Identity politics has killed political accountability in South Africa

27 August 2020

Many South Africans would have witnessed the anti-ANC social media campaign under the hashtag “#VoetsekANC” earlier this month in response to a litany of Covid-19 PPE tender corruption allegations levelled against various party members. The hashtag rightly gained immediate traction on Twitter where the governing party’s outright failure to hold its own to account was laid bare. Yet interestingly enough, it was the ANC Youth League’s counter campaign just days later that was most insightful as to the way in which South African politicians, political parties, and contemporary South African society deal with political accountability.

Photos on social media soon emerged of ANCYL placards hung on street poles across the country with slogans such as: “Voetsek Racism”, “Black Lives Matter”, and “No To Violence Against Humanity”. What these slogans had to do with ANC corruption I am yet to deduce, but what frightens me is the fact that as bizarre as this campaign may be, it is this sort of racial scapegoating that has become worryingly effective at deflecting from political accountability in South Africa, and I suspect we have the prevalence of identity politics to blame.

British novelist, Zadie Smith writes that: “Bitter struggles deform their participants in subtle, complicated ways. The idea that one should speak one's cultural allegiance first and the truth second (and that this is a sign of authenticity) is precisely such a deformation”.

Smith succinctly outlines the dangers of an obsession with identity over truth in modern democracies, where reason and rationality are eclipsed by group think and a new form of cognitive tunnel vision masquerading as progressive thought.

This is not to say that conversations of identity aren’t important, especially in a country like South Africa whose legacy of inequality is, ironically, a direct result of the active legislating of the politics of identity. But there is a fine line between meaningful and constructive conversations around race, and the societal paralysis, intolerance, and division brought about by an obsession with it. If Zadie Smith refers to cultural allegiance over truth as a deformation, then there is no doubt that South African society has been deformed by identity politics, and the ANCYL’s recent social media counter campaign is just one example of this.

Think of any prominent politician who has been taken to task over suspicious actions in government and I can almost guarantee you that most or all of them have used identity to deflect from their wrongdoings or to elicit public sympathy.

In the face of tender corruption allegations and malfeasance as Cape Town Mayor, Patricia De Lille famously branded the DA as racist, stating that the party and its senior leaders “epitomised control, protecting a white minority at the expense of their own senior black leaders, black constituents and [Cape Town] residents”. She later laughed on live television when white commentators asked her directly whether she sent an SMS interfering in the appointment of the then city manager.

By crying racism, and wading into the waters of coloured nationalism, De Lille managed to successfully evade accountability and even find promotion riding on favourable public sentiment and the media which pandered to her every whim.

Ultimately, she used and manoeuvred them both like pawns. As the National Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure in Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet, De Lille now faces damning allegations of interference in procurement processes relating to the Beitbridge border fence, corroborated by findings from National Treasury and the Special Investigating Unit. It may only be a matter of time before De Lille accuses both of being anti-coloured.

But what was most unsettling about this debacle, is that the media was very much complicit in driving the race narrative sown by De Lille and capitalising on the tabloid potential of the story to boost web traction and newspaper sales. If identity politics sells, the media were certainly cashing in on this debacle at the expense of public truth and integrity.

Bell Pottinger may be the quintessential example of the use of identity politics to dangerously distort our society for political gain, but some of our very own media and journalists are responsible for killing any form of political accountability in the country by grooming readers to think in terms of race and victimhood.

It saddens me that we now have to religiously check the author and publication of a news article before even considering glancing over it. And yet when political parties call for fair, objective, and balanced reporting from the media in South Africa, it is impertinently dismissed. It seems we haven’t learned anything from the past 10 years.

So how do we revive political accountability in South Africa?

Well, by digging a grave for the politics of identity for a start. We need to realise that we are no better than the National Party if we continue to see each other through the prism of race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. These may be important facets of our identities which influence the way in which we think and contribute to public debate and conversation, but they should not be the parameters by which we define capability, enforce accountability, and attempt to own thought. Similarly, we are fools to allow our political leaders to coax us into compliance and complicity by dividing and grouping us by what we know and find familiar.

The ANC, and many other South African politicians, have optimised the tried and tested apartheid system of divide and conquer, only now it has become a strategy of divide and deflect. South Africa has a corruption problem because South Africa has an accountability problem, and we cannot hold our leaders accountable because they have become experts at getting us to spend our energy bickering among ourselves. We are not black, white, or coloured – we are South African. We don’t have to abandon what makes us different, but we should never allow it to lead us astray from what is right, what is just, and what is true.

Ryan Smith is Chief of Staff to the Federal Leader, Democratic Alliance.