Ralph Mathekga — The ANC‘s Last Decade

And once again, it is "What's Involved?" Special guest tonight, and somebody that I'm really looking forward to chatting to. He's written a fantastic book, in my opinion, and certainly one that has a rather interesting title. Who is he? He is none other than author, Ralph Matega. Ralph, welcome. Good to have you along with us. - Thank you so much for inviting me, and it's a great pleasure to be chatting to you. - Okay, so now the book that we're gonna be chatting about that has just recently been published, and I've gotten my hands on, is called "The ANC's Last Decade", how the decline of the party will transform South Africa. So like I said, very, very provocative title there, but before we get into all of that, Ralph, let's talk a little bit about you. Give me a bit of your background. Born, bred, where, how, why, and what led up to writing of this book? - Well, very interesting question there, David, because I usually don't get asked much about that. A lot of people will presume that I'm from around Jobek and so forth, and now I'm gonna come out now. I was born in Limpopo, actually, and I was raised in Limpopo in an area they have called, in the Boha area, it's in our Rana municipality, a village oddly named my darling, very interestingly.

So I did my high school there, and raised by my mom and dad there, among the six siblings, big family. Then I went to study at Vets, where I did law, politics, and economic history. I did BA, did honors there, did my master's there. From there, I then went to the U.S. to study at the new school in New York, where I spent about three, four years there as well, doing postgraduate studies and fellowships. And yeah, then I came back, started working profession in South Africa, where I worked for IDASA at an NGO. I was subsequently worked for Treasury, lecture politics, and in the middle of all that, I was writing, busy writing. I mean, since my time doing fellowship at the university, far back 2003, I've always written an academic article in journals and so forth. So I enjoy writing, and I've always been able to contribute to the debate and follow what's going on in academia or in public affairs. So in a nutshell, that's just about where it comes from. - Okay, now talk to me about the book though, Ralph. I mean, what led to you wanting to write a book like this? - I mean, the book is part of the story I began telling about South Africa's political evolution, broadly speaking. I'm fascinated with South Africa's democratic consolidation, what's happening.

And I think this account that fascinate many observers. I mean, one of the late commas to experiment with democratization, South Africa and expectations are high as to how this country will perform and how it is performing. So I've been following that from the point of view of looking at the leadership from the ANC as it is the dominant party. I went far back, started with a book titled "When Zuma Goes" where I looked at the level of corruption within the state and what it meant to the functionality of state institutions. I will then subsequently write a book on Ramaphosa's term where I started looking at the prospect for transforming the ANC to becoming a modern political party that can actually account instead of a corrupt political party that draws its identity a lot from its liberation heritage. And after then I wrote this book that you and I are thinking about the NC's last decade where I began to postulate on how South Africa will look like with a weekend and severely weakened ANC. And I then proposed that this is the decade that the ANC will most likely lose power. I don't think they will go through two more national elections without losing power unless otherwise a big miracle happens in terms of re-basing the ANC, in terms of rethinking about the identity of the ANC, reforming the ANC.

It's a huge project that we see will not easily get to succeed. So the ANC is facing this decline. But it's not just about the ANC decline in David. It's about how it will spread itself across various areas of power, across different spheres of government and how it will relate to government. I'm speaking about other issues there on how I map this ANC and the dispensing of power in South Africa. - Okay, now this is fascinating. And as you said, for a lot of observers, South Africa is a very fascinating country to look at politically, but we're living in it, okay? And if I look back to the past, there was this liberation movement. Eventually they won. We had Nelson Mandela, who was just the most amazing person as the figurehead. And in 1994, we all went to vote together and we thought, this is it, the rainbow nation. And if I have a look at our constitution, for example, at our Bill of Rights, we've got probably one of the best constitutions. Certainly the Bill of Rights speaks to very, very important things. And yet, somewhere along the line, we seem to have gotten lost. Talk to me a little bit about that, 'cause I know you break up this book into some very, very interesting chapters as well.

