Political scientist RW Johnson exposes obvious parallels between the National Party’s Apartheid project and the ANC’s obsession with racially-based economic policies. Both had disastrous consequences – and required a radical re-think, fuelled by social unrest, before abandonment. The big question is whether Cyril Ramaphosa is able to adopt the radical change of an FW de Klerk or the timid, incrementally-based approach of PW Botha. Johnson spoke to BizNews editor Alec Hogg.

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Highlights from the interview

In this interview, R.W. Johnson, a seasoned political analyst, discusses the current state of South Africa’s political landscape with Alec Hogg. Johnson expresses concern about the trajectory of the ANC, suggesting that their continued adherence to outdated, Marxist-influenced policies could lead to severe social unrest. He compares the ANC’s situation to that of the National Party during apartheid, noting how both parties were trapped in ideological bubbles, unable to adapt to changing realities. Johnson reflects on how the ANC, like the National Party before it, seems unable to break free from its entrenched views, leading to stagnation and poor governance.

He also critiques the ANC’s focus on rhetoric over action, a pattern he believes stems from their exile years when resolutions and statements were seen as achievements in themselves. Johnson touches on the potential for significant social disturbances if the government continues to neglect the country’s pressing economic issues, such as inequality and unemployment. Despite these challenges, Johnson sees some hope in the new DA ministers, who he believes are bringing a fresh, action-oriented approach to governance. However, he remains skeptical about whether these changes will be enough to alter the ANC’s course or prevent further decline.

Edited transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

00:00:09:13 – 00:00:36:03
Alec Hogg:
There’s a whole lot happening on the political front, and we’ve been kept up to date by R.W. Johnson, who’s been giving us some of the best columns that I’ve seen on the political analysis of South Africa anywhere. Then again, we expect that from him. We’ll be talking to the former Oxford Don in a moment.

00:00:36:05 – 00:01:05:12
Alec Hogg:
Well, good to see you. Let’s start off with the key issue that you’ve been driving over the past few columns, and that’s the ANC economic policy. Perhaps you can unpack for us the parallels you’ve drawn between the National Party, who finally decided that they’d messed up with apartheid, and then had that incredible moment where F.W. de Klerk told the world that they were dropping this policy they’d had for decades.

00:01:05:14 – 00:01:30:11
Alec Hogg:
And the ANC’s similar missteps or mistakes in labor legislation, minimum wage deployment, basically messing up the economy. It’s there for all to see. However, we await the de Klerk moment. Just unpack that for us, if you would, and how long it might take before sanity prevails.

00:01:30:12 – 00:02:11:16
R.W. Johnson:
Well, that last question is the most difficult. Look, the point I was trying to make was that the National Party, in power over a period of 40 odd years, built up this enormous edifice of apartheid legislation, which, in the end, was remodeling the whole country—dividing it up into black homelands and the rest, group areas, and changing the geography of cities and so forth, let alone all sorts of other laws regulating everything from who you could marry to who you could go to bed with, or, you know, everything.

00:02:11:18 – 00:02:41:20
R.W. Johnson:
And it appeared likely to those of us who were opposing this system, which had taken all those years to construct, that it would take just as long to dismantle it. But in practice, that didn’t happen at all. It all happened pretty quickly. I mean, there were reform attempts in the ’80s, but it was what happened when de Klerk made his big turn in February 1990 that mattered.

00:02:41:22 – 00:03:10:20
R.W. Johnson:
And very quickly, it was all gone. Now, it seems to me that the same situation is building up with the ANC, in the sense that they have been happily legislating away for 30 years, building up a similarly complicated system. Again, the basis of it all is racial legislation, despite what they said about being non-racial. They have brought in hundreds of laws which use racial classification as their basis.

00:03:10:22 – 00:03:41:22
R.W. Johnson:
Whether it is affirmative action, BEE, or all sorts of other things, this is really the problem. We are still only partway from getting away from the apartheid system. We still have a racially-based system, and this also happens to be very hostile to investors, both domestic and foreign. It drives away investment, with the results that we know in terms of unemployment, inequality, and so forth.

