SOEs for strategic growth in a hostile and deglobalising world. In Priority 2 of its manifesto, the ANC lacks the level of detail a governing party of over three decades ought to provide on the concrete industrialisation of former homelands and townships. 

This political creative destruction era will seduce, entice, frustrate and leave us emotionally vexed in the coming years, if it even lasts that long. But beyond that, it could be a positive as, much like Schumpeter’s original idea, political creative destruction might finally give birth to daring leadership and experimental imagination going forward.

• Pooe is a public policy specialist at the Wits School of Governance. He writes in his personal capacity.