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South African politics and the local government elections

08 June 2021 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath

read more Webinar on Gov Election June 2021 Web News-Block

As a public higher-education institution in South Africa with a responsibility to contribute to public discourse, the University of the Free State (UFS) will be presenting the webinar as part of the Free State Literature Festival’s online initiative, VrySpraak-digitaal. The aim of the webinar series is to discuss issues facing South Africa by engaging experts at the university and in South Africa. Some of the topics for 2021 include, among others, reimagining universities for student success; corruption; local elections, the state of business – particularly in the Free State.

In 2020, the webinar series saw the successful participation of leading experts engaging on COVID-19 and the crisis facing the country socially, economically, and politically. This year, in lieu of the Free State Arts Festival, the UFS will present the webinar virtually over a period of five months.

Third webinar presented on 29 June 2021

South African local government has often been the target of protests due to poor service delivery. This either suggests that local government is not capable of carrying out technical tasks, or that constituents are not being heard by the representatives they elected. Without capable and ethical politicians, the best institutions and policies in a country will serve no purpose if they are not protected. Institutions run the risk of being ineffective and not reaching their full potential in an environment without an ethical framework and the required human capabilities. South Africa suffers severe capability deficiencies due to poor political management that requires fixing at a political level.

Will the forthcoming local government elections be the solution to much-needed change OR will electoral reform – a somewhat far-fetched ideal – provide the platform for ultimate change?

Date: Tuesday, 29 June 2021
Topic: South African politics and the local government elections: scene setter for a capable state?
Time: 12:30-14:00
RSVP: Alicia Pienaar, pienaaran1@ufs.ac.za by 26 June 2021

Facilitator:

Prof Francis Petersen
Rector and Vice-Chancellor, UFS

Panellists:

• Dr Ferial Haffajee
Associate Editor
Daily Maverick

• Prof Susan Booysen
Director of Research
Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA)

• Mr Ebrahim Fakir
Director of Programmes
Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute (ASRI)

• Prof Sethulego Matebesi
Associate Professor and Academic Head of the Department of Sociology
University of the Free State

Bios of speakers:

Dr Ferial Haffajee

Ferial Haffajee is a South African editor and journalist. She is currently associate editor at the Daily Maverick. Previously, Ferial was editor-in-chief at the Mail & Guardian and City Press, where teams working with her won numerous investigative journalism awards. She is a regular analyst and commentator on radio, television, and elsewhere. Ferial is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and a member of the African Leadership Institute. She serves on the board of the Open Society Programme on Independent Journalism. She has won numerous awards for journalism and for her support of media freedom, including an International Press Freedom Hero award from the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2015 and the Naspers Phil Weber award in 2013 – the global company’s highest internal honour. Previously, Ferial was chairperson of the South African National Editors’ Forum and chairperson of the CNN/MultiChoice African Journalist of the Year Awards. She has served on the boards of the World Editors Forum and the Global Editors Network. She published a best-selling book called What if there were no whites in South Africa, and in 2017 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of the Free State for her journalism.

Prof Susan Booysen

Prof Susan Booysen is a political scientist, author, and analyst of South African politics. She is also Director of Research at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), emeritus professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, and visiting professor at the Wits School of Governance.

Booysen’s third book in her Wits University Press trilogy of research-driven books on the African National Congress of South Africa, Precarious Power: Compliance and discontent under Ramaphosa’s ANC, was published in March 2021. The first two parts of the set were The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power (2011) and Dominance and Decline: The ANC in the Time of Zuma (2015). Precarious Power (http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/precarious-power/) is available from South African bookshops and digitally from online stores such as Amazon’s Kindle Store and Barnes & Noble.

Booysen also edited a range of books on South and Southern African politics. Her latest edited volume for the Mapungubwe Institute is Marriages of Inconvenience: Coalition politics in South Africa (July 2021). Her previous edited books are FeesMustFall: Student Revolt, Decolonisation and Governance in South Africa (WUP, 2016) and Local Elections in South Africa: People, parties, politics (SUN Press, 2012). She co-edited Democracy and Elections in Southern Africa (2009) with Denis Kadima.

Mr Ebrahim Fakir

Ebrahim Fakir is currently Director of Programmes at the Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute (ASRI). He was awarded the 2014 Ruth First Fellowship at the University of the Witwatersrand and was a part-time lecturer in the WITS School of Governance in 2018. Until October 2016, he was head of the Political Parties and Parliamentary Programme in the Electoral Institute (EISA) [2009-2016], where he edited and published the Election Update focusing on the analysis of SA elections. He was an editorial adviser to the independent start-up media house Daily Vox and regularly contributes analysis, opinion and comment articles to POLITY, the Mail & Guardian, Sunday Times, News 24, and Business Day, among others.

Formerly a senior researcher and analyst in the Centre for Policy Studies in Johannesburg (2003-2009), he worked in both the Pretoria and Cape Town offices of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA – 1998-2003), and also in the Legislation and Oversight Division of the first democratic Parliament of the Republic of South Africa (1996-1998). Before that, he was a tutor in English Literature at the then University of Durban-Westville (1994-1996), writing for the popular press as well as for academic and policy journals on politics, development, and the state.

He read for a degree in English Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he was elected to the Student Representative Council. He was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex (2006) and a Draper Hills Summer Fellow at the Centre on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University in 2011.

