No, negotiation, compromise and bridge-building are not a national speciality WRITTEN BY TERENCE CORRIGAN

[Nat Quinn]

No, negotiation, compromise and bridge-building are not a national speciality WRITTEN BY TERENCE CORRIGAN

South Africa has a unique ability to build bridges and find compromises. Its political miracle in the 1990s was in the ability of people across the spectrum to reach out to one another, develop mutual understanding and create an inclusive democracy that is the true envy of the world. Indeed, its expertise at managing the tough work of negotiation and accommodation is nothing less than an example for the world.

This, at least, is the national myth, a warm, endearing myth that is invoked on global platforms to showcase South African exceptionalism. Consider this extract from President Ramaphosa’s address to the World Economic Forum in January:

South Africa has a rich history of inclusive dialogue and common action. Over the last few years, the South African government has been working closely with social partners in business and in labour to address key national challenges and drive inclusive growth.

This cooperative culture and approach was taken to a higher level with the establishment of the Government of National Unity following the elections we held in May last year. The Government of National Unity, made up of ten political parties, has been vital to stability and inclusive governance, and has contributed to greater interest among investors in South Africa’s economic prospects.

As in all national myths, there are elements of reality and elements of imagination in this one. South Africa’s transition to democracy was a triumph of negotiation – of sorts. The country could have ground on as it was, slipping into advanced economic crisis and violent confrontation. Or the protagonists could take a breath, step back and try to draw up something that no one was entirely happy with, but that everyone could broadly accept. Thankfully, the latter option prevailed. But this was only possible because the gravity of the crisis was recognised by all protagonists, and the incumbent government accepted that it would need to cede power. Besides, powerful interests in the country – such as the business community – and internationally had taken an interest in seeing the transition succeed.

Still, this experience gave it considerable cachet in those early years. The insights of South Africans were in demand to assist in dealing with such intractable conflicts as those in Israel/Palestine and in Northern Ireland. South Africa itself put enormous efforts into dealing with conflicts on the continent. But here too, remember that South Africa could play this role because of the prevailing conjunction of circumstances and national capabilities: not only did South Africa have a particular moral authority, but it was the indisputable economic colossus and had the military punch to make a difference.

Pragmatic assessment

In other words, whatever successes South Africa can claim arose from a clear idea of what was at stake, a pragmatic assessment of the nature of the impasse, the capacity to act appropriately, and an environment conducive to this. There was no natural proclivity for negotiation and compromise.

Indeed, those with long memories would recall that the crisis that came to debilitate South Africa in the 1980s owed a great deal to a refusal to negotiate and compromise. The incumbent National Party ruled out talks with the ANC until it renounced violence and broke with the SA Communist Party. This was actually something of a shift from the stance taken by previous generations of NP leadership, which denied that black and white people were part of a common society, so there was precious little to discuss.

The ANC, meanwhile, held out a hope that it could somehow break the then-existing government, with some romantics seeing this culminating in the ANC flag hoisted above the ruins of the Union Buildings. This was never remotely possible; the ANC never developed anything that could militarily emulate its idols in Cuba, or for that matter its peer organisations in the region. But Thabo Mbeki once declared that the ANC’s struggle was not for negotiations, but for a “transfer of power to the people”. Negotiations would merely be a route to this outcome.

And if the National Party for much of its existence denied the central issue for negotiation – how South Africa could be organised as a common society – the ANC denied the legitimacy of its inevitable interlocutors. As Mbeki’s words illustrate, the ANC saw itself as coterminous with “the people”. This is standard thinking for liberation movements, and it’s deleterious even to recognising that good faith negotiation is possible.

Incidentally, it might be recalled that South Africa’s own transition was not an unabashedly inclusive affair. The Inkatha Freedom Party largely rejected the negotiation process (ironically, since it had punted negotiations as the route to a settlement for the country) and boycotted the post-election Constitutional Assembly. It agreed to participate in the election only after a series of appeals and interventions, eventually fronted by a Kenyan mediator, Washington Okumu, who put forward a number of guarantees for the IFP’s core interests and the promise of international mediation to resolve disputes going forward.

Unique national predisposition

In other words, there is not a great deal to suggest a unique national predisposition to meet one’s fellow citizens in a determined spirit of discussion and compromise. Sometimes South Africa gets it right, often it doesn’t. At times, it has needed – and received – external assistance.

Nor can South Africa claim a special commitment to negotiation and compromise in its post-apartheid dispensation. The ANC never had any intention of submitting anything to international mediation. Shortly after having taken office, then President Mandela declined even to meet Okumu to discuss the matter, and in 1995, Mbeki made it clear that such mediation was off the table.

For the most part, the ANC post-1994 has not bothered much with finding consensus. With successive comfortable majorities, it hardly needed to. True, to an extent it was willing to show a pragmatic regard to the concerns of influential interests, such as big business. But on the political front, its view of itself was of a powerful hegemon bestriding the firmament. This wasn’t merely a matter of the ability to disregard its opponents: it was how it viewed them.

