Legacy political foundations, organisations established to honour the principles and ideas of prominent figures, are becoming increasingly critical in providing South Africa with intellectual, policy and moral leadership, partially because most of South Africa's political parties have slogans for policies, are stuck in dated ideological views that failed badly elsewhere and prioritise their narrow party interests, rather than the greater South African interests and are led by ignorant, violence-embracing, village-idiot leaders.
As South Africa’s African National Congress, the one-party dominant governing party for three decades, declines, South Africa is also seeing the rise of extra-parliamentary groups and leaders who are similarly populist, anti-Constitutional, violence-promoting and ignorant about the complexity of South Africa’s social, economic and state failures and lack the policy knowledge, statesmanship and broad-mindedness to tackle the country’s complex challenges.
Among the many reasons why legacy political foundations are increasingly providing a source of direction is that most of South Africa's political parties have slogans for policies, are stuck in dated ideological views that failed badly elsewhere and prioritise their narrow party interests, rather than the greater South African interests. Many of South Africa's political leaders are largely immature, acting like they are schoolyard politicians, are often corrupt, garner popularity by scapegoating others, embrace violence and routinely undermine the country's Constitution.
Unlike many mature democracies, particularly in Western Europe and Latin America, South Africa’s political parties do not have party-based policy institutes or thinktanks. Thabo Mbeki, when he was President of South Africa and the ANC, proposed an ANC party policy thinktank along the lines of the German Social Democratic Party’s policy institute. However, this was never implemented by the ANC.
When the ANC came to power in 1994, it closed down many of the research and policy units and institutes in the state, state-owned entities and development finance institutions, severely undermining the quality of public policies being devised in the state. The closure of these state-based research and policy institutes have severely undermined state capacity, institutional knowledge and policy influence.
The ANC, through its policy of cadre deployment, often pack the remaining state-owned research and policy think tanks with ANC leadership approved cadres, not necessarily based on research competence, undermining the quality and relevance of the policy research.
Some government policy has been formulated through the ANC government ministers establishing ministerial task teams to investigate specific policies. Often through the ANC’s policy of cadre deployment whereby the party appoints its cadres to key government positions and channel state black economic empowerment tenders to the companies of ANC connected cadres, experts to these ministerial policy inquiry task teams are often also mostly ANC leadership approved experts, which means that the same ANC aligned experts are continuingly recycled, reproducing the same policies over and over.
Many independent South African think tanks and policy institutes, such as the Centre for Policy Studies, that shaped policies during the late apartheid-era and the new democratic dispensation have closed down because of lack of donor funding. Remaining public policy think tanks have often been issue or sector-based or have not strongly influenced public debates. University-based policy think tanks have also been mostly issue or sector-based or closed down because of lack of donor funding. Sadly, the South African corporate sector, unlike in other democracies, have not significantly funded public policy research. Most of the independent public policy research has been funded by foreign donors.
The US, European Union and Japan have increasingly cut development aid, including for policy analysis. New emerging markets, such as China, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates do not fund independent public policy institutes in other countries, unless these advance their own domestic policy agendas and interests.
The quality of South Africa’s public policy debate has also increasingly declined, with the same failed party policies often continually recycled. This has resulted in poor, nonsensical and lack of evidence-based policies widely circulated and embraced. Slogans have increasingly replaced policies. Country policy choices demand trade-offs. For the proper understanding and interrogation of policy trade-offs, needs quality, evidence-based policies.
The lack of quality, evidence-based, rational, and pragmatic public policy proposals, discussions, and analyses have undermined the capacity of the South African state to produce quality public policies and to effectively deliver public services.
In addition, the rise of the social media-driven instant news cycles, policy debates have undermined the idea of the deep study of policies, with short-term political expedient, emotional, ideologically fundamentalist, and shallow policy discussions over evidence-based policy analysis and deep thought frequently the norm. Furthermore, public policy debates in South Africa have increasingly taken place along echo chambers, with algorithms steering people to shallow policy proposals they ideologically or emotionally agree with.
Because of the generally flawed government policies, individuals and organisations have often taken poorly-thought-out, irrational, and ideologically government policies to court, and overturned such policies in overwhelming occasions.