00:03:42:00 – 00:04:12:14
R.W. Johnson:
Clearly, the ANC has failed in a grotesque way. I mean, it promised a better life for all, but it has actually brought about much higher unemployment, much more poverty, and much more inequality. They try to talk as if these things are somehow the heritage of apartheid, but they’re not. Certainly, it started from a high base of inequality, but it’s gotten much worse under the ANC, and they don’t seem to reckon with that.

00:04:12:17 – 00:04:46:19
R.W. Johnson:
Their policies are actively chasing them away from where they say they want to go. Now, it seems to me that we can hope that, as we have seen in the last few years under Ramaphosa, some of the attempts at reform, some limited degree of privatization—in some of the SOEs, the allowance of independent generation of electricity, and so forth—these are small changes compared to what is required, but they are, in a sense, rather similar to what began to happen under P.W. Botha, where he made one small change after another, which in the end were quite significant.

Read more: De Beer: The “Most Wanted Poster” Politicians in SA

00:04:46:19 – 00:05:24:12
R.W. Johnson:
But, of course, it didn’t get us anywhere near where we needed to be. I think they are now in a similar situation, and that what we will sooner or later have to face is a big torrent of change, in which we get rid of most or all of that racial legislation, and have a completely liberalized economy.

00:05:24:18 – 00:05:53:14
Alec Hogg:
So it’s interesting, when you put it in those terms, the incremental changes that P.W. Botha made and the incremental changes that Ramaphosa is making. So we need, if I hear you correctly, an “F.W. to the P.W.,” in other words, somebody from the ANC or somebody in government, as president, who can break with the past and bring through radical change. Is it not possible that Ramaphosa himself could do this?

00:05:53:16 – 00:06:28:18
R.W. Johnson:
Well, I mean, obviously, we don’t know what the agency will be. What worries me is that I mentioned in the talk that David Makhura and his IFP counterpart were warning that unless we change, we will face revolution. Now, I don’t think that’s true, but I do think that if we carry on the way we are, we will face great social disturbances because you can’t expect people to put up with this degree of inequality, poverty, and falling per capita income, for God’s sake.

00:06:28:20 – 00:06:52:23
R.W. Johnson:
Sooner or later, this will create an explosion, which will make what happened in July 2021 look quite minor. So, it may be that the ANC will refuse to reform until we get an explosion of that sort. I don’t know, but that’s where we are heading at the moment if we continue along the path that we are on.

00:06:53:00 – 00:07:22:19
Alec Hogg:
Mr. Johnson, you’ve been giving us some fabulous insights for a while now about the emergence of MK. Over the weekend, my colleague Christine had an interview with Jabulani Khumalo, the founder of MK, where he made some radical exposés about Jacob Zuma, and more than 300,000 people have watched that video in just over 24 hours, which to me, shows that there’s a lot of interest in it.

00:07:22:21 – 00:07:26:16
Alec Hogg:
What can we read from this? And I’m glad you’ve seen it. What can we read from that?

00:07:26:18 – 00:07:49:19
R.W. Johnson:
Well, I wasn’t too surprised by most of it in the sense that Zuma, you know, he took hold of their initiative, used it for his own purposes, and clearly had rather limited ideas about what he was going to do, making it up as he went along. And, you know, MK is a fairly chaotic party.

00:07:49:21 – 00:08:15:18
R.W. Johnson:
I don’t know whether that’s going to change, frankly, but it is a peculiar situation where—I mean, I see that the party is demanding that the grant for the Zulu royal house be doubled. I mean, this is allegedly a radical left party, which is arguing in favor of Zulu chieftaincy and monarchy, with enormous resources to be devoted to it.

00:08:15:18 – 00:08:27:03
R.W. Johnson:
I mean, it’s peculiar. It’s a bizarre set of notions that an old Zulu man like Jacob Zuma has, but which make no sense otherwise.

