There is a developing
relationship between liberalism and the African National Congress. The ANC,
established as an early 19th-century black elite response to their exclusion in
the post-South African War 1902-1910 political settlement, has roots as a
liberal construct. This historical context is crucial for understanding the
ideological evolution of the ANC.  

The
former leaders of the ANC were described as having come from mission schools,
firmly committed to Christian ideals, dressed in Victorian fashion, embracing
mainly British cultural values, and placing a significant trust in what they
called a white sense of fairness play. Removed from traditional society, they
found work as teachers, church ministers, clerks, interpreters, and
journalists, aiming to show how easily Africans could adapt to white
civilisation. They envisioned a civilised, non-racial society where merit
was valued above colour. Theoretically, they were called the ‘new black elite’;
they embraced not only modern (read liberal) political ideas but also
contemporary (read Western) customs and practices. They followed a mainstream,
European-influenced Christianity and became South Africa’s first generation of
African (non-ethnic) nationalists.

To
the South African, who still lives under a political system of government with
one foot in the apartheid colonial world, the only possibilities for reaching
the full potential of the liberation promise in the Constitution, particularly
its economic emancipation and self-expression, are in the domain of a new
revolution being executed. There is a consensus that the political settlement
between 1990 and 1996, a crucial period in South African history marked by the
end of apartheid and the transition to democracy, resolved the politics as war
dimension of the South African conflict. The troubled peace, a function of a
profoundly tormented past, is increasingly accounted for by the unresolved
economics as a war dimension of the march towards a non-racial, non-sexist,
democratic, united, and prosperous nation. 

Economics
as war concerns itself with the struggle for control over the means of
production, whether for the benefit of society as a whole or the personal gain
of individuals. These means of production are generally agreed to be land, labour,
capital, and entrepreneurship. How these resources interact in society, how
they are acquired or accumulated, and how they are regulated and adjudicated
form an economic system. The competitive nature of this struggle for control
introduces the concept of ‘economics as war’, and the associated politics as a
type of war that humanity has framed as the political economy. 

Depending
on the rules of engagement, access to the coercive force of violence as a state
or otherwise monopoly, and the recordal of jurisprudence as the basis of
justice, including social and economic, the economy as a war dimension of human
conflict easily becomes a vicious and intergenerational tension. In South
Africa, where injustice as part of its past is recognised, the organisation and
arrangements that preceded the current ownership, control, or otherwise patterns
of the means of production are a significant component of the national
grievances. Land dispossession, which is in essence the dispossession of a core
component of the means of production and exclusion from the modes of production,
such as industrialisation, finance and debt, continues to characterise muted
political discontent in a society that claims political stability. 

The
ideological battle has, on the one hand, always concerned how to establish a
society rooted in a philosophy that advocates individual rights, civil
liberties, democracy, and free enterprise. On the other hand, there is a drive
to create a society based on human dignity, social and economic justice, and fair
production and distribution to benefit all of society or humankind. While South
Africa as a state is a result or construct of land dispossession, the 1990-1996
political settlement introduced a legal framework to enable restitution that
upholds the fundamental human rights in the Bill of Rights. This has made RSA a
nation that values equality and individual freedom, advocates for private
property and personal rights, supports limited constitutional government, and
recognises the importance of related principles such as non-racialism,
non-sexism, the rule of law, and universal suffrage. All of these form the
foundation of a liberal and open society. 

The
political and legal framework governing the democratic order is liberal. It is rhetoric
and terminology that are lagging. A context has developed that has hindered
policy implementation from fully embracing South Africa’s true ideological
nature as a liberal democratic state. This portrayal does not serve liberalism
per se but aims to offer a proper understanding of what South Africa as a state
faces. Throughout its significant policy documents—including its founding
Constitution, the 1923 African Bill of Rights, the 1943 African Claims, the
1949 Congress League Programme of Action, the 1955 Freedom Charter, the Ready
to Govern Documents, and the 50th Conference adopted 1996 Constitution of RSA—the
ANC remained committed to its liberal democratic path. 

The
Government of National Unity, a coalition of two liberal democracy-oriented
political parties distinguished by their rhetoric emphasising their liberal
character, may initiate a transition towards consolidating liberalism. Outside
these two parties, there is no leftist party in Parliament. This explains why
the GNU is a space everyone wants to join, as ideologically they are all
competing to do more of the same, but better, than the rest, especially with
the below-threshold majority party. It will be interesting to see how the SACP,
a significant political force with a history of advocating for socialist
policies, performs within a liberal democratic constitutional order.