Rejoice fellow South Africans, for these are wonderful times and the ANC is doing our country a massive favour.

Five reasons why I’m upbeat about what’s happening in SA politics at the moment.

1. Our Constitution Rocks!

Our Constitution has proven itself to be both fair and just.
Now is the time to be thankful for CODESA and people like Mandela, De Klerk, Ramaphosa and Meyer. 
It’s a beautiful document and the fact that it has remained standing despite all the chaos of the past 20 years makes me believe it will remain standing for the next 50.

For perspective(and I will ask this often): imagine the alternative.

Imagine if South Africa, in these turbulent political times had problematic amendments that spoke of the right to bear arms or made assertions on things like land ownership or racial differentiation.

It doesn’t — and all South Africans should be thankful for the fact that it’s such a wonderful document and not up for debate.

2. Our Constitutional Court is a rock!

Not only is the letter of the law in good shape, but the watchdog making sure it’s implemented has some teeth.

Yes it took some time to come to this point (also a good thing), but the ConCourt judgement against Zuma was a STRONG one, it was an unanimous one and it went further than many hoped — even implicated Parliament. Teeth!

So, the ConCourt has obviously not been ‘captured’ and this alone is reason to be a very happy and proud South African today.

For more perspective: imagine if it was captured … 
They would have been forced to find a way to find Zuma not guilty.
This would have required a ‘creative’ interpretation of the Constitution, which in turn would have thrown us into complete chaos.

So, be thankful! 
It’s a big deal.

3. Thank God for the honourable Mandonsela

Twenty years into the new South Africa, our knight in shining armour is a humble, smart and tenacious black woman. 
This is significant on more levels than one people. 
Celebrate it!!

Once again, imagine a South Africa without her. 
None of this would have happened. 
Niks!

4. Celebrate the arrogance of the ANC top 6

Yes, thank your lucky stars they’re an arrogant and corrupt bunch.
I know everyone is moaning about the fact that they’re not recalling President Zuma, but this is the best thing for South Africa.

Stay with me now..
Imagine the thing so many people say should happen, did actually happen.

Ramaphosa walks in, announces Zuma has been recalled.
The ANC declares itself ‘back on track’ and wants to put the damage this one man has done behind them.
Zuma becomes the scape goat for an organization that has lost it’s core.
For the next 4 years any and all critique against the ANC will be answered by: “We know, that was the Zuma ANC, this is the new one and we’re clean”.

Voters would give the struggle movement another chance under ‘new management’ and they’ll only lose 5%-10% in the next election.
The EFF will step up the militancy and continue to try to make the country ungovernable. Nothing really changes and nobody wins.

The way things are unfolding now however, the ANC is likely to lose 15% or more in the next election (or tear itself apart before then) and South Africa has a chance to get to a balanced 3 party democracy .

This is the best case scenario for your kids, irrespective of your political preference. (I’ll explain below.)

Bottom line: Let the ANC double down on stupidity and arrogance and be happy about it. It’s frustrating and incomprehensible, but it’s good for us in the long run.

5. Three is a crowd

The way the ANC is carrying on now, the DA and EFF will pick up big gains in the next election. With the DA adding Gauteng and the EFF possibly picking up a province as well.

With 3 ‘equally strong’ parties the political complexities become so tricky that the damage these politicians can do becomes limited.

They’ll be checking up on each other all day, which will lead to lower levels of corruption and better service delivery.

They’ll be making deals ‘across the aisles’, the EFF and DA standing together on one issue, the ANC and DA on another — blurring the lines of the growing polarisation in our society.

AND THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART, this “blurring the lines of the growing polarisation in our society”- part.

People like Malema, Trump, Zuma and Steve Hofmeyr feed on the fear of people.

They allow those who shout to shout louder and then they use the shouting to create the illusion that everyone feels like the shouters do.

They polarise a society and prefer a world of black and white, simplifying complex issues into slogans:

“We’ll carpet bomb them!” 
“We’ll take the land back!” 
“White people are the real problem!”
“Black people are the real problem” 
“Muslims!”

In a three party democracy, it becomes more difficult to simplify complex issues and polarise a voter base.

Imagine for a moment the EFF takes a province like Mpumalanga, with a proper majority. 
The ANC will immediately copy the EFF strategy of making that province ‘ungovernable’ and find their own ‘pay back the money’ slogan to shout.

The EFF is suddenly incentivised to calm things down, to deliver in Mpumalanga and make sure things work. This will force them to do some actual work instead of just shouting at others and influence their policies in general.
Shouting is easy and we must be truly thankful for the EFF for shouting as they have on the issue of Zuma, but in the long run it’s service delivery, education and job creation that we need and these things don’t happen when we simply shout louder.

So, be thankful for the ANC top 6 because they’re busy building us a three party democracy — without knowing it.

No guarantees in this particular possible future either, but the fact remains:

South Africa is great despite our politicians, not because of them and our best case scenario is one where they’re so busy keeping each other in check that we can get on with the business of building a future for everyone that lives in this beautiful, wonderful place.

Let’s celebrate — and then get back to building.