00:08:27:05 – 00:08:55:15
Alec Hogg:
Part of the discussion that Christine had with Mr. Khumalo was that Zuma’s daughter had fraudulently gone into CIPC, into the back end, and changed the ownership or the directorship of the MK party. And that’s one of the reasons why he’s laid a fraud charge. It seems open and shut. But what are the implications of something like that?

00:08:55:17 – 00:09:23:13
R.W. Johnson:
Well, I wasn’t too surprised, as I say. I mean, you know, Zuma, in his years of armed struggle, would have done many things more radical than that. His daughter obviously has learned from her father, and they wanted certain things, so they made sure that it happened. And then you go on from there. I mean, that’s just the style they have.

00:09:23:15 – 00:09:43:02
Alec Hogg:
What are you seeing from the other big announcement of the past week, the resignation of Floyd Shivambu from the EFF and his joining MK? Again, Mr. Khumalo says it’s a ruse, a deception. He doesn’t see this as a major break. How are you reading it?

00:09:43:07 – 00:10:14:23
R.W. Johnson:
Well, of course, I know no more than anyone else, but the Sunday Times yesterday had a completely different story, which made good sense. They reported that there had been a split between Malema and Shivambu, basically over the negotiations with the JR, and their story made perfectly good sense to me. Malema had been so keen to advance his own interests that he sort of sabotaged Shivambu’s negotiation, and I can see how that would be very upsetting to Shivambu.

00:10:15:01 – 00:10:45:03
R.W. Johnson:
So, look, I think part of the problem is that we’ve now got two, well, radical economic transformation parties, if you like—MK and the EFF. And I don’t really think there’s room in our system for two such parties. Since MK is bigger, has a former president leading it, and has this large block of support in one province, it’s more formidable.

00:10:45:05 – 00:11:08:18
R.W. Johnson:
Which the EFF doesn’t have. It’s a more attractive pool of opposition, and I can see that it will pull people away from them. Yeah, Malema’s got a real problem with that. But, at the end of the day, as I say, it’s kind of chaotic to me. They keep drafting in more people with very shaky, dubious credentials. It’s a party of crooks to a considerable extent, and it doesn’t make much sense. So, I don’t know whether even AMK is going to hold up very well over time. I’d be surprised if it does well in the 2026 municipal elections, for example.

00:11:32:02 – 00:11:58:02
Alec Hogg:
Moving back to the Government of National Unity. So far, so good, it appears. And some of the initial reports coming back from the new ministers, particularly the DA ministers, are that they are shaking up their predecessors. Would this cause concern for the retention of the status quo?

00:11:58:04 – 00:12:23:08
R.W. Johnson:
I don’t think so. I think Ramaphosa would be delighted that this is so. They have some ministers who work really hard and don’t just talk. I think there was a very good column by Justice Malala in the Mail & Guardiancontrasting Motsoaledi going on another big talk show with Schreiber at Home Affairs, who’s getting on and actually doing the work.

Read more: MK founder spills the beans, unmasks Zuma’s real agenda…

00:12:23:10 – 00:12:48:18
R.W. Johnson:
I think this is the difference, really. I mean, Motsoaledi has been talking about this issue for 17 years now, and he still thinks the answer to the problems is yet more talking, not doing. The DA ministers are a breath of fresh air from that point of view. My concern, as I pointed out, is that they’ve been carefully kept away from all the national ministries, meaning that all the basic ANC economic policies are still in force and are indeed being reinforced. That is exactly what needs to be changed and isn’t changing.

00:12:48:20 – 00:13:09:21
Alec Hogg:
So let’s go back to those parallels with the National Party. Where will the spark come from? Or how could the spark occur that gets the ANC to sober up and realize that it is not doing itself, let alone the country, any good by following economic policies that have failed and are continuing to fail?

