The democratic features of our society that do exist are under constant threat from within the ruling party and by the criminal networks linked to it.
In a real democracy a presidential scandal would be a crisis for the president and his party but not for the country. But South Africa is only a partial democracy.
No society can call itself a genuine democracy when activists are regularly assassinated, malicious actors effectively undermine the legal system, democratic institutions are frequently distorted in the interests of elites and open criminality among the political elite largely remains unsanctioned.
The democratic features of our society that do exist are under constant threat from within the ruling party and by the criminal networks linked to it.
Cyril Ramaphosa is widely considered to be a failed president. He has failed to deal with the criminal and anti-democratic elements in his party, deal with the electricity crisis, develop a coherent economic policy or deal with horrific levels of violence in society. He has not even bothered to condemn the assassinations of grassroots activists or to remove the many odious individuals who hold places in his cabinet.
In any real democracy he would have been booted out before you could say “Liz Truss” and spent the rest of his days in ignominy. But because we are not a real democracy many decent people want to try to keep him in office.
The reason for this, of course, is that if the kleptocrats and anti-democrats in the ANC were to get their hands on power they would destroy what remains of our institutions, loot the state and take the country in an authoritarian direction. We would end up like Zimbabwe — with a rich political elite lording it over a broken and poor society from which anyone with the means would flee.
These realities have led many to conclude that, as pathetic as Ramaphosa has been as a leader, he must be supported for the moment because, as one commentator said, the alternative is too ghastly to contemplate.
Much, although not all, liberal opinion has taken this line. But what of the left?
In any normal society, the left would see a president like Ramaphosa as a principal enemy. For a start, he and his brother-in-law are billionaires whose vast wealth came through their political connections. If they were Russians they would be called oligarchs. There is also the fact that he personally profited from the exploitation of mineworkers that led to the wildcat strike at Marikana, a strike that, of course, was crushed with state murder.
For anyone on the left, Ramaphosa’s silence on the ongoing assassinations of activists is simply unconscionable. At the same time, he is pushing neoliberal macro-economic policies that are devastating to the majority and pursuing a programme of privatisation by stealth. To make matters worse, his billionaire brother-in-law stands to be a prime beneficiary of the increasing privatisation of the electricity system.
Despite all this, he continues to be supported by the South African Communist Party. This may be a case of simple opportunism on the part of the party whose leaders have had ample access to positions of power over the last quarter of a century.
But the SACP does also have a case for their position and one that many on the wider left privately share. That case is simple. As much as Ramaphosa is a weak and inept plutocrat who puts the interests of capital before society, he is the lesser evil in a country in which the greater evil would be even more devastating.
Corruption is foul under Ramaphosa — one only has to think of the looting of the Covid-19 budgets. But it would, clearly, be even worse under the so-called “radical economic transformation” faction. Political violence is also rank under Ramaphosa but would also be much, much worse under that faction.
While grassroots activists do not enjoy democracy under Ramaphosa, it is clear that the authoritarians in the radical economic transformation faction would scale back a much larger range of democratic freedoms affecting far more people. In fact, it is highly likely that we would head towards a Zanu-PF-style dictatorship, such as that which has destroyed Zimbabwe.
As bad as things are under Ramaphosa, civil society and the media can function freely and the space is not entirely closed for the development of a left project including, at least in theory, the development of a left political party. None of this would be possible under a Zanu-PF-style dictatorship. For this reason, it does make strategic sense for the left to back Ramaphosa in this crisis.
However, this kind of realpolitik, difficult as it is to stomach, only makes sense if it is accompanied by a serious attempt to build a viable party of the left. The old game of brutal sectarianism and small NGO and university-based cliques trying to capture mass organisations has failed completely. Something radically new is needed.
Strategically backing Ramaphosa to keep some democratic space open is a pointless strategy if the left cannot get over its vicious sectarianism, open itself to new ideas and find a way to connect with the majority living ever more desperate lives.
The electoral successes of the left in Bolivia, Colombia and Brazil show what is possible with the right kind of politics — politics rooted in building bridges across the left and organising from below.
We should have started this work 20 years ago. But, because we failed to build a mass-based and non-sectarian independent left, we find ourselves in the bleak situation where support for Ramaphosa to continue to hold office is an important defensive line against the kleptocrats who would probably plunge us into a dictatorship if they were able to take hold of state power.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.