And the one is the fatal flaw in the giant's DNA. So talk to me about this whole thing, 'cause we were all so positive and now nobody really is. We all kind of going, okay, so the ANC on brilliant, but what are our options? - I mean, David, it's a complex question we are raising. When I talk about the DNA of the ANC, the fatal flaw in the DNA of the ANC, where I draw on its character as a liberation fighter, it's not just for historical purposes only, but it's most importantly also to identify and try to begin to think about how the ANC will relate to institutions of democracy, particularly liberal democracy. I'm quite clear, David, that I'm focusing on liberal democracy, constitutional democracy. So liberation parties find it very difficult. There is a certain pattern of accountability and a certain way of relating to institutions that is required in a liberal democracy, that liberation party seems to have a deficit thereof when it comes to disposing of such culture. And this is why when we look at South Africa's constitution, the provisions are quite well. When you look at the constitution, the ANC was part of the drafting of the constitution, but the political culture and some of the liberation paraphernalia that is left within the ANC, dominating its way of making decisions at times, do not go well with the principle of the constitution.

And the ANC tend to flound a lot of majoritarianism when it comes to policy, without making effort to stick to rationality and try to show that policies are rational and justifiable, even if they may be set upon or agreed upon by the majority. That's more sufficient on its own. They still have to be rational in line with the constitutional provision. So the demands of a constitutional system or a constitutional order, I think the ANC find it difficult to live up to that. And it's got a lot to do with the liberation heritage. And that is why you find this gap between what is envisaged in the constitution and what is actually happening on the ground. - Okay, because in my mind, what happened, and I used to say this quite often, is what we did is when the ANC came to power, there was just a lot of stuff. They were left carrying a lot of baggage. And it seems to me that it turned out that we literally just changed one bunch of sort of corrupt institution to another one. The name just changed, but the practices essentially to me still continued. And why do you think though that people continually and have continued to vote for the ANC despite this unhappiness, despite people going, but it's not working for us.

Why have we continued to vote for them? - It's very frustrating that David, I can even sense the frustration in your voice as you're afraid with this question. Are you quite frustrated as you are about this? And I think it talks to political culture of South Africa. I think we still have a lot of work to do as political scientists in helping people understand the political culture so that we know what we need to shift from and to shift to what. One of the things I try to identify in the book about the political culture is the culture of a single place center of power, I feel like. I'm going back to even South Africa under the British crown, South Africa under Union, South Africa under Eastern Republic and controversial even so, South Africa in a post-democratic dispensation. One of the essential characteristics that runs across all these different political orders for the last 100 years is that there has always been a single center of power. Provinces and everything, they were subjugated to the central government and it has always been that. And the central government has always been dominated by a single political party, the national party for many years. And in the post-apartheid, the ANC came and occupied that single center of power.

Even when the ANC is failing in delivering in a democratic dispensation whereby it ought to be judged through electoral evaluation critically, you still find a sense whereby it is also being held above politics. It is almost the center of power. For example, I want to vote for the ANC to be out, but what will happen? Because they will no longer be the center of power. I don't see the opposition as an alternative constituting that new center of power. But because I need the center of power, I will vote for the ANC. We are used to that politics centered around a single center of power. And the reality as I'm observing and I'm pointing out, quite trying to point out in the book throughout is that our institutional evolution and our democratic culture as well, there is a contradiction because the way in which things are going, the center of power is no longer holding. The ANC is no longer being able to retain that hegemony and constitute that center of power. Power is dispassing. What do we do? Power is dispassing to regions. What do we do? Do we establish a new center of power without the ANC? Or do we learn to function in a system of multiple centers of power? Which I think is the most practical.

- Wow, there's just so much to talk about and so much to unpack. This is "What's Involved". My special guest is Ralph Matega, who is the author of the ANC's last decade. How the Decline of the Party Will Transform South Africa. Just the title says to me that there is hope. And let's dig into that a little bit when we come back. This is "What's Involved". And we're back with my special guest, Ralph Matega. We're talking about his latest book, "The ANC's Last Decade". How the Decline of the Party Will Transform South Africa. - So Ralph, we've been through some fairly trying times. I mean, we've had the Zuma debacle, which continues up until now. When President Ramaphosa then sort of won the prize there and became president, everybody breathed a collective sigh of relief and thought, okay, as of tomorrow, everything changes. It's not like that though, is it? - It's not like that. And this is what I began emphasizing when I wrote the book, "When Zuma Goes". That corruption has infested our institutions. You see, I'll tell you, David, I've had the privilege of traveling a lot as a student in my twenties. I remember at some point, spending a lot of time in Ethiopia as a researcher. I've been funded to do research in Nigeria, in the Niger Delta, where I spent a month there back in 2003.