00:13:09:23 – 00:13:33:02
R.W. Johnson:
Well, as I say, I can only see two ways. One is that they will continue to lose electoral support. If that happens badly enough, it will shake them, and they will be in less and less of a position to call the shots anyway. But, the worrying thing is that we could see, as we did under apartheid, you know, every now and again, you get explosions—Sharpeville, Soweto, the situation rising—explosions of social discontent, which then force change of some sort.

00:13:33:04 – 00:14:01:11
R.W. Johnson:
And I fear that that is also a real possibility, that you can’t keep on cutting people’s per capita income, increasing unemployment, and increasing social misery without, in the end, producing some convulsion. And that’s what they’re pushing towards.

00:14:01:13 – 00:15:06:05
Alec Hogg:
For those of us sitting outside of the political science arena that you’ve spent your life analyzing here and all around the world, it kind of beggars belief that when the facts are so clear, the people who should be making the changes don’t. What is it about the human condition or indeed about the politician’s condition that stops them from seeing the obvious, what is seemingly obvious to others?

00:15:06:07 – 00:15:45:01
R.W. Johnson:
Well, I think that the ANC has been in its own particular bubble ever since it went into exile. It imbibed, as you know, for a whole generation, essentially Marxist ideas, both political and economic, and those are still highly influential. Phrases like “National Democratic Revolution” still have a sort of sainted meaning, which they don’t in the rest of the country. But they’re still clinging to those things because they don’t have any other way of thinking about things.

00:15:45:03 – 00:16:15:21
R.W. Johnson:
And that is a huge problem. But, you know, the same was true with the National Party. As you know, they saw things in the way that Verwoerd laid out in the 1950s, and they carried on with that for a very long time. I remember talking to Laurie Schlemmer in the 1970s and 80s—I saw a lot of Laurie then—and he was by far the best analyst of South Africa that we ever had.

00:16:15:21 – 00:16:42:17
R.W. Johnson:
I think I said, you know, how come we’re still doing these things, trying to create homelands and all of this apartheid when it’s quite obviously not working? Why is it still going on? And he said, well, you know, that’s true. But the point is that you’ve got all these bureaucrats and technocrats in the government and throughout society. The last time they got a clear message, which they understood, was from Verwoerd. Now he’s dead and gone. But they continue to do it because no one has offered any alternative. So they continue with those policies, even developing them, because they don’t have any idea of where else to go. And I think, in a sense, the ANC is now in that sort of situation, where they must be losing confidence in their own policies to some extent.

00:17:17:03 – 00:17:22:10
R.W. Johnson:
But they don’t have any feeling of where else to go, if you know what I mean.

00:17:22:12 – 00:17:29:19
Alec Hogg:
And what was that clear message that the ANC had? Where did that come from? Tambo? Mandela?

00:17:29:21 – 00:17:58:12
R.W. Johnson:
Oh, I think it came earlier than that, during the exile years, when those were the years after when the SACP was at its height, to some extent in control. And when its policies became ANC policies, all sorts of very exciting, but completely unrealistic policies were adopted. There was always talk about revolutionary seizure of power.

00:17:58:12 – 00:18:31:14
R.W. Johnson:
And as you know, that never took place. But it was the sort of thing which excited people and made for good rhetoric and exciting statements drawn up in countries far from South Africa. But it was completely out of touch with reality. The armed struggle was also, you know, a disaster, really. Within a very short time of being launched, it resulted in everyone going to jail, into exile, being dead, or whatever.

00:18:31:16 – 00:19:07:20
R.W. Johnson:
It never really got off the ground in a serious way. So I think they were in a very peculiar state in exile, as most exile movements are. Of course, the only thing they then did was to issue statements and pass resolutions, and that became the modus operandi of the ANC. They still have this tendency to make speeches, pass motions, etc., and then feel the work is done. But it’s not because it’s just noise.

00:19:07:22 – 00:19:16:09
Alec Hogg:
R.W. Johnson, author, political scientist, and the favorite columnist of the BizNews tribe. And I’m Alec Hogg from BizNews.com.

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