The
consistent policy statements by Gauteng Premiers, starting with the inaugural
one, Tokyo Sexwale, underscore a pressing need to review the provincial
government’s powers. At the first meeting of the President’s Coordination
Committee, an intergovernmental forum comprising the President and Premiers, in
1994, Premier Tokyo Sexwale publicly called for his powers to govern. While the
context also involved the restrictions imposed by the Interim Constitution, the
broader issue was the demand for asymmetrical allocation of provincial powers,
stirrings of federalism

Quickly
turning to Premier Panyaza Lesufi, who faces a similar yet different challenge
regarding the need for provincial powers. In Lesufi’s case, the issue is the
ANC’s reduced ability to maintain an outright majority at both the National and
Provincial levels of government. This limitation has significantly compromised
the ANC’s inner circle and its approach to managing intergovernmental
relations. In his statements and policy initiatives, Lesufi has demonstrated,
on several occasions, a willingness to exercise powers and perform provincial
functions in a way that encroaches on the government’s functional and
institutional responsibilities in other spheres, potentially leading to a
significant shift in power dynamics. 

 

The
entire Nasi Spani programme, the anti-crime initiative, and the recent bold
proposal to establish a Provincial Task Team on Political Killings are nothing
but political rants and tantrums, showing frustration at being a toy-telephone
executive authority holding office. 

 

The
uncomfortable truth is that the position of the Premier is based on the old
administrative structure of the four provinces of the pre-1994 RSA. At best,
the office of the Premier has become a hybrid between the administrator system
and the self-governing territories system, which supported the homeland system.
The farce of the Provincial Executive Authority vested in the Premier has been
repeatedly exposed by the gradual loss of Treasury powers and, by extension,
the ability to fund rigid regional political programmes. These programmes once
set the pace for how the democratic and constitutional order develops. 

 

While
this intergovernmental relations (the interactions between different levels of
government) farce was glaringly in the eyes of the governing ANC for the thirty
years of post-liberation power honeymoon, the government did not focus on its
constitutional development duty. Aptly captured by former President Zuma when
he declared the ANC will ‘rule until Jesus comes’, the government displayed an
attitude of never imagining a power configuration context that followed the May
2024 moment. Luthuli House, which regulated intergovernmental relations outside
a constitutional development policy context, has since May 2024 become
irrelevant, and the Provincial Powers debate has been fudged with all manner of
toxicities, including the democracy wrecking, unmanageable in-ANC succession
battles or circuses. 

 

The
periodic bursts of Gauteng Premiers in search of actual political power in a
construct that views them as administrators manifest the unresolved federalism
CODESA debate. Given that the proverbial ‘Zuma Jesus has arrived’, the
constitutional order, which was choked by the ‘wait’ for thirty years, has not
developed a capability to navigate the unfolding intergovernmental relations
complexities caused by the multitude of coalition arrangements in local
government. 

 

Compounding
this reality is that the ANC is losing grip of the central executive authority
of the Republic, and its Premiers will, through cracks of seeking power to come
to the provinces, inadvertently lead to the federalisation (the process of
forming a federal state) of the Republic. In any case, the constitutional order
has several continuum points for the full federalisation of RSA. 

 

This
is a fascinating and historically significant phase of South Africa’s maturing
constitutional democracy. It is interesting how the pre-CODESA speeches of
Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Van Zyl Slabbert, and many other federalists will
be relived thirty years later in speeches of several power-seeking Premiers.
The Western Cape’s demand for policing powers is a campaign better executed by
the Gauteng Premier. The logic of its correctness is seen through the prism of Lesufi’s
actions. 

 

If
there is a political power issue the ANC should pay attention to, it is how it
embraces the Constitution as the ultimate frontier of its fledgling National
Democratic Revolution. Its future, and only after it survives the haemorrhaging
effects of brazen corruption and state capture on its reputation, lies in it
becoming the defender of the Constitution. Its interior is about what it
bequeathed to the democratic order.