Homogenisation of a special type
The negotiated settlement provided the institutional foundation on which the new South African state was built. But it also prescribed the forms of engagement between state and society for this new state. These became fixed in the national imagination in the short path between CODESA and the GNU.
The ANC’s return from exile marked the opening up of a new terrain in its struggle for national liberation. Despite heated contestation over the relevant strategic approach to ending apartheid, the ANC chose to use mass struggle only as a means of leveraging its position at the negotiating table. This required that the full weight of the liberation movement be given over to managing (including suspension of) bread and butter struggles. Many of the organisations of the liberation movement became solely directed to the pacification of its members. What this produced, by the time an agreement had been reached for the handover of power, was the institutionalisation of a negotiations-centric polity. The result was that the entire ‘machinery’ of the new state and the liberation movement became hostage to the terrain of negotiation as an end in it self.
Ten years on this terrain has become increasingly incorporated into the national imagination as prescriptive of the only legitimate form of societal contestation. It is this imagination that has ensured that any form of dissent has become anathema to the dominant current within government/ANC and its various institutional arms. From IDASA to COSATU the effect has been one of generalised quiescence, evincing a broader trajectory within civil society that forecloses systemic critique and mass struggle. Within the derivative languages of this national imagination – i.e., ‘constructive engagement, nation building, batho pele etc. - any real space for fundamental ideological and strategic contestation has been closed down. The end result? South Africa has shifted from a colonialism of a special type to a homogenisation of a special type.
The introduction of neo-liberal ‘ restructuring’ of the local state and service delivery, forced poor communities to struggle against evictions and cut-offs on a terrain that foreclosed the possibility of institutional remedy through negotiation. These struggles sat uncomfortably with the constructed national ‘imagination’. In this context, the active resistance coming from the new social movements was seen as out of sync with the ‘peacetime/reconstruction’ agenda of the government/ANC. What this meant was that their forms of engagement were treated as inimical to nation building and the corporatist politics that were rapidly institutionalised as part of harmonising racial and class relations in South Africa.
Instead of recognising the conflict of interests between rich and poor for what they are, the pathological need to project South Africa as a homogenous, entity (i.e., one big happy family) has been prioritised. In the self-constructed religion of nation building, everyone gets along in spite of their differences and those who would upset this delicate balance of family planning are to be seen and treated as heretics. In the South African hallways of power nationalism’s priestly caste jealously protect the image of harmony that the market demands.
As a result, it has been widely accepted that there is no terrain of engagement between civil society and the state outside of negotiation processes and corporatist structures. State antagonism to communities resisting the installation of pre-paid meters or bank evictions become justified by the objective interest of the nation. This has meant nothing less than the institutionalised marginalisation of these community groups, who have little recourse other than to engage in mass struggle. Resistance to government policy outside the safe environs of the corporatist deal making fora are treated as criminal and illegitimate, and those who dare go outside the sanctioned forms of engagement risk becoming enemies of the state.
The very character of the ‘imagination’ of the nation has therefore provided the basis for the widespread criminalisation of dissent. You don’t belong if you question (not to mention act against) the dominant framework of the ‘rainbow nation’ that has been constructed by South Africa’s emergent comprador class. This then lends itself to people’s struggles being characterised and/or categorised in relation to the shifting notion of the national interest. You are a whitey, a foreigner, a misled stooge of the former two categories, unpatriotic, agent provocateur, all of the above, and may therefore be dismissed. On the horizon of the national imagination the rainbow learns to shift according to the needs and demands of the ruling class/party/magnum leader.
The supreme irony is that the national ‘othering’ of the social movements is precisely what shuts the door on the possibility of the state engaging with social movements on the fundamental socio-economic issues that affect the majority of South Africans. As social movement are forced back on the street with their grievances the vicious circle is complete.
