Bela Act debate reveals deeper divide in SA politics

There is a general divide that defines South African politics at any one point in time.

This division might appear to be simplistically a racial one based on this country’s racially segregated past but, on closer inspection, it is more a divide between those seeking to preserve unearned – sometimes undeserved – privileges from the past and those attempting to forge a new inclusive society.

This divide is at the centre of what is threatening to unravel the tenuous strings that hold the government of national unity (GNU) together.

The Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act that the DA has now decided is the hill they are willing for the GNU to die on is the very definition of the division that defines this country.

Before President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Bill into law, the DA had already drawn its line in the sand, stating that it would leave the GNU if he signed it into law.

It did not leave when he signed it into law with conditions that clauses 4 and 5 not be immediately implemented.

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Now that the three-month consultation period that he set aside has come to pass and the clauses that will take away the power of school governing bodies from determining a school’s language policy have not been changed, the DA is threatening, again, to walk away.

That is because there are rumours that the DA’s Siviwe Gwarube could be fired.

Ramaphosa would be a hypocrite to fire a DA minister for siding with trade union Solidarity and AfriForum in wanting to preserve their privilege over school admissions while less than a week ago, he failed to fire a minister who is clearly compromised.

Instead he “reshuffled” minister Thembi Simelane from justice to cooperative governance and traditional affairs.

He took forever to “apply his mind” to her alleged transgressions of accepting a loan from a VBS-linked entity, but may fold easily and fire Gwarube to punish her party.

If indeed Gwarube is digging in her heels to preserve the privileges of certain sections of society that they are not entitled to, the easiest way to deal with that transgression would be to implement the law that has been enacted.

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The issue is simple, school language policies have been used by certain sections of society to determine the overall school admission policy to the exclusion of a lot of language groups in schools.

There is no moral justification for the preservation of a system of admission that perpetuates the imbalances of the past.

This impasse between the president and Gwarube if it is indeed just between the two of them, is also a wonderful opportunity to determine if the president’s party, ANC, and the DA are in their current arrangement for the long haul.

It cannot be healthy for South Africans and, indeed, the country’s economy to be threatened with the dissolution of government at every turn. That is akin to both parties holding a gun to each other’s head while pretending to be taking action to stabilise the country and map out its future.

It might seem fashionable and “within our rights” to continue to defend privileges that were cornerstones of a discredited system in the past, but it creates uncertainty in the political space of the country.

This is the uncertainty that allows anarchists to come in and declare “see, nothing has changed!” South Africa has a bigger project of economic transformation ahead of it to allow instability over a justifiable law to destroy everything.

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