CHALLENGING THE SYSTEM
SA needs a public debate beyond mere opposition
‘Will a programme centred on "good governance" and anticorruption be sufficient to successfully rival the Zuma faction and achieve mass support?’
Economic and political crises typically encourage new avenues for conceptualising a reordering of society. They open up discourse spaces due to the discrediting of traditional narratives and systems of thought. If that is the case, it is interesting to note that one could hear a pin drop in the mainstream forums for discussing SA’s political and economic system, despite the heightened sense of crisis that pervades since President Jacob Zuma appointed his fourth finance minister in two years and ratings agency S&P Global Ratings downgraded the country’s credit rating to "junk". Elsewhere in the world, (particularly in advanced countries such as the US, Britain, Greece and France) there is significant reconfiguration of the political landscape, with left and right populists leading wave after wave of attack on the political centre, due to the latter’s complicity in failing to resolve social crises. Some of the most pertinent dimensions of these crises are economic. The crisis has been...
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