I mean, the time I spent in Nigeria had actually made me aware back in 2003, what happens when corruption becomes a numb? When corruption begins to compete with institutions to a point where it actually overwhelms institutions where there is no longer a wide recourse against corruption. We're nearly there. One of the reasons why we're undertaking an inquiry into state capture, which is the most wide inquiry into corruption I've ever heard of in the world recently. This is a wide, wider inquiry questioning the genesis of political decision-making and how that extends to the dispensing of patronage in our system. Why we're having this is because of the extent of infiltration of corruption, how it infiltrated our institution. So this is why someone like Zuma living is not going to be the solution. Someone like Ramaphosa surviving is not going to be the solution. However, what Ramaphosa survival ought to entail in order to be a long-term solution is that it should also reflect the moral turnaround within the party and also within the society, where the society begins to critically evaluate leaders. You can have the most effective anti-corruption, but if the leadership processing pipeline allows for corrupt leaders or questionable leaders to come through, you just have to build more chains.

- You know, I've been trying and since getting your book as well, 'cause I think about this a lot. I would suppose I would describe myself as a passionate South African. I love this country. I love the people of this country. I love living here. I'm incredibly patriotic. And yet, you know, over these last few years, I've become disillusioned. And some people told me I'm a terminal optimist, but even me, I've become disillusioned about everything. And the problem that I have is that, you know, with all the things that are happening, I could not in good conscience say, okay, well, I want these guys to stick around. But then I look around me and I go, okay. So if I don't want them, who do I want? And I don't have an answer to that. - I think David, as a nation, we are battling through trauma. And I think it is the trauma of big disappointment. We held the ANC above a normal political party. For many years, we have held the exceptionalism in South Africa that says the ANC is different from FRELIMO, only to an extent of the resources that the FRELIMO is presiding upon, and the extent of the institutional resilience in that area, given the historical pattern of post liberation in the region where FRELIMO is involved, Mozambique.

So what is coming to dawn upon us is that the ANC is not exceptional. I mean, if you have traveled across the continent, what differs is the scale. When I was in Nigeria, I began to realize our corruption become normalized. Our system is not yet at that level, but they are not too far. Remember the catching up become too rapid. In 2003, David, when I was in Nigeria, there were generators all over. And I was asking myself, I was in Lagos, how do they manage to survive with such noise? Little did I know that years down the line in South Africa, there will be generators because of red shedding, for example. So this didn't become normalized a bit by bit. Nations get used to living within instance of state failure. It requires reflection. What I always throw back to South Africans is in what direction are they willing to reflect? Are they willing to help the ANC restore itself? How much time will that cost? And how much of further deterioration will get underway in government? Or are South Africans willing to craft the solution away from the ANC? The choice is all ours. We're a free country. We vote free. - Yeah, again, and this is the thing, Ralph, that you brought it up now, is we become so used to it.

I was saying to somebody the other day, it's ridiculous. We actually celebrate when we have power. When we have electricity, we're like, yay, we've got electricity. We are so grateful that we've got electricity. And then we count, hey, we've had like two weeks without any interruption in our electricity supply. Not thinking, but hang on, electricity supply should not be something we should celebrate. It should be a given. When you look at all of these things that are happening, I often talk about what I call the silent majority. And I define them as this large group of South Africans. All we actually want to do is we want to have a country that works, we want to be able to go out, earn a living, look after our families, and just generally get on with things. And this is across the color spectrum, I believe. And yet, we don't seem to, this majority, don't seem to want to stand together yet. Is that something that you've picked up or am I living in cloud cuckoo land? - No, David, I agree with you. It's an opportunity to rebuild the center in South Africa. The center that has been constituted by the NC is collapsing, collapsed. The NC no longer has a German. And I still believe there is an opportunity for progressive politics that can be built across different formations.

And I do think that that majority can come through and find an accord. But the problem, David, is that it requires a lot of work to be able to do that. It requires more than just the common despise of the ANC. It requires a greater sense of the agency beyond the ANC. For example, you bring people together who are both angry at the ANC, you find that they still have little, they agree upon. They don't have any other overriding issues that bring them to function and work together and pursue those things. So this is where the problem is with our politics, David, is that as I'm seeing fragmentation, including within the ANC and across other political parties, I do not see coalescence of the issues. I mean, communities can stand, ratepayers can refuse to pay rates and say, we're organizing ourselves, but that does not constitute a better institutional development. It is actually a symptom of institutional failure where the political institutions are failing, where the political order is not well aligned to resolve problem in society and find common solution. That ability to find common solution, it's a problem I think we're facing. Well, we're gonna get into that a little more in just a bit.

