The National Democratic Revolution is at odds with the values spelt out in the Constitution

by | Jan 30, 2025 | Chapter 9, General | 0 comments

By Paul Hoffman

If more politicians took their oaths of office more seriously, the freedom obtained in the Struggle would not be nearly as incomplete as it manifestly is in 2025. Too few politicians appreciate that they are constrained by the Constitution.

Thirty years into a new dispensation in SA called “constitutional democracy under the rule of law” in which multiparty democracy is a given, freedom remains elusive.

There are regular elections “to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness”, all ostensibly aimed at promoting human dignity, achieving equality and advancing human rights and freedoms. These values are all neatly spelt out in section 1 of the Constitution, our supreme law.

The struggle for freedom is the people’s struggle, not that of the politicians.

The struggle continues and will continue while hospitals are scenes of looting, not healing; schools are the venues at which nepotism and corrupt procurement play out, and educational standards drop; and while Sassa grants remain stubbornly inadequate after 30 years that should have been making people freer and less dependent on grants.

Inequality, as measured scientifically with the Gini coefficient, has never been greater than it is now in SA. The new emergent middle class of tenderpreneurs and overpaid civil servants has exacerbated the gap between rich and poor in SA.

The Marikana shootings, the Life Esidemeni neglect of impecunious mental patients, the Stilfontein informal mining debacle — all bear witness to the undermining of human dignity by the systems of governance actually in place, and not those envisaged in our foundational values and the Preamble to the Constitution.

The Zondo Commission revealed the rot in politics in SA and fingered cadre deployment by the ANC as a cause of that rot. The ANC was called “Accused number one in State Capture” by its own leader. It is not difficult to join the dots.

Quest for power

Too many of our politicians are not in politics to promote constitutional values and improve the delivery of services that address the needs of the people of SA — rather, they are in search of untrammelled power.

If more politicians took their oaths of office more seriously, the freedom obtained in the Struggle would not be nearly as incomplete as it manifestly is in 2025. Too few elected politicians appreciate that they are constrained by the limits set in the Constitution.

It was Smuts Ngonyama, currently our ambassador to Japan, who famously said: “I did not join the Struggle to be poor.” Greed, self-enrichment and corrupt means of seeking and retaining power (and with it wealth) have become the order of the day in SA. Former Chief Justice Raymond Zondo has warned that drastic action against the corrupt is urgently needed. Yet there is no appetite for acting on this warning.

The strategies and tactics used to govern by the largest political party, the ANC, are based on the achievement of the goals of its so-called National Democratic Revolution (NDR).

The aims of the NDR have proved unattainable despite the ANC being the dominant party in SA through six successive parliaments. Constitutional values trumped those of the NDR during the dominant-party state that ended in May 2024. Reversals in public interest litigation irritated ANC politicians when their laws and conduct were repeatedly struck down as unconstitutional.

The judiciary has held the line in exemplary fashion. The NDR will be tested again when the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act, National Health Insurance and expropriation without compensation come under constitutional scrutiny in looming litigation. If the ANC is so ill-advised as to oppose the Glynnis Breytenbach Bills for a new anti-corruption body, more litigation can be expected.

It is only in the seventh Parliament, 30 years into the new order, that for the first time the ANC does not command a majority of the seats in the National Assembly. Despite its enviably long run of power, it has been unable to assert the NDR fully.

It still seeks to do so despite the fact that none of its coalition partners in the so-called Government of National Unity (GNU) are proponents of the NDR.

The ANC is mindful of its leftist allies in the SA Communist Party and Cosatu, the trade union federation that does the heavy lifting for the ANC at election time. All three members of what used to be called the Tripartite Alliance want the GNU to implement the policies of the NDR, with the ANC in the driving seat at all times.

None of the other parties in the GNU shares this desire or mindset. They are all more attuned to the supremacy of the Constitution and want no truck with the NDR.

The difficulty with implementing the NDR — and this has been a problem since day one of the “new South Africa” — is that the tenets of the NDR are at odds with those of the Constitution, as summarised above.

Checks and balances

The NDR seeks what its proponents call hegemonic control of all the levers of power in society. In society, mark you, not just governance. This aim of being comprehensively in charge of everything does not sit well with the rule of law, the doctrine of the separation of powers and the existence of checks and balances on the exercise of power that have been built into the system.

Our independent and impartial judiciary and the Chapter Nine institutions that support constitutional democracy with guaranteed independence for each of them trip up the NDR regularly when functioning optimally.

Without Thuli Madonsela’s resoluteness there would have been no Zondo Commission, no Nkandla litigation and no findings against Bheki Cele that led to his dismissal as commissioner of police.

In essence, the Constitution seeks to transform society in SA into what is envisaged in the document, while the NDR seeks its own hegemony via its revolutionary methodology.

The transformation is one in which the state respects, protects, promotes and fulfils all of the rights guaranteed to all by the Bill of Rights, which is Chapter Two of the Constitution. The democratic centralism of the NDR seeks to revolutionise SA in ways that involve the comprehensive control of all levers of power in society by the ANC as the ruling party.

We are ruled by the Constitution, not any political party. All parties govern, not rule, in accordance with the tenets and limits of the Constitution. When they do not, public interest litigation ensues and is usually won.

The theory behind the revolutionary strivings of the NDR is drawn from the teachings of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and others who embraced (or even invented) communism as a means of ordering society. The Soviet Union abandoned communism at the time of its demise when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Today Russia is an oligarchy and many of its former associates in the USSR are free countries, some are members of Nato and the EU.

As if it is stuck in a time warp, the ANC persists with its ideology based on the NDR despite the empirical proof that its aims do not work in practice in the 21st century and certainly not in a country which has a justiciable Bill of Rights built into its Constitution.

How then are ordinary SA citizens to assert their freedom in the circumstances created by the formation of the GNU as a Constitution-fearing body under the rule of law when the ANC persists in its pursuit of the NDR?

Freedom is a responsibility as well as a right.

If freedom is not exercised it withers away. All engaged and active citizens in SA — and that should mean everyone — need to bring to bear the consciousness of the fact that freedom in a corrupt society such as ours is all too often either illusory or unattainable because corruption has the effect of stealing from the poor.

Working toward asserting freedom involves proper scrutiny of the NDR and a close look at the policies of the GNU. If the GNU strays from the path of the Constitution and the rule of law, engaged citizens must continue to take up the cudgels of public interest litigation to assert their freedom. There are plenty of NGOs ready, willing and able to assist where good cause is shown.

Engaged citizens in SA today need to be reminded of the words of Demosthenes, written for Athenians more than 300 years before the birth of Christ, when he suggested that vigilance should be the watchword. He said:

“The strongest shield and safeguard for all men, especially for the masses against tyrants, is mistrust of those in power. If you value liberty, then guard that mistrust, hold fast to it. For every king, every despot is the sworn enemy of freedom.”

Any politicians who ignore their oaths to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law are not to be trusted with the votes of ordinary freedom-loving citizens in SA.

A system of laws that requires the state to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights guaranteed to all in the Bill of Rights is not a system in which the tenets of the NDR are tenable.

The NDR should be abandoned, as was suggested by Professor Kader Asmal. If it is not relinquished by the ANC, it will continue to clash with the sound constitutional values that ought to be the watchwords of those who govern in SA. DM

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