Democracy Is Alive And Well, But Liberty Is On The Skids

South Africa’s democracy remains functional, but its deeply centralised state is steadily eroding individual liberty. Lasting change will require pressure from beyond formal politics.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Notwithstanding the significant socio-economic challenges it continues to face, South Africa’s democracy, which was formally ushered in by the historic 1994 election, remains resilient, functional, and comparatively stable.

It boasts a progressive Constitution that protects fundamental rights, separates state power between the legislature, executive, and judiciary, and establishes Chapter 9 institutions to support ethical governance. Its judiciary has demonstrated a meaningful degree of independence in upholding constitutional principles and reviewing the exercise of state power. Since 1994, it has held regular competitive elections, while a vibrant civil society and diverse media landscape have continued to shape public discourse and enhance political accountability.

That said, while South Africa’s democracy has upsides and remains functional, its structural defects have, over the past three decades, been accentuated by a deeply centralised state that has incentivised rent-seeking politics, intensified competition for control over state resources, and expanded the scope of state power in ways that undermine individual liberty and pose an existential threat to it.

Even as the African National Congress (ANC) co-governs South Africa alongside the Democratic Alliance (DA) and eight other political parties, the economic machinery of the state remains firmly under its control. It continues to wield its greatly diminished democratic power in pursuit of its National Democratic Revolution (NDR), a left-leaning ideological programme aimed at “transforming” the country’s economy, among other social spheres, through a combination of nationalisation, central economic planning, and redistribution.

The state’s control of “strategic sectors” of the economy such as energy and mining, coupled with its possession of a redistributive mechanism like Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE), means that those who occupy strategic positions of power are still incentivised to accumulate wealth through plunder or the extraction of rent from productive actors in the private sector.

In turn, this concentration of vast economic resources within the state partly explains the intense competition for state control that has underpinned factionalism within the ANC for the longest time. It also helps explain why two ANC splinters - namely the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the Umkhonto weSizwe Party (MK Party) - are determined to capture the state.

Contrary to what their political rhetoric deceptively suggests, their real agenda is not to empower the millions of young, poor, and unemployed black South Africans who remain structurally excluded from participating in the economy as a result of central economic planning. Much like the ANC, their real agenda is to use state power to enrich themselves while distributing some of the proceeds of rent-seeking through welfare to a democratic majority that rationally supports them.

Naturally, the ANC’s NDR, which also focuses on transforming other spheres of society such as healthcare and education continues to expand the scope of state power over individuals, businesses, and communities, greatly reducing their liberty to make independent decisions without undue interference.

At the time of writing, the state, through the “transformative” Basic Education Laws Amendment Act (BELA), has cemented its control over the basic education system and eroded the limited autonomy that the Schools Act granted parents and communities over the education of their children. While the implementation of the National Health Insurance Act (NHI) remains on hold pending legal challenges, it represents a thinly veiled attempt to centralise healthcare and gradually wither away the private healthcare sector.

That violent crime is rampant in South Africa and that South Africans are living in a war zone is no secret. Yet the same state that has failed dismally to perform one of its most basic functions remains insistent on monopolising policing through the South African Police Service (SAPS), a thoroughly corrupt and incompetent Trojan horse whose control by compromised politicians has facilitated the partial capture of the criminal justice system by criminal networks.

As a result, the DA cannot act decisively against gangsterism in the Western Cape, which continues to ravage communities and undermine public safety. Millions of poor South Africans with no access to private security live in perpetual fear of their liberties being violated by criminals who operate with impunity.

The opposition and the limits of formal politics

In a time of such crisis when the South African polity is unravelling and fuelling all kinds of populism among the poor and unemployed, there is no room for comforting illusions. While pessimism is unhelpful and paralysing, the political opposition landscape does not offer much reason for optimism.

Both the EFF and the MK Party, which could easily form a coalition government with the ANC as early as 2028 should its next president, following the elective conference, collapse the Government of National Unity (GNU), are ideological heirs to the NDR. What makes them far more dangerous than the ANC is their explicit desire to dismantle the constitutional checks and balances on state power and institute pure majoritarianism in pursuit of their destructive agenda.

The DA, which is the other major player in the GNU and traditionally a classically liberal party, can be an important force for fundamental change in the country, but arguably lacks the ideological conviction required to command full confidence. While its performance in government has not been without important successes, it has also revealed that the longstanding battle for its soul is far from over, with some elements within it still open to moderating or even abandoning classical liberalism altogether in an attempt to break its electoral ceiling.

What can be, for argument’s sake, termed the social democratic wing of South African politics, comprising parties such as Build One South Africa (BOSA), Rise Mzansi, and GOOD, primarily differs from the ANC on administrative matters and the application of policies such as B-BBEE. It promises cleaner and more competent governance, but democracy remains its North Star, and it broadly accepts the post-apartheid consensus that a capable, centralised state is necessary to address inequality, advance racial redress, and promote a nebulous form of civic nationalism.

To be fair, BOSA supports the voucherisation of basic education and the devolution of policing. However, its leader Mmusi Maimane does not subscribe to the view that the Constitution is federal in nature. He remains wedded to the idea that a more capable, centralised state – which inevitably relies on some degree of central economic planning and various forms of redistribution – is necessary to build a truly non-racial and just society.

Rise Mzansi and GOOD, particularly on economic policy, have a more progressive stance than BOSA, with some of their leaders demonstrating a willingness to embrace wealth taxes and other similar policies. Both parties are also noticeably more critical of classical liberalism as an ideology as evident in their scathing criticism of certain aspects of DA policy, such as means-based redress, which they characterise as anti-transformation.

