Most people know that the political landscape in South Africa is difficult and complicated. The ruling ANC government has left us in an ethical void and the system of party politics is hopelessly tied to past allegiance.
More than ever it is important to pull back the veils and see the deeper movements of power. The balancing of power centres will, as ever, determine the future. While I am not equipped to comment on every aspect of power in South Africa, I have observed and garnered insight into the political dynamics shaping our country for years.
While power is apparently given by the population in national elections, this forms only one aspect of the power dynamics in any nation. Much of the dealmaking occurs behind closed doors and only astute observers can see a glimmer of what’s happening. We’re fed a constant diet of news tailored to trigger our emotional reactivity and bias. The short term information obscures the structural picture that is developed over long periods of time.
I recently moved to the Western Cape and have been trying to get insight into the dynamics of Western Cape politics as well as how that fits into national politics. It’s at present an incomplete work but a few things have become clear.
Some time ago a small political party, ‘The Cape Independence Party’ emerged. The main thrust of its policy is secession, which is the formal withdrawal from a political structure, in this case the national government. While anyone can tell this is a pipe dream — I mean treason and standing armies! — they garnered more votes than expected and polling showed that the people of the Western Cape were widely in agreement with the policy.
Poltical players with significant membership in parliament are bound to the whims of their electorate. The Democratic Alliance (DA) as the representatives of the population took note of the developments and began incorporating a lot of policy which I will call ‘slow seccession’. The strategy the DA has been pursuing is the devolution of powers from the national government to provincial and local structures in the following areas: energy, security and transport.
In January 2023 devolution of energy became possible because South African independent power producers became exempt from needing a licence to feed anything up to 100MW of power into the national grid. Cape Town followed quickly with announcing feed in tariffs. These things are not only helpful in response to the energy crisis we are facing but also bringing one of the basic pillars of our civilisation under the control of more localised structures.
The Western Cape has also been using existing mechanisms to devolve power in the realm of security. South Africa has long had metro police as well as police. Most of the time Metro Police are glorified traffic cops. They can give fines and arrest people. The Western Cape has used this mechanism to create the Leap Officers. The limitation of these security forces is that they have no investigative powers. And deeper than that all policing is dependant of prosecution ,the judiciary and detention.
It’s never a good idea to reveal the capacity of your security forces in a ‘Game of Thrones’ but these officers have been placed visibly in the terrible gang infested neighbourhoods of CT and were recently on the front line against the August 2023 Taxi Strike. Unfortunately two officers lost their lives.
Despite the limited powers the murder rate in Cape Town has dropped by a whopping 14% in the 22/23 financial year.
Thirdly, there has been intense lobbying in the national government to devolve transportation to local power centres with capacity. It was recently announced that the devolution of railway infrastructure and management to local structures with capacity will be gazetted — fully enforced in the law — later this year.
This brings us to another enormous power centre in South Africa. SANTACO. This is the national representative of the taxi industry. Everyone knows the taxi industry is a mafia industry. Everyone also knows its vital role in ensuring the smooth running of the economy. A smooth running rail system is an enormous blow to this power structure. Was this the underlying reason for the August Taxi strike, especially considering how farcical the demands from SANTACO became at one point?
From here let’s zoom out to the national picture. It seemed very co-incidental that Zuma escaped his reinstated prison term the morning after the deal to end the strike was made and although I can’t make out the nuance of this, one of the best pieces of advice I was given on building my political awareness at the moment of quelling widespread civil violence, was to watch the landscape and see what deals were made.
Deal Making in July 2021
There was an enormous collective sigh of relief when the violent looting and rioting of July 2021 was quelled but what’s much more interesting is how power rebalanced itself. Zuma had just been imprisoned, everyone expected something. I remember on the first few days I thought hah! They’re only managing the odd road closure in KZN. By Monday morning it was clear that we were in the middle of a well organised mission to destabilise the country. It fitted more with the blood curdling press conference Zuma gave in the days leading up to his arrest.
Several forces appeared on the national stage. For the first time in our current history we saw the uprising of residents associations and their private security forces against the frenzied looters. Next the Zulu Monarchy stood down. And finally SANTACO began protecting infrastructure.
While the Zulu monarchy and Santaco represent independent power centers they have often made alliances with Zuma and his power centre and in the first days of the insurrection they were aligned.
Shortly after the violence ended two things became clear to me: The Zulu Monarchy had maintained its incredibly vast land holdings in KZN. The ‘Land Appropriation without Compensation Bill’ was adjusted to exclude tribal land. The bill would have enabled the land to be repossessed by the state and title given to the people who are currently beholden to the monarchy. The long story of this situation is very interesting and perhaps I will share more later. I don’t know if title would have been given to renters but if it ever happens it’s going to add rocket fuel to the KZN economy because having a title deed means its holder has surety for a bank loan. I’m pretty agnostic on whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing but whoever is in power at this moment will look like a super hero.
So why did Santaco stand down? This goes back to earlier in the pandemic. Under the brutal regime of lockdown the government had been bringing non-conforming industry into the tax net. The taxi industry generates vast amounts of cash, it’s an absolute haven for tax evasion. My best guess is that the parts of power that wanted to maintain stability gave the taxi industry a pass on that.
With these two power centers switching allegiances as well as a backroom deal for Zuma to evade his sentence when things calmed down, peace was once again reached.
Santaco and the Zulu Monarchy have been playing ‘Game of Thrones’ for decades. The new player on the block was residents associations. Personally I think that represents a shred of hope. Obviously KZN residents associations were forced to pull together in a way that hadn’t yet been seen. Perhaps that unity in the face of a common enemy is an underlying driver of what’s been emerging this week. Under the leadership of the Westville Residents Association eThekwini rate payers have been banding together in a tax strike. They have amassed enough support to create a trust fund where residents can now pay their rates bills and a legal team to support the coming legal challenges. The city is behaving like a ranting toddler whose determined to believe this isn’t really happening. If the rate payers can hold out for a year, they’ll have an enormous ‘war chest’ and the city will be insolvent. Money is practically a substitute for power. Things change and then they change fast.