This article was first published by BizNews on 6 February 2025
One cannot understand South Africa without understanding the African National Congress (ANC). Its northern star is the National Democratic Revolution (NDR).
The NDR is a Soviet-inspired strategy which the South African Communist Party (SACP) says provides ‘the most direct route to socialism’.
Its long list of policies, pursued slowly and strategically over time, choke the private sector and entrench control of a tiny elite.
Institute for Race Relations (IRR) Head of Policy Research Dr Anthea Jeffery has done extensive work on this topic, deepening understanding of how the ANC operates.
The ANC now shares power with the market-leaning Democratic Alliance (DA), and others, in a coalition named the Government of National Unity (GNU).
Jeffrey wrote a convincing piece on how the ANC may weaken the DA, keeping them out of key economic ministries, and outmanoeuvring them at every turn. By 2029, the DA could lose votes, the ANC regrows, with the NDR remaining on course.
Or are there flashes that the edifice of the NDR is cracking?
The DA and its pro-market allies can creatively break the NDR, repivot the needle and gain political capital.
1. Foster off grid communities
I wrote a piece on how SA is far down the road of self-sustaining communities.
These pockets, with private water sources, electricity and beyond, are far from the reach of a predatory state, relaxing the grip of government.
The DA should foster elaborate alliances with civil society groups – contracting a residents’ association to maintain large road networks or harvesting rainwater.
These groups, accustomed to asking for forgiveness and not permission, may find an ally in the DA, winning political capital.
A DA councillor in the Dr Bayers Naudé municipality, where the DA is not in government, was summoned to appear in court after proceeding to paint road markings, replacing an absent government.
2. Devolve policing, lean on the private sector
The ANC sacrificed control of a monopoly on the legitimate use of force sometime in the 1990s, to high performing private security companies.
This a key structural difference to those who reached the promised land of the NDR in Venezuela and Zimbabwe. In those cases, by the time the masses noticed that the NDR had failed them, it was very difficult to remove the ruling party from power for their cast iron grip on the military.
The ANC does not have this option.
The DA has a capable Chairperson of the parliamentary portfolio of police in Mr Ian Cameron. He told me he has noticed better cooperation between the government and private security groups.
The DA also has an ally in the capable ANC Minister Mr Senzo Mchunu. In October 2024 he laid out a roadmap to better cooperation. In leveraging the deep pools of expertise these companies have, here lie easy wins in improving SA’s security situation. That is a policy and mindset shift from the ANC.
The DA may want to push for the devolution of policing to the provinces. If the DA applied its skills to policing where it governs in the Western Cape, it could swiftly bring the crime rate down.
It also governs in the second largest province of KwaZulu-Natal, where it governs with the pro-devolution Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
This could be used as a bargaining chip between the three parties when the time is right.
Centralised policing is partially SA’s staggering crime. Indeed, Policing is decentralised in most countries in the world, right down to community level.
Devolution would denote another check and balance against state entrenchment.
3. Put a dent in BEE
The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, given to the DA, may have seemed a lesser one. Then the DA Minister, Solly Malatsi, proposed that Elon Musk’s Starlink may be able to enter SA by sidestepping Black Economic Empowerment laws (BEE). Such ‘Equity equivalents’ could be providing equipment, to rural, poorer schools.
Malatsi may have had cabinet or Presidential nod to even float the idea.
To pull this off, offering companies the option to sidestep BEE would allow all involved to say that BEE is not dissolved completely and could break the hold of a deeply detrimental labour law.
I wrote an extended essay on how a landmark win-win deal could be reached between the ANC and the DA: a conditional amnesty on wrongdoing in office, in return for scrapping or replacing BEE.
DA Federal Chairperson Helen Zille said that during the negotiations for the GNU, President Ramaphosa nearly offered the position of Trade and Industry (DTIC) to the DA. That is the department responsible for BEE.
A future cabinet reshuffle could see the DA take the DTIC, in return for not pursuing ANC individuals involved in corruption now cooperating with authorities.
4. Put a dent in labour laws
SA’s edifice of labour laws is mammoth.
Might the coalition be forced into a state of panic if resentment spills over into large scale riots?
That could be the ‘gap’ needed to pursue radical labour market overhaul. Special Economic Zones with lax labour regulation could be carved out, or a card allowing exemptions from labour laws for the unemployed. That was proposed by The Free Market Foundation (FMF).
The coalition may be punished if it cannot bring down the unemployment rate.
5. Win compromises on NHI, BELA and EWC (and sell them)
There are signs that compromises may be within reach on damaging NDR-legislation.
One of these is the National Health Insurance scheme (NHI), which would nationalise private healthcare.
Signs that the Health Minister Aaron Motsaeledi is endless annoyed suggests that it is not being implemented.
A compromise was reached on the Basic Education Amendment Act (BELA).
The DA, having the Ministry of Basic Education, may want to run with its idea of school vouchers, which could be spent on low-cost private education.
Thought to be a popular idea, it could be trialled in the Western Cape, with discretionary provincial money, underpinned by business or international donations.
Opposing the Expropriation Without Compensation (EWC) of property is the DA’s moment to wave the finger, look the country square in the eye and say, ‘No, No, No’. It would be remembered and rewarded for that.
From a structural standpoint, the three above examples may well signal that the DA – and its involvement in the GNU, has in fact seen off serious threats to the country.
Whether or not it will register with the average voter that ‘your-life-would-be-even-worse-without-us’ is another question.
Forward
In late 2024, the SACP – the driver of the NDR – announced it was standing independently of the ANC. It believes the ANC betrayed the NDR by doing a deal with the DA. That augurs well and may allow the ANC to pivot more to the market.
Indeed, the more the ANC has pursued the NDR, the more it has lost votes.
The DA can skilfully make a crack here, or a crack there. That may be enough to win political capital, more votes, to later dent the NDR further.
Much has been made of the ANC pushing the DA around. It may want to respond in kind.
