Rise Mzansi exposes the banality of South Africa’s political punditry

Rise Mzansi is the latest exciting toy in the South African political ball pit, which is unsurprising as this new political movement is led by one of South Africa’s most astute journalists, editors and thinkers, Songezo Zibi. It has also attracted several other personalities from business, academics and politics. However, South Africans need a reality check to manage their expectations of new parties like Rise Mzansi.

Citizens and punditry are mesmerised by the new party and its members, who have incredible resumes from diverse fields. It is, however, a sad indictment, particularly on the punditry class, for their lack of interrogation of Rise Mzansi’s offering beyond fresh new faces and rhetoric about being different from other political parties. A vital example of this lack of critical rigour over Rise Mzansi was from Zibi’s former colleague, Natasha Marrian, who wrote about the party in the Financial Mail (4 May 2023). In her piece, Marrian states that Rise Mzansi is “an antidote to the banality of slogan-drenched strongman politics” and proceeds to list the resumes of some of its prominent members. However, looking at what the party has said or its principles on its website, one would be hard-pressed to distinguish it from many other parties that float around the centre-left spectrum of South African politics.

South Africans have been in a dark place, literally and figuratively, under the dominance of the ANC. The party’s grasp on our national politics, while slipping, may likely remain for another five years or a decade. Unfortunately, the ANC is empty of any ideas, solutions or even the will to change the direction of this country for good. The failure of incumbent opposition parties to completely dislodge a party bereft of morals or capacity has led to many South Africans yearning for some external intervention rather than existing political players.

Political outsiders, as proven by the likes of Donald Trump in the United States, former Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan and former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, can appear as a breath of fresh air to many who are often led to believe that the outsider will act entirely different from those who have spent years in politics. But, unfortunately, this betrays naivety in not understanding that anyone entering politics will have to deal with the same systemic realities as the incumbents. Moreover, these systematic realities will be external to a new organisation and internal, as the forces that shape politics, such as special interests, personal ambition and complacency, bleed into the new organisation. New political parties are formed by the same type of human beings who are members of existing parties and will therefore be vulnerable to the same challenges.

Whilst emerging from the think-tank founded by Songezi Zibi, The Rivonia Circle, Rise Mzansi has not offered anything novel in terms of policy for South Africans. If politics were like venture capital auditions such as in Dragons Den Rise, Mzansi would find it near impossible to sway investors to support it, as it does not present anything that has not been said, stated or professed as a principle or policy by several other centre-aligned parties in South African politics, such as Build One South Africa (BOSA), Action SA, Xiluva, COPE or even the Democratic Alliance. Some, if not all, the principles and values the party has adopted to profile itself can be found in ActionSA, BOSA and the Democratic Alliance.

Far from being fresh and unique, Rise Mzansi’s emergence has almost followed an identical path in becoming a political party as BOSA and ActionSA. Like Rise Mzanis, these organisations started claiming to be just a “movement” rather than a political party. Before launching as fully-fledged parties, BOSA and ActionSA also went on public listening tours to inform their policies. Even the EFF went on roadshows to get public input on its manifesto; a road Rise Mzansi has stated it will take.

The primary mistake of those who seem to have uncritically accepted Rise Mzansi is their awe over personalities. The utter failure of Ramaphoria should have put to rest the idea that a special kind of personality can save South Africa. Rise Mzansi’s leadership professes the intention of bringing the power back to the people; however, the party contradicts itself when lamenting our society as one ruled by politicians when admitting its vision can only be achieved by them becoming politicians, as the party says it needs political power to implement the sweeping changes it proposes. Pundits blinded by the resumes of the personalities involved in the Rise Mzansi project have not touched on this contradiction.

South Africa is not shaped only by politicians or the government of the day but by many stakeholders, including civil society, academics and others who hold the state to account using resources such as the courts to force the state to abide by the constitution. For example, efforts by groups such as the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) to dissolve the dysfunctional Makhanda Municipality in 2020 show us that there are tools outside the exclusive realm of politicians for shaping this country.

Many new parties that have emerged in the past year are formed by people I do not doubt have the best intentions for the country. However, it is frustrating that many of these people seem to only see themselves as leaders rather than followers hence the need to create their own formations where they are at the helm. The history of the ANC, the Labour Party in the UK and both dominant parties in the United States show that some of the most successful changes to a political environment come from within incumbent parties, often through internal revolutions such as when Nelson Mandela’s youth league changed the trajectory of the ANC’s stance toward the liberation struggle bringing more militancy in the movement. South Africans do not have to be bound within the confines of existing political parties; however, having our best and brightest people thinly spread across small parties is unlikely to have the decisive impact possible if they were under a handful of clearly defined structures. Several members of these new parties were in the Democratic Alliance but have not been able to cooperate politically since leaving, instead seeming to need to hold seats in separate organisations.

2024 is an opportunity where South Africa will decide to stay in its decline under the ANC, choose a worse fate under the ANC/EFF alliance, or where citizens can take power into their own hands and steer the country towards a brighter future. Political journalists and analysts have a critical role to play by providing the public with objective information about what the different political formations offer. The data is readily available, and where the governance metric is considered, reports by the Auditor General and Statistics South Africa show which parties have been doing what. Those whose job is to inform the public about politics and the workings of government should educate the public on who does what best rather than getting involved in the public’s doomed pursuit of the perfect party they are aligned with on every possible issue. We must not let perfect be the enemy of better.

Sinethemba Zonke is a political commentator and analyst.