This is what's involved. This is an incredible book and you guys need to get out and read it, okay? Because it just has such amazing insights. My special guest, Ralph Matega, and we're talking about the book, "The ANC's Last Decade." When we come back, we'll chat some more about it. And we're back with Ralph Matega, author of "The ANC's Last Decade," a couple of other books as well, but this is the one we're focusing on now. Ralph, one of the things that, to me, is still a challenge in our country is there's still so much fear and it's fear across the spectrum. It's fear of, you know, of our past. It's fear of sort of broaching those kind of subjects. It's fear of what happens if we do stand up, you know? What happens if we go, okay, Mr. ANC, you're not working, so we'd like somebody else, but we don't have anybody else. So to me, two of the greatest problems that we need to address is this fear that we have still, and we need to be able to communicate more. That's why I love being able to talk to people like yourselves because it's an opportunity to get some more info out there, to broaden the debate. What are your thoughts there? I don't think that fear is quite a great concern and it is the psyche of fear because we have never, in a democratic dispensation, lived through a weaker ANC, which is struggling to reconstitute the center or itself at that center.

So the fear is the fear of what we don't know. I mean, I talk to a lot of people in the financial sector, financial institutions, the banks and the insurance companies. And in most cases, one of the ways that often comes out is uncertainty about the policy environment in South Africa and about the politics. And this uncertainty, if you look at it, the more the ANC loses the grip of power, the more uncertainty in South Africa becomes. It shows how certainty is reliant on South Africa. But what has that certainty brought about us, David? If you take a critical look, I mean, what have we achieved under a single dominant party system? Did we achieve transformation of the economy? No, did we achieve transformation of the education system and massive education of the young people? No. So if you look at it from the sexual point of view, you take a closer look. You realize that it's all about the discomfort of not being in the center that we actually fear. But when it comes to the gains of having that center politics dominating, it has not brought us so much. It has not brought us much. And I believe we can actually experiment to see what happened if the mandate is dispersed across political parties and power is dispersed across the society.

Can we find a way to build coalescence in a way that our institutions function? What if we have power dispersed across the courts, across the NGOs, across political parties? Can it come back and function in the line with the constitution to ensure progress in our society? Why don't we experiment with that? - Yeah, that's a very, very valid point. But now, when you're talking about this, because initially in the beginning of, from '94 on to let's say around about 2000, there was still a lot of anger. There was a lot of finger pointing at apartheid. But subsequent to that, we've now gone into this generation of what is referred to as the born frees. This worries me in terms of where we are politically at the moment is where do our young people sit? Because our young people are the ones that are ultimately going to inherit this country. Where are they? And how come specifically in terms of the ANC at the moment, I don't hear many young voices there. - You know, increasingly, David, young people are increasingly looking to me as that forgotten generation because we have no plan to involve them. Our politics is still very conservative in my view. There is no distinct voice of young people.

They are fully integrated into politics, mainstream politics, which is dominated by conservatives as well. This is one of the reasons why if you look at a party that calls itself representing young people, if you put them behind a curtain and you say to them, they must continue speaking, you'll feel you're listening to a party in 1964 because their solution and interventions are showing that we are still at that historical politics. I mean, for example, the land has been dispossessed in South Africa through violence and it has been dispossessed to the economic detriment of many. But when you listen to the narrative around land restitution now, sometimes you hear young people speaking about it, you get a sense that there isn't innovation in the solution. It's almost like you are just turning upside down what was done in the past and you are now selling it as a solution to the present. I mean, you are not even taking into consideration that you live in a different political order whereby everyone else enjoyed the same right, irrespective of the historical path that the country went through. You just cannot emphasize on taking the land while it punishes a particular group simply because they find themselves on the wrong side of history in the past.

You cannot just do that. So that lack of innovation in our solution is showing how our politics is held to the mainstream. And David, I travel around. The mainstream politics is having problems. In Washington, there is a need to try to reinvent mainstream politics. Identity politics continue to challenge mainstream politics. Women are marching on the street because mainstream politics is failing to provide them safety. People of color are saying we don't feel fully represented. We are forming parties that distinctly represent us for that matter. So you have a problem of the mainstream politics that is not functioning and the youth is not finding a voice in all of this. It's creating distortion for the future. - Yeah, Ralph, it's doom and gloom at the moment. And really, I mean, we are sitting in some dark times. Just recently, all of the unrest we had and the amount of damage that was caused and we heard that it was all a planned thing and this and that and the next thing and we had all of these theories. And then it kind of went away and South Africans just continued with their lives and we're like, okay, well, that's done. We did come together. There's a spark of hope there because we did then come together as South Africans and stand together and say, okay, hang on now.