South Africa’s public policy debate has also remained ideologically partisan, rather than evidence-based. Under the ANC, the South African state, sadly, has in most cases only funded policy analyses of individuals aligned to the ANC’s official policy and ideological positions. Critical state research has been ignored or slammed. The state-owned Southern African Development Bank had its 2010 Development Report, of which I was a co-founder and co-editor, rejected by the ANC government because the report was critical of government economic policies.
Multilateral organisations, such as the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme also do policy research on South Africa. Often, if such policy research is critical of the ANC government, they have often been rejected by the ANC government. The UNDP’s 2004 Human Development Report for South Africa was rejected by then South African President Thabo Mbeki and the ANC government because it was critical of the ANC government policies.
Many global non-governmental organisations, such as Action Aid and Oxfam sponsor policy research on South African issues, prioritising social justice, gender equality and inclusion. The ANC government has often been largely unenthusiastic about such research interventions.
Legacy foundations are organisations such as the Desmond and Lea Tutu Legacy Foundation, founded to promote the reconciliation and social justice agenda of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Leah Tutu, the Helen Suzman Foundation, founded to promote the liberal democratic values espoused by Helen Suzman and anti-apartheid Member of Parliament who co-founded South Africa’s liberal Progressive Party in 1959; the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation established to uphold the non-racialism and anti-corruption values of veteran of the liberation struggle Ahmed Kathrada, who spent 26 years imprisoned on Robben Island alongside his fellow Rivonia Trialists, such as Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, for opposing apartheid.
The Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation established by the former South African president Kgalema Motlanthe promotes social dialogue and social pacts. Former South African President Thabo Mbeki continues to shape South Africa and the ANC’s policy debates through his Thabo Mbeki Foundation.
In Africa, outside South Africa, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, established by Sudanese billionaire businessman, Mohammed Fathi Ahmed Ibrahim, is aimed at strengthening the African voice on global challenges and awards the Mo Ibrahim Prize to exemplary African heads of government. In the US, the Carter Center, established by former US President Jimmy Carter and a member of the Democratic Party, to promote human rights, conflict resolution and democratic monitoring.
With the decline in foreign development aid to South Africa and the decline in South African corporate development aid for local policy think tanks, political legacy foundations have become increasingly important, as they have received more regular funding from either the state, if they are former presidents or from foreign ideological partners or from rich supporters.
In many quality democracies, legacy political foundations do have a massive influence. The German social democratic orientation Frederich Ebert Stiftung, named after Friedrich Ebert, who served as the first democratically elected President of Germany from 1919 until his death in 1925; the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, with centrist Christian democratic principles, named after Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1949 to 1963 and Co-Founder of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU); and the liberal Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, aligned to the Free Democratic Party) and named after Friedrich Naumann, a German liberal politician, and the first chairman of the German Democratic Party, have global influence.
We are living in complex times, where there is a fusion of technologies which blurs the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres, a merger of artificial intelligence (AI) with automation, in which traditional software combines with machine learning and natural language processing. The traditional factory model of employment has been permanently disrupted by automation, robotics and AI.
The demand for humans on the factory assembly line has decreased. Job security is declining and will also become insecure in the public sector also. Microchips are now the key engine for productivity growth. Business supply chains are increasingly spread across different countries, with the sourcing of inputs, the manufacturing and the distribution, logistics and marketing of products now increasingly happening across countries. Evidence-based, deep-thought, imaginative public policy is now more critical than ever.
South Africa’s political parties will be more effective if they commission independent, evidence-based policy research, rather than rely on slogan-based, emotional or ideologically-fundamentalist policies. South Africa’s state-owned research institutions must be depoliticised, with merit-based leadership appointments and research conducted independently from dominant political, ideological, and corporate interests.
South African corporations must contribute more to public policy analysis, as better quality policies lead to increased state capacity, increased state delivery and increased economic growth. Foreign development aid to South Africa will be more impactful if it supports independent, evidence-based public policy research and analyses in South Africa. South African government funding to non-governmental research must be based on merit and in the best interests of South Africa, not on dominant party ideological and patronage considerations.
Prof William Gumede is the Founder of the Democracy Works Foundation, the Co-Founder with Sibanye-Stillwater, of the Institute for Social Dialogue and the Founder of the Gumede Foundation; and the author of the bestselling Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times (Tafelberg).
This opinion is based on his interview on Johannesburg’s Radio 702 on the increasing importance of legacy political foundations in strengthening democracy, formulating evidence-based policies, and fostering racial reconciliation in South Africa.