Michael Beaumont
Pretoria - This week, ActionSA was among a group of seven political parties that jointly announced a multi-party pact convention to be held next month.
This is the first time in our young democracy that political parties come together before an election to negotiate a pact with the prospect of forming an alternative government.
It is no accident that the convention will take place at Emperor’s Palace, the site of the Codesa negotiations in the early 1990s, as a symbol of what this moment means for South Africa in 2023.
It was at this venue that the difficult and imperfect terms were negotiated for the birth of our democracy, and it may be here where a different and better future takes root for the South African people.
Starting with the reasons this pact must succeed, one only needs to travel 20 minutes in any direction to answer this question; 44% unemployment, the highest rape and murder rates in the world, the rising cost of living, continuous load shedding, decaying infrastructure, collapsed public healthcare and an education system that is raising the next generation of unemployed South Africans.
It is against this backdrop that the ANC appears certain to drop far below 50% in next year’s elections, having already fallen to 46% support in 2021.
The last 30 years have proven that South Africa and the ANC cannot co-exist in mutual prosperity. Equally, it has been proven that South Africa cannot be fixed from the opposition benches.
This is why this pact convention must succeed.
In the 2021 local government elections, 45% of registered voters cast their votes.
If a number of political parties come together, and they present the prospect of animating the millions of South Africans who have given up on their political establishment, the ANC’s legacy in government will be relegated to the history books of our country, and the turnaround of South Africa can begin.
This is why it is essential for this multi-party pact to be more than anti-ANC.
Can you imagine if parties that could agree to such ideas were to place a small sign in the corner of their election posters so that all South Africans could know they were working together like a proudly South African tick or an ISO 14001 accreditation?
The focus on an alternative vision for South Africa and shared solutions to the challenges that confront South Africans is as necessary to inspire belief as it is to ensure that a new national coalition government in 2024 is capable of overseeing the turnaround of our country.
Those who align with the ANC are associating around a continuation (or worse) acceleration of the status quo.
For this, the baggage of the recent and distant past will have to be left at the door. In every other industry, people work together for the common good, even if they do not particularly like one another. Why should politics be any different?
Finally, while it may sound obvious, the recent past has revealed otherwise; political parties are going to have to believe in the long-term growth they will achieve by collaborating, even if it is at the apparent expense of their short-term self-interest.
For the first time, the despair of South Africans is being met with the hope that South Africa can be placed back on the path to becoming the nation we were destined to be. In this respect, next year’s elections must become a referendum on change.
Those who align with the ANC are associating around a continuation (or worse) acceleration of the status quo. Those who align on the other side are coming together for change. The crossroads that South African faces can leave no space for equivocation on this question.
* Beaumont is national chairperson of ActionSA
Pretoria News