This is not good for us. But then we just went back to the same old, same old. Is there hope for us, Ralph? - There is no hope for this current politics as it is configured.

Too much fragmentation and political parties are not making efforts to find each other. There is too much radicalism. Political elites are dominating politics largely for the sake of power exchange as power brokers. And it is not to the benefit of the broader public interest. That is why even the broader public interest cannot induce the most basic cooperation among political parties. You're seeing coalition collapsing in municipalities that are already struggling, showing that the lack of service delivery and the peril that the municipalities and the people find themselves in is not enough to sufficient coalescence and cooperation among political parties. That tells you the politics that is not well grounded. It's doom and gloom, but I don't think it's all bad. It actually says that there could be other ways to rally action in South Africa. And I don't mean it in the naive way of saying, let's go from an action movement that is not a political party or anything, but it's just a movement. What I'm trying to say is that South Africa's politics is evolving and fragmentation and the dispersion of the political mandate is uncomfortable, looks like doom and gloom. But it does not mean that there are no opportunity for other players to come in and reconstitute political identities and political project along what is progressive and functional for the society.

- Where do we start though? I mean, do we have, where does the power lie? Because we talk about the ANC as this super power kind of, you know, the only one in the country. Where does the power actually lie though? Does it lie just with the ANC or whoever turns out to be currently in power? Where is that power? I need to understand this. - Power lies with the voters. And voters are also beginning to regain heart.

Voters will not just vote for the sake of punishing. They need to understand if an alternative is possible because you go to the elections with maybe slightly different calculations than what people tend to think. You don't go there from the completely rational point of view of saying, if I vote for this one, it will take a vote from this and then it will result in a concept looking like this. You vote usually on the basis of what is possible in terms of your nearest a favorable patch willing the elections. And the configuration that comes out of that usually result in what people often misinterpret. If the ANC is losing voters, it does not necessarily mean that the voters are willing to give those voters to the opposition. It could mean that we need to find functionality in municipalities that have got to be commanded. Where do we begin? Within that, NGOs get involved. They have been getting involved. Some of them have been learning to litigate with these municipalities as we are learning to litigate around policy. I mean, that's the only way that's what is happening because I don't think there will be consolidation in a short term. What needs to happen in a short term is just different stakeholders coming in and finding an accord and working towards functionality as government will possibly strengthen capacity on an ongoing basis.

Unfortunately, I don't see any positive turn in terms of the municipality gaining capacity suddenly. All I see is you're going to see non-government players pressuring a lot in some of the municipalities. Some of the areas that I've observed, I'm seeing traditional leadership gaining more and more momentum, doing a lot of development goals, intervening when municipalities are not capable. But where those institutions are possible, you're going to see community lobbying institutions, conflict and matching. And in some areas, there will be success. In some areas, there will not be. You have a mixed back. - All right, this is what's involved. My special guest is Ralph Mataga. And we're talking about his book, "The ANC's Last Decade, How the Decline of the Party Will Transform South Africa." I want to get into the transformation, but when we come back and as we wrap up our chat with Ralph, this is what's involved, as I said, and it's so good to have you along with us. Back in just a bit. And we're back with my special guest, Ralph Mataga. And we are wrapping up our chat about his latest book, "The ANC's Last Decade." Ralph, all through this conversation with you, there's a lot of what I pick up, and I pick up around the people that I know and interact with.

There's a lot of will to want to change things. But as I said earlier on, I mean, if I have to look at the current political landscape now and go, okay, so who do I want to vote for? The answer is not nobody really, because it seems that as you said, it's mostly a power-grabbing thing. And it's like, do we have to settle for the lesser of the evils in this country? Is there no way that we can change? So talk about transformation here. How are we going to, let's say you said that by the end of the decade, so what's that, 2029? So let's wake up one morning after those elections. What is it gonna look like for us, do you think? - I mean, David, let me just quickly start with how I use transformation. And I think that the silver lining in the book, I mean, the silver lining in my analysis of South Africa's crisis, that yes, a crisis is there, precipitated by the ANC. It is becoming a national crisis. South Africans also see it as that, that the crisis of the ANC, the crisis of the nation. But one of the things that I also point out, and I think often people will not take heed of that because people will tend to think the bigger part of the book, it's negative stuff. And I don't have negative and positive, David, myself, it's just politics for me.