On what can cautiously be labelled the centre-right wing of South African politics lie parties such as ActionSA, the Patriotic Alliance (PA), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), and Freedom Front Plus (VF Plus).

On paper, ActionSA has a solid grasp of basic economics, with its leader Herman Mashaba being a successful entrepreneur who is an unapologetic proponent of capitalism. However, its nativist populism, which is centred around scapegoating immigrants for socio-economic challenges and advocating for more restrictive immigration policies, sits uneasily with classical liberalism, which does not reject borders but generally favours less restrictive immigration policies. As several other case studies across the world have shown, this kind of populism often lends itself to protectionist economic policies that expand state power and undermine free-market capitalism.

Beyond this, Mashaba’s relentless criticism of the DA appears to be driven by more than just lingering resentment over perceived betrayal in the past. His continued attacks on party for rightly resisting past efforts to steer it away from classical liberalism, his scepticism towards privatisation in the City of Tshwane, and his propagation of grand narratives about collective racial guilt all suggest that he is an unpredictable figure whose commitment to the classical liberal tradition remains questionable at best.

The PA, under the leadership of Minister Gayton McKenzie, has no discernible ideology beyond “conservative” vibes regarding law and order, capitalism, and bringing God back into schools. Its alignment with the same kind of populism espoused by ActionSA is yet another cause for concern. Moreover, McKenzie is no classical liberal by any stretch of the imagination. He has proudly and consistently described himself as a “benevolent dictator” who would, as state president, suspend the Constitution and grant himself emergency powers to rescue South Africa.

The IFP, motivated by a desire to shed its traditional image as a Zulu ethno-nationalist party and renew itself, has tragically drifted from its federalist heritage and increasingly come to resemble its rival, the ANC, in some respects. It is certainly preferable to the latter, and it can still be a vehicle of fundamental change through KwaZulu-Natal if the few remaining voices of reason within it prevail by some miracle. However, the current prioritisation of renewal and electoral pragmatism places these voices in a deeply marginal position where they have little to no influence over the policy direction of the party.

There are, respectively, areas of disagreement with some of the VF Plus’s and the ACDP’s socially conservative positions. Nevertheless, both are important parties that recognise the federal nature of the Constitution and have consistently advocated for a federal system of governance that could significantly reduce the incentives for rent-seeking politics, lessen competition for resources at the centre, and expand the scope of liberty for individuals, businesses, and communities to govern themselves and make independent decisions.

This analysis is by no means exhaustive, but it has covered the parties most useful for understanding and mapping the nature and direction of South African politics.

No political party can perfectly align with one’s ideological worldview, and this essay’s measured pessimism about the opposition landscape does not stem from such an expectation. Notwithstanding this, it is important to place a premium on some degree of ideological alignment, especially in a context where ideas matter, whether consciously or unconsciously, and where the future of an unravelling polity is, to a significant extent, contingent upon them.

Furthermore, the measured pessimism expressed in this essay regarding the opposition landscape should not be confused with, or equated to, a complete withdrawal from South Africa’s formal political arena. Formal politics remains the primary arena through which political power is exercised and public policy is shaped. As such, it is central to the pursuit of meaningful change and cannot simply be disregarded.

The DA, particularly within the GNU, still has an important role to play in resisting the ANC’s destructive policy agenda. It must continue to champion the cause of classical liberalism and govern in accordance with its principles wherever it holds office. More broadly, all those who cherish liberty have a responsibility to support political parties that also value it - however imperfectly - ahead of the 2029 national election, even if classical liberalism remains an electorally marginal ideology in South Africa.

Beyond formal politics

But the more nuanced point that must also be considered is that the cause of liberty and fundamental change has severely limited prospects of succeeding through formal politics alone.

At least for the foreseeable future, the most likely outcomes after the GNU are either a highly dangerous coalition between the ANC, the MK Party, and the EFF, or some kind of GNU 2.0 in which an even weaker ANC continues governing alongside the DA and several smaller parties. A third “wild dog” coalition, in which the DA governs alongside a grouping of smaller parties without the ANC, is the least likely outcome. In all three scenarios, the prospect of a future government agreeing to decentralise state power is exceedingly slim.

This necessarily means that there must be another avenue beyond the arena of formal politics through which the cause of liberty can be advanced and sustained.

This avenue is civil society, and it is encouraging to see that it is already advancing the cause of liberty, holding the GNU to account, and applying pressure on it to move away from centralisation.

It includes civil society organisations such as AfriForum and Solidarity, think tanks such as the Free Market Foundation and the South African Institute of Race Relations, and advocacy groups such as Sakeliga and Lex Libertas. Collectively, these organisations are playing an important role in advancing the cause of liberty and must continue doing so in a context where sustained pressure beyond the arena of formal politics is essential to driving fundamental change.

Hopefully, this sphere of society will continue to grow, with more individuals, organisations, and communities recognising both the limits of formal politics and the necessity of pressure beyond it. It is equally important that the business community recognises its influence and exercises it in support of a policy agenda that supports the expansion of individual liberty and reduces the concentration of state power.

While formal politics remains important, it is individuals, businesses, and communities that possess the capacity to drive lasting change. This is easier said than done, but history has repeatedly shown that meaningful change often begins with those most affected when the state becomes excessively powerful and encroaches upon individual liberty.

Ayanda Sakhile Zulu holds a BSocSci in Political Studies from the University of Pretoria and is a Policy Officer at the Free Market Foundation.