Prof Sethulego Matebesi

Sethulego Matebesi is Associate Professor and Academic Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of the Free State. Matebesi’s primary research interest is social movements, community development, and mining-company-community relations. He is particularly interested in understanding the role of trust in community protests at municipal level and the conflict between mining companies and mining communities in South Africa. His recent publications include two monographs – Social licensing and mining in South Africa (2020), and Civil strife against local governance: Dynamics of community protests in South Africa (2017).

News Archive

Moshoeshoe - lessons from an African icon - by Prof Frederick Fourie

2004-11-03

(The full text of the article that appeared in City Press and Sunday Independent)

Our understanding of history informs our understanding of the present. No wonder the contestation over historical figures in South Africa’s past is so fierce and so divisive.
The question is: could it be any other way? I would like to think that it could; that black and white South Africans, across linguistic, cultural, religious and other divides, can develop a shared appreciation of our history – at least with certain periods and personalities as a starting point.

One such personality whose legacy I believe offers a possible platform for unifying our still divided country is King Moshoeshoe, who lived from 1786 to 1870, and is acknowledged as the founder of the Basotho.

King Moshoeshoe is the topic of a documentary that has been commissioned by the University of the Free State as part of its Centenary celebrations this year. It is part of a larger project to honour and research the legacy of Moshoeshoe. The documentary will be screened on SABC 2 at 21:00 on November 4th.

Moshoeshoe rose to prominence at a time of great upheaval and conflict in South Africa – the 19th century, a time when British colonialism was entrenching itself, when the Boer trekkers were migrating from the Cape and when numerous indigenous chiefdoms and groupings were engaged in territorial conquests. It was the time of the Difaqane, a period when society in the central parts of the later South Africa and Lesotho was fractured, destabilised and caught in a cycle of violence and aggression.

In this period Moshoeshoe displayed a unique and innovative model of leadership that resulted in reconciliation, peace and stability in the area that later became Lesotho and Free State. It made him stand out from many of his contemporaries and also caught the attention of his colonial adversaries.

Such an evaluation is not a judgment about which model of leadership is right and which is wrong, or which leader was better than another; but merely an attempt to explore what we can learn from a particular exemplar.
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Historians point to the many progressive leadership qualities displayed by Moshoeshoe which he used effectively in establishing the Basotho nation and in defending it.
First, there is his humanism and sense of justice worthy of any great statesman. Confronted by a situation in which cannibals murdered and devoured his grandfather, Moshoeshoe chose not to take revenge. Instead he opted to rehabilitate them and feed them as he believed hunger drove them to cannibalism.

Secondly, there is his skilful alliance-building with his contemporaries such as Shaka in an attempt to neutralize those rivals who were intent on attacking his followers. This is also displayed in the way he sought the protection of the British to keep the Boer forces at bay.
Thirdly, his emphasis on peaceful options is also seen in his defensive military strategy which saw him retreat to a mountain fortress to be able to protect and build a burgeoning nation in the face of the many forces threatening its survival.

Fourthly, there is his remarkable inclusivity and tolerance for diversity which saw him unite disparate groups of refugees from the violence and hunger that displaced them and then weld them into the Basotho nation. He also engaged with French missionaries, inviting them to stay with him and advise him on Western thought, technology and religion.
These are but some of the qualities which belie the notion that all 19th century African leaders were merely marauders and conquerors that gained their ascendancy through violence. Instead Moshoeshoe is a prime example of the human-centred, democratic and pluralist roots of South African, indeed African society.

The Moshoeshoe project that we have initiated (of which the documentary, called “The Renaissance King”, forms but one part) derives from our location as a university in the Free State, a province with a particular history and a particular political culture that developed as a result of this very model of leadership. This province has benefited tremendously from leaders such as Moshoeshoe and president MT Steyn, both of whom many observers credit with establishing a climate of tolerance, respect for diversity of opinion, political accommodation and peaceful methods of pursuing political objectives in the province. Their legacy is real – and Moshoeshoe’s role can not be overstated.
In addition the project derives from the University of the Free State being a site of higher learning in a broader geo-political sense. As a university in Africa we are called upon to understand and critically engage with this history, this context and this legacy.
Besides the documentary, the UFS is also planning to establish an annual Moshoeshoe memorial lecture which will focus on and interrogate models of African leadership, nation-building, reconciliation, diversity management and political tolerance.

In tackling such projects, there may be a temptation to engage in myth-making. It is a trap we must be wary of, especially as an institution of higher learning. We need to ask critical questions about some aspects of Moshoeshoe’s leadership but of current political leadership as well. Thus there is a need for rigorous academic research into aspects of the Moshoeshoe legacy in particular but also into these above-mentioned issues.
While the documentary was commissioned to coincide with the University of the Free State’s centenary and our country’s ten years of democracy, it is a project that has a much wider significance. It is an attempt to get people talking about our past and about our future, as a campus, as a province and as a country – even as a continent, given the NEPAD initiatives to promote democracy and good governance.

The project therefore has particular relevance for the continued transformation of institutions such as universities and the transformation of our society. Hopefully it will assist those who are confronted by the question how to bring about new institutional cultures or even a national political culture that is truly inclusive, tolerant, democratic, non-sexist, non-racial, multilingual and multicultural.

I believe that the Moshoeshoe model of leadership can be emulated and provide some point of convergence. A fractured society such as ours needs points of convergence, icons and heroes which we can share. Moshoeshoe is one such an African icon – in a world with too few of them.

Prof Frederick Fourie is the Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Free State

* The documentary on “Moshoeshoe: The Renaissance King” will be screened on SABC2 on 4 November 2004 at 21:00.

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