The opportunity for transformation is what we tend to overlook. And we don't want to live through moments that precede transformation. Usually, what we usually say is transformation we put in our blueprint in the papers and everything, it's just for our own comfort. But the transformation of South Africa's politics comes through the unraveling. The unraveling where you have the ANC losing this hegemony, it is a crisis moment. We call it a crisis moment as we're looking at it. But it leads to transformation because it can allow new players to come and begin to say these are the issues that South Africa can actually push through upon. And that transformation comes through the collapse of the center and the emergence of multiple center and how it brings about a new regime when it comes to the exchange of power in influencing key decisions in our society. That is the key transformation I'm talking about, which can never happen in a single dominant party system. I remember a while ago, there was one campaign around election time that was like, "Vote your hopes and not your fears." Which is a great sentiment, you know? But where do we look for the hopes? So essentially, things are not gonna get better tomorrow.

But by going through this process, if we as individuals take responsibility, we can become this rainbow nation that I think most of us dream about. - It indeed. And one of the advantages that South Africa has as it traverses this storm of democratic consolidation is that there is still some level of institutional resilience. In some countries when discussions have been raised, it's when other institutions have already caved in. Institutions such as the judiciary. But in South Africa, there is still some level of judicial resilience. I mean, you can look at South Africa and you can think that it's all doom and gloom. Nothing great is happening. But the reality is that very few countries can mention jailing the former president. No, not many countries can achieve that as part of an indication that no one is above the law. The anti-corruption maneuvers that have gotten underway recently have seen changes in government. We have the state capture commission underway. Other countries cannot even get to that point. They just improvise and move along. So South Africa is one of those countries where you get a sense that nothing happens, but a lot happens. But when we take a closer look, you end up with the net result that says there is gradual shift in terms of the country moving in the right direction.

This shift is coming through crisis. The shift is inaugurating, bringing forth uncertainties that we don't know, but the nation is just holding, and it's holding. - Yeah, oh, okay. Well, Ralph, as we wrap it up now, what's next for you? Ralph, where are you going from here? Because this is a book that I don't know, even 10 years ago, would have not been allowed to be published, I don't think. But it would take great bravery to publish a book like that and go, "Hands up, guys. Listen, things are not working. We need to look at this." Where are you going next? What is your journey? - You know, my journey to follow the journey is to follow South Africa's evolution, democratic consolidation. South Africa offers a very interesting and tainted case study regarding opportunities for democratic consolidation, liberal democracy, 'cause it's not democracy, especially in countries that have got liberation history. And there are various institutions that are playing a role. It's not just political institutions that are playing a role when it comes to this democratic consolidation. I mean, one of the example I mentioned in the book is how ordinary people in South Africa have achieved a lot. I mean, the electoral reform that came through the court's decision that independent candidate can stand for mission out and provincial elections.

That means to be in parliament and the NCP. It's a huge achievement. And it was not achieved because someone sat down there and planned a political project within the NC of the DA. Actually, it was achieved because two or three people within a small NGO decided to approach the court. And I know them personally, and I've had personal discussions with them around this thing. So those are things that give me hope. Those are the stories I want to tell. The stories where I'm saying that South Africa's progress does not only depend on politics. Of course, it will do well if the politics was well placed. But with politics that is not well placed, fraught with corruption, the NC failing, a great deal of progress in this society has been made when it comes to electoral reform, when it comes to the health policy. I also want to note that the world's biggest anti-retroviral drug, anti-retroviral program is the one being implemented in South Africa. And it was not because of government. It was because of litigation by the treatment action campaign. All I'm saying is that there's a lot of stories to tell in understanding consolidation in South Africa. And I want to continue telling that story. - Wonderful stuff.

Well, we wish you all the best with that Ralph. And this particular show is always open to you. If you feel that you have something that people need to hear, I'd love to chat to you again. But thank you for your time. And we do wish you all the best going forward. I look forward to the next book as well. - Thank you so much David. It's been a great pleasure to come to you and pleasure being in connection with your listeners. - Wonderful stuff. There we go, wraps it up for this edition of what's involved. My special guest there, Ralph Mettega. The ANC's last decade, how the decline of the party will transform South Africa. And I'm all about transformation. Go out, get the book, do yourself a favor. It's well worth the read. Until next time to each and every one of you, take care, Look after yourselves and thank you for listening.