While writing a previous series evaluating the Government of National Unity (GNU) after 100 days, I said more than once that the GNU was established in the aftermath or in the context of a crisis, and it also presented certain opportunities.

At that time, I focused on the crisis of electoralism, with the ANC losing its majority for the first time and no other party commanding anything near to a majority. (See Part One and Part Two and Part Three).

I also argued that the opportunities were ones where in documents like the Statement of Intent, one could make a presentation or an intervention which stood as an interpretation of elements of that document which were drawn from the Bill of Rights and from general aspirations towards an equal, non-racial, non-sexist society.

I described this as an opening in the sense that although the Statement of Intent was basically a technical document about how the GNU would work, there were also opportunities for intervention which could open up opportunities for developing towards a more democratic society and also a sense of the “common good”, shared ideas of what all needed and were entitled to as meeting needs that were acknowledged by all.

It was suggested that the members of the GNU could do this themselves, that is, intervene on the meanings of the Statement of Intent and provide meanings that were liberatory or emancipatory.

But I said it was not restricted to members of the GNU. Members of the public, academic scholars, faith-based organisations and religious leaders, members of professional bodies and social movements, among others, are free to enter into debate over the meaning of words in the Statement of Intent. They may give them a meaning that could enhance freedom in South Africa.

The range of words in documents that are important in public life do not necessarily have single meanings. They must be interpreted, and it is open to us to give meanings that enhance or retard the quest for an all-encompassing freedom in South Africa.

I noted, however, that there were no longer popular forces systematically organised on a generalised basis, as was the case once with the ANC and other liberation movements and the UDF and its affiliates.

The ANC is no longer a mass popular organisation. It is more of an electoral party. From the 1990s - without formal decision - the ANC changed its character from a mass popular organisation into an electoral party, operating in many ways similar to parties of Western Europe, where the vote and preparing for the vote is generally more important than concrete policies, and politics becomes more and more individualised with the leader displacing the party, and the role of members  further diminished.

Additionally, or connected with electoralism, since the 1990s the tradition of debate of policies and ideas has disappeared from the ANC s repertoire as an organisation.

In fact, little is left of the organisation other than the blustering of the Secretary General, Fikile Mbalula. This is how the ANC is represented instead of arguing over meanings, which is symptomatic of organisational qualities having been eroded.

People do not enter the organisation as new members and get inducted into policies, strategies and tactics that are open to discussion and debate and intellectual growth of all members.

That doesn't happen anymore. And it's discouraged from the top. It's discouraged in the organisational headquarters. Everything has become bureaucratic and top down, whereas in the time when many of us joined the ANC-led liberation movement, we had - whatever our rank - the opportunity to question and debate policies, strategies and tactics as well as concrete directions of the organisation. We would argue about them, and we did argue about them among ourselves. And this was continuing at the time of the 1990 unbanning and to a significant extent in the early years after unbanning.

Many of us were aware that a lot of thought had to be given to what it meant to be a member in the unprecedented conditions of unbanning -not simply picking up from the earlier period of legality of the 1950s, but also not continuing with the secrecy of illegal struggle.

I remember seeing young Africans with thick leftist books under their arms. Sometimes that shook me, because to be holding some of these books would have been illegal just a few years earlier.

That there had at one time been a tradition of debate and thinking and questioning would condition the type of leadership that the ANC and its allies could give.

The leadership of today is no longer one which is emancipatory, one that enhances the freedoms of people. It is depoliticised, with little concern for the multiple forms of suffering around them 30 years after democracy was won.

Leadership is mainly decorative and no longer breaking with the scandals of recent years. We have a series of public revelations concerning the Minister of Justice, Thembi Simelane, now. The president is not unduly concerned and has left it for review for some time (although reports over the weekend suggested that it would be discussed at an ANC National Executive meeting. But there are many others with more serious allegations who remain in important positions).

GNU as technocratic organisation and conflicts

Let us turn to the nature of the GNU as a practical, technocratic organisation which has a depoliticised face and way of functioning. If there are conflicts between parties, it is usually between the ANC and the DA, and because of the extent to which they have vested their interests in the survival of the GNU, these parties try to settle their differences behind closed doors and not raise them at a public level. And if it becomes a public tension there appears to be a willingness to compromise.

And that type of practice feeds into the depoliticisation of the GNU. The way in which the GNU presents itself and its deliberations, the image that is created, is one that has some measure of success in carrying out technocratic functions, as with Dr Leon Schreiber in Home Affairs

Now we need to ask ourselves, where are we now? We are in a situation where the partial resolution of the crisis (of electoralism) that precipitated the formation of the GNU did not solve the wider or multiple crises of the country. The wider crisis is still with us, and that crisis is certainly no closer to being resolved by us declaring that there's a crisis of leadership.

No leader is giving political leadership, leadership based on debate among membership. There is a disjuncture between the way in which the GNU addresses pressing social problems like poverty and the way in which social movements, progressive researchers and other engaged organisations and individuals raise it concretely in relation to issues like social grants.

And at a broader level it contests the semi-autonomous way in which fiscal policies are developed and argues that these need to be aligned with its institutional and constitutional obligations to meet the basic needs of people, large numbers of whom live at levels below that required to avert starvation.

It is also raised in relation to the ethos of budgeting in general that creates obstacles to realising human rights, notably the social grants on which the high court is due to pronounce. (See for example: https://www.iej.org.za/open-letter-treasury-must-align-fiscal-policy-with-its-institutional-and-constitutional-obligations/ and Matshidiso Lencoasa, behind paywall and Franny Rabkin, behind paywall.).

I, like many others, recognised the importance of stability evoked by the creation of the GNU and its winning support of potential investors. But we cannot have the focus on investment or debt or inflation or similar fiscal issues continually displacing or being treated as hierarchically more important than addressing questions relating to the welfare of the population. Most obviously, the question of sheer survival must be addressed as part of the responsibility of political organisations committed to bettering the lives of all.

That is part of a broader crisis of liberalism and democracy in a number of states of the world. It is being replicated in South Africa, the state that, for all its revolutionary background, has settled for the former liberation movement, the ANC, becoming an electoral machine.

That process of electoralising of the ANC has been one of the things that makes it vulnerable to a deeper crisis where people stand by and see their problems remaining unresolved. They do not see the leaders speaking about these questions, except insofar as they are technocratically resolvable, as with the Home Affairs’ issues.

There is no sign that they've got long-term visions about labour questions - especially unemployment - about the critical water crisis, housing, healthcare, education, crime and addressing the all-round crisis engulfing South Africa as well as ways of realising people's basic human rights.

Absence of an alternative to parties that do not care about the common good, read together with the educational crisis and violent criminality, makes for a society where people easily become part of gangs or vigilantism.

This is a breeding ground for extreme populism, even fascism, where there is no sense of the “common good” advocated by parties in the GNU.

The national dialogue could be part of such an alignment to the broader segments of our society, but that there is no preparation (as in trying to secure inputs on a broad basis) signifies that it is a paper commitment without any intention of involving and bettering the lives of all.

We all know that things are bad here in South Africa. We need to find a remedy by looking beyond what is currently on offer in the public domain.

Raymond Suttner is an Emeritus Professor at the University of South Africa and a Research Associate in the English Department at University of the Witwatersrand. He served lengthy periods as a political prisoner. His writings cover contemporary politics, history, and social questions. His X (twitter) handle is @raymondsuttner.