Pissing against the Wind

Politics in South Africa! Many think that South Africa is heading for political turmoil, economic stagnation coupled with the explosion of her racial melting pot when it reaches boiling point. There is an intrinsic aspect of South African politics that is worth dwelling into, and that is post liberation party politics.

Post liberation party politics has been studied through the assesment of post colonial African independence. Post liberation party politics is studied within post colonial dimensions and the type of states that have emerged from thereof. In South Africa however, the context is entirely different, there was no full scale intrastate conflict or civil war that brought about the libeartion of black people. There were skirmishes, protests, terrorists attacks, sabotage, philosophies such as Black Consciousness, Pan Africanism and international sanctions that contributed to the end of apartheid and the emergence of post liberation party politics.

There is a pattern in African multi party democracies, and that pattern is the dominant party system that has come to characterise the African democratic experience. All one needs to do is look at the state of opposition politics in Southern Africa with examples ranging from Mozambiques FRELIMO, Angola's MPLA, Namibia's SWAPO and South Africas Very own ANC. Now the question that is hot on the lips of every political comentator in the country is, "is the ANC leading South Africa into oblivion"? Not in those words, but clearly the proposed amalgamation of opposition parties in the country signifies the proactive measures that opposition parties are taking in trying to combat the ANC Titan. The question that needs to be raised in South African political discourse is: "To what extent will the governing political party cling to political power?"

Lets look at the political terminology that has charactersied post Thabo Mbeki ANC political discourse over the past couple of years. We have had terms sucha as militancy, cockroaches, womaniser, rapist, tenderpreneurs, hyena's, fat cats, elite, corruption, over indulgent spendthrifts and so on and so forth. Putting those into perspective, where is this country headed? Your guess is as good as mine but untill we move from liberation politics and entitlemnt to nation building, job creation and infrastructure developmentm, the better. Untill then all of our efforts to ensure the effective development of of our country will be like pissing against the wind.