For an extended period, the ANC stuck to a narrative that not only were those in opposition opponents, but enemies. This language was explicitly used, along with such cliches as “counter-revolutionaries”.  Allusions to treason and dark conspiracies with nefarious outsiders – something with a particular resonance given the fulminations against AfriForum and Solidarity – were regular talking points. (USAID, latterly the subject of considerable discussion and denunciation as a Trojan Horse into South Africa, was attacked on precisely those grounds by Nelson Mandela in 1997.)

From its own vantage point, there was little of substance to negotiate and no partners with whom the ANC could negotiate.

Unevenly successful

Beyond the country’s borders, South Africa’s attempts at mediation and conflict resolution have been unevenly successful. It has been involved in a protracted and frustratingly inconclusive effort in Lesotho (a country over which it has unparalleled leverage). It has been heavily involved in Zimbabwe, on and off, but hardly as a good faith partner to all sides, the sympathies with Zanu-PF being on visible display throughout. As President, Mbeki denounced the Movement for Democratic Change as a creation of the US Central Intelligence Agency. Zanu-PF remains in power, so the South African government and the ANC could claim a win of sorts – within its own terms of reference – though Zimbabwe remains economically prostrate.

In the Great Lakes region, successes such as the 2002 Sun City Agreements were temporary, as the war repeatedly flared up – the legacy of which for South Africa is the ongoing deployment of troops (now effectively prisoners of war) in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Cote d’Ivoire, the record of South African intervention was not impressive, amidst accusations of bias and charges that it didn’t understand the realities of the region.

Probably more than anything, South Africa has aspired to a role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here again, it had clear and explicit views about how this should be resolved. For better or worse, its position has been entirely in favour of the Palestinians; as time went on this has become increasingly emphatic. That’s why all the Department of International Relations and Cooperation could muster after Hamas’s October 7 assault was to decry the “escalation”- and blame Israel for it (reading that statement, it’s possible to assume that Israeli troops had attacked Gaza). Right now, it’s hard to identify any Israeli interest that South Africa would deem legitimate. Indeed, it’s doubtful that South Africa sees Israel’s very existence as legitimate.

Yet to quote President Ramaphosa in October 2023: “SA stands ready to work with the international community and to share our experience in mediation and conflict resolution as we have done on the continent and around the world.” The hubris and delusion shine brightly here.

“Terrain of struggle”

Besides, there’s not really a huge repository to draw on. Perhaps, though, the President’s view of “mediation and conflict resolution” is coloured by a sense that these are merely a “terrain of struggle”. This was exactly what Mbeki had been getting at. Negotiations, mediation and conflict resolution were a means to achieve a pre-set goal, rather than as a process for mutual accommodation.

This brings the conversation back to the present, to the GNU, and to how it underlines South Africa’s capacity to compromise. This is transparent – and if one may say so, self-serving – nonsense. Last year’s election produced a stalemate that made some sort of deal necessary. A government was not possible without it. But the President’s conduct, using his official prerogatives as head of state, speak to a less than selfless impulse.

This was clear in the apportionment of cabinet positions, giving the ANC an effective two-thirds majority, and control of most hot-button portfolios, such as foreign affairs, the economics ministries and health. More than this, the President has acted with studied disregard for his nominal coalition partners. For example, he insisted on signing the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act over the objectives and in the absence of his education minister; on signing the Expropriation Act without even bothering to inform those outside the ANC, including the Democratic Alliance minister responsible for its implementation (and announcing it immediately on returning from Davos, where he declaimed the negotiations myth, and trotted out the pro forma open-for-business sentiment); and in failing to disclose the budget until hours before it was due to be released.

The ANC isn’t even willing to concede the basics of professionalising the State by stepping away from its poisonous programme of cadre deployment.

The calculation is to keep the DA on board with the threat of an alternative hook-up with the Economic Freedom Fighters or the uMkhonto we Sizwe Party; to appeal for superficial “unity” in furtherance of “the good of the country” (as, of course, the ANC and its leadership understands it). Simultaneously, the President’s actions serve to undermine the DA, and portray it as weak, ineffective and unable to deliver for its constituency. Hopefully – again, from the ANC’s and President Ramaphosa’s perspective – this will provide the space to reorganise and reassert its “hegemony” in the next election.

Logic and cunning

As political strategy it has a definite logic and cunning – but it must be understood for what it is, the pursuit of narrow party interests. To pretend this expresses some sort of ennobling national character is delusional and insulting.

The reality is that South Africa has no special capacities in this regard. Like all people and countries, its people and politicians can negotiate and find compromises if they choose to, and are willing to forgo particular advantages in pursuit of others – if they choose pragmatism, in other words. Choose ideology and dogma, and there is nothing unique about the country and the fates that await it. Its history testifies to that.

 

SOURCE:No, negotiation, compromise and bridge-building are not a national speciality – Daily Friend

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