There has been much effort to try and characterize the nature of the unrest that has gripped South Africa in recent weeks. Following the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma for contempt, the country exploded into a period of disorder that brought flashbacks of the violence that engulfed South Africa before its first democratic elections in 1994. Some elements of this wave bridge then and now: the strategy of coordinated attacks on vital infrastructure, the weaponizing of deep racial and ethnic tensions, and the conditions of widespread poverty and inequality that serve as their background. The difference is that, when Nelson Mandela graced television screens to address the nation to appeal for calm after the murder of Chris Hani, it was a moment that put South Africans at ease—that reminded them that the postapartheid state in the making gave much reason for hope and that the African National Congress (ANC) would lead all into this brighter future. But when President Cyril Ramaphosa first addressed South Africa on this occasion, his presentation was flat and lethargic, representative of an ANC that is spent and left with little to offer the masses.
The available evidence suggests that the violence was predominantly orchestrated by supporters of Zuma as a plot to either extract concessions from Ramaphosa in favor of Zuma (such as that he be pardoned), or to sink the Ramaphosa government altogether. This is a dramatic confrontation between two factions of the ruling party: one, the so-called wing of “Radical Economic Transformation” (RET), represents a politics of faux radicalism that advocates a united front of the black tender-based capitalist class allied with the working class against the white-dominated private sector. It mostly serves as a rhetorical device to provide ideological cover for a system of political patronage in which the state becomes a site for accumulation. Ramaphosa’s camp, then, is associated with anti-corruption and the return to a mythical, clean capitalism where states and markets are neatly disentangled.
Many South African commentators have identified the RET faction as populist. In South Africa, this mainly functions as a dirty word, a floating signifier for a crass, antidemocratic political style where all power is vested in the grip of a charismatic leader—whether it’s Zuma or Julius Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), South Africa’s third-largest party which increasingly cohabits the same space as the RET faction in South Africa’s political field. In the last 10 years, “populists” have been the standard-bearers for the myriad ills afflicting South African politics today: systemic corruption bleeding out state resources and hollowing its capacity, social polarization through racialism and xenophobia, and the machismo which contributes to the country’s escalating rate of gender-based violence.
Indeed, the political trajectory the country now travels exhibits some of the hallmark beginnings of a full-fledged populist moment. The most recent general election in 2019 showed cracks in the center; the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA), the largest parliamentary opposition party, fielded their worst electoral performances to date. Though this is hardly enough to count as evidence of “Pasokification,” there is palpable inertia afflicting the mainstream parties. Despite coming to power promising to expel corruption, Ramaphosa looks mostly powerless to control members of his own party. Before this spate of violence, his hands were full with managing the fallout from a scandal in which Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize (who is mostly well-liked and viewed as competent given his professional health background) was placed on leave following revelations that he played a role in awarding an improper contract worth $10 million to a communications company run by a former aide.
While ANC comrades continue to use the public purse to fill their coffers, the party is moving forward with its plan to drain the pockets of citizens. In sharp contrast to governments elsewhere that are using the exigency of the pandemic to increase public spending, the ANC is reining it in—with steep cuts to the public sector, education, and health planned. The DA, on the other hand, has been bleeding support due to its misplaced obsession with right-wing American identity politics and concomitant efforts to rebrand as a culture-war fighting force (the de facto party leader, Helen Zille, sets the tone). In the corridors of elite public opinion, the ANC is roundly derided and the DA is routinely mocked. Of course, both parties have loyal voting bases that give them enduring electoral dominance. But for some time now, the political forces seen as lively and creative are either fresh players like the EFF, African Transformation Movement, ActionSA, and Patriotic Alliance, or the RET faction spiritually led by Zuma (read more about the unrest precipitated by his arrest here, here, and here).
These aforementioned groups are drawing from the populist playbook in more identifiable ways, specifically with regard to their ideological focus and political form. In terms of the first, they are marked by a tendency to make identity the dividing line of society. The EFF, for example, conceives of South Africa’s fundamental social cleavage as proceeding on racial lines. South Africa’s political dysfunction is attributable not just to nagging, racialized inequality, but that the “national question” (the debate on South African nationhood) remains unresolved. In other words, all political conflict is an expression of an irreconcilable, transhistorical antagonism between settler and native. Unless and until there is some kind of thoroughgoing redistribution of resources that makes the color of economic and cultural power in South Africa noticeably black, social instability will abide.
As already alluded to, the EFF is but a more sophisticated extension of the RET faction. The latter is by no means a stable or coherent one and mostly encompasses a loose network of people that stand to lose if patronage is seriously curtailed through legal and policy interventions. But the normative framework deployed by proponents of RET and the EFF is the same insofar as it diagnoses South Africa’s problems as stemming from wealth being far too concentrated in the hands of the white minority. The problem is not the unequal distribution per se, but the perceived unfairness of resources being predominantly owned and controlled by “non-indigenous” South Africans—i.e., whites and Indians. The programs touted as vehicles for redistribution—be it land reform or nationalisation—are not pursued as egalitarian initiatives, but as projects for reclaiming national sovereignty as a “black”—specifically “African”—race.
These tropes clearly mirror the strategies of populists elsewhere, but do they resonate with the masses? Notwithstanding its impressive electoral growth since starting in 2013, the EFF seems headed for a plateau. After its noisier initial years as one of the biggest adversaries of Zuma, it now looks stuck. One reason for this comes from an overreliance on its online presence, itself a quality of the populist political form. As a “digital party,” the EFF commands a large social media following with a unique ability to shape the agenda of the digitized public sphere. But this hasn’t translated into much political influence, as the party has mostly eschewed the base building required to actualize its (once) ambitious political program.
Nowadays, the EFF is largely content to organize protests against racism at South African schools (which are mostly counterproductive and involve little consultation with the victims) or against the national health regulator (endangering members’ lives during a pandemic while demanding that scientific decisions about vaccines be decided by political whim). This, under normal circumstances, is perfectly fine for a political party to do. Yet the fact that this constitutes the bulk of the EFF’s activity during an unprecedented social and economic crisis makes the party either laughable or suggests something about the true nature of its political priorities. Basically, the EFF is not really as anti-systemic as its leaders make it out to be, and it only seeks a transformation of South Africa’s elite.
The EFF appeals to working-class voters with its rhetoric, but because it lacks any roots in working-class society it has grown increasingly disconnected from it. It has mostly projected the idiosyncratic views of its top brass, and with expected inconsistency—for example, during this violence, some of its senior members have called for Zuma’s pardon, others have shamed his kleptocracy, and others have represented him in the court proceedings attempting to prevent his arrest. The EFF seems unsure of its identity—iffy about how far to follow its ostensible commitments to accountability, the rule of law, and Pan-Africanism, versus how much to pander to fashionable discourses. It is no wonder that it has started to tacitly embrace right-wing talking points to shore up against possible decline.
The communal racial violence of mid-July will certainly give ammunition to those keen on packaging South Africa’s divisions as primarily a conflict between its four racialized groups—black, white, Indian and coloured. But outside of specific regions—such as KwaZulu-Natal, where tensions between blacks and Indians have deep historical origins—race-based concerns don’t figure as much in the political concerns of the majority. One guess as to why this is so is that although white South Africans are still seen as the symbol of wealth and inequality, there is an established, if not bitter, commonsense understanding that they are so integrated into South…