Time To Rethink The Case For Decentralisation?

Decentralisation is not just another policy preference; it is central to the broader fight for liberty in South Africa

Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

Diversity is an important justification for decentralisation in South Africa, but it may be time to consider deprioritising it in the marketplace of ideas if the aim is to build support for decentralisation.

This is because arguing that the country is diverse, and that a decentralised system of governance is necessary to accommodate this diversity, almost always elicits the usual strawman about apartheid nostalgia. One is accused of concealing separate development and Bantustanism under the progressive language of autonomy. The fact that organised Afrikaners and a handful of Zulu speakers are at the centre of championing this diversity argument does nothing to improve the situation. The history of the so-called “third force” is then invoked to suggest that Afrikaners are once again using their supposed Zulu puppets to fragment black people.

This is obviously not true, but it is the common response to the diversity argument, and it stifles any necessary and substantive discussion about wresting power away from Pretoria.

A possible solution is not to stop pushing for decentralisation, but rather to reframe the case for it by prioritising rent-seeking politics as the central justification.

Centralisation and the politics of rent-seeking

At this point, any politically literate person knows that South Africa’s centralised democracy is deeply flawed and has become little more than a mechanism for rent-seeking. After more than three decades of ANC majoritarianism, political parties, particularly those on the left - including ANC offshoots such as MK and the EFF - have learnt how to play the game.

What has been the game?

It has been the leveraging of a largely poor and unemployed black majority to capture state power and gain access to the national pot of resources. This majority has been consistently lured with promises of incentives and redistribution. Once power has been secured, some welfare has been dished out to it, with the bulk of state resources flowing to the political elite, its patronage networks, and an ecosystem of highly paid civil servants who make up the bureaucratic class.

Mass employment has not been created because a degree of security and upward mobility would pose a threat to the politics of mass poverty and state dependence. Those who think this claim is conspiratorial must explain why the ANC has failed to create an environment that encourages growth and job creation over the past three decades, despite the abundance of common-sense solutions and successful models from other parts of the world.

The people who have suffered the most from this arrangement are part of the upper and middle classes in society, and they have collectively shelled out billions of rands in personal income tax each year. Set aside the argument that everyone pays tax through VAT and other levies. Personal income tax remains the single largest contributor to tax revenue, and these taxpayers have been squeezed relentlessly.

Even as the GNU governs the country, this centralised machinery of rent-seeking remains firmly in place and is likely to do so until 2029. Beyond that point, change is arguably unlikely, whether through another coalition arrangement or, by some miracle, a parliamentary majority for the MK Party.

Reframing the case for decentralisation

In this context, there may be a case for arguing that advocacy should focus more on convincing taxpayers that politics in this centralised democracy is a grift that has scammed and will continue to scam them as productive people. Decentralisation is a possible solution to the problem.

Of course, there are objections. This approach certainly does not guarantee success, and it will likely elicit unfair criticism even from people within the classes in question, ranging from claims that it is a class project aimed at excluding the poor to accusations that it promotes inequality between regions by decentralising tax policy and collection.

But the mere fact that it can give rise to such criticisms suggests that it may be better, precisely because it can open the conversation, however heated it may be. The dynamics of decentralisation in practice can be debated without the discussion ending at the claim that its proponents are nostalgic for Apartheid.

For the sake of clarity, this is not to suggest that there is anything inherently wrong with diversity, or that it should be discarded in the marketplace of ideas. There is nothing objectionable about it; it is simply the reality of the country. However, if (and it’s a huge if) the aim is to build broad public support for decentralisation, then diversity may need to be deprioritised in favour of an approach that centres rent seeking.

The tragedy of politics is that perception often matters more than truth. Ordinarily, this would not be an issue. But decentralisation is not just another policy preference; it is central to the broader fight for liberty in South Africa. For this reason, it may be time to reconsider not the substance of the argument for it, but the way in which it is advocated for.

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