I’m a glass half-full sort. Not, I hope, in the irritating “there’s a silver lining to every dark cloud” way, but in my firm belief that I’ve never met an insoluble political problem. To paraphrase Marx, nothing that’s human should be alien to any of us. Right now the level of my glass is, for the first time in a while, higher than half-full.

Why? First, I’m struck — and, I readily admit, surprised — by the manner in which the ANC has accepted its electoral defeat. Of course it remains, by some considerable distance, the largest political party in the country. But its acceptance of its status as a minority party, no longer able to govern without the support of other parties, means it has lost its privileged status as a liberation movement.

It can no longer claim entitlement to a monopoly of political power. It cannot invoke the imperative for secrecy and absolute loyalty that an underground organisation must demand. It cannot invoke conspiracy theories to explain its relative decline. It’s now a political party, subject like every other to the vagaries of election outcomes.

Not only has the ANC accepted the far-reaching consequences of the election results, it has consistently explained its setback as a judgment on its poor record in government. Its history and record in government has seen it retain the support of 40% of the voting public, but it has lost critical support, particularly in the major urban areas and across the voting districts of KwaZulu-Natal, where ethnic determination of political loyalties remains unchallenged.

The ANC’s effective endorsement of the “normalisation” of electoral politics is a large step forward in the consolidation of a national democratic revolution (NDR). Those who claim that
co-governing with other parties, particularly the DA, is a betrayal of the NDR, are wrong. Far from that, the ANC’s response to the election outcome may represent the most important step forward in the NDR since the 1994 elections and the adoption of the constitution in 1996. It may yet come to represent a rare instance of a successful liberation movement transforming itself into a sustainable modern political party.

Second, the ANC’s strategic response to the election demonstrates that it and the country have an astute democrat at the helm of each. Throughout his presidency Cyril Ramaphosa has been universally derided and mocked as dithering and indecisive, as someone who would rather spend time with his damn cattle than serve his people.

We saw him set up the National Union of Mineworkers and lead the game-changing 1987 strike with great strategic acuity and personal courage. We watched him negotiate the transition from apartheid to democracy, a process that involved great teamwork, negotiating skill and personal relationship building. When he was defeated by Thabo Mbeki he went into business where, because success is measured in the wealth one accumulates, he must be judged highly successful, but which never seemed to grab him in the way politics did. We saw him return to politics, somewhat surprisingly, as Jacob Zuma’s deputy in an already compromised government.

We saw him derided for his public silence during state capture and then strike back when, at the ANC’s 2017 conference, he narrowly defeated Zuma’s hand-picked successor for president. We noted Zuma’s white-hot anger at being replaced, a few months later, in the Union Buildings. I joined anxiously in the nation’s celebration of Ramaphosa’s accession to the presidency, anxious because I knew this was not going to be easy. We watched him being publicly insulted and mocked by the corrupt thugs sitting alongside him in the leading structures of the ANC.

But, again, he’s struck at the right moment. Had Ramaphosa taken on Zuma when the latter was president of the country and the ANC, he’d have been slaughtered. Had he taken on his many powerful detractors in the ANC during his first term, the risk of defenestration and even greater instability and government failure loomed all too large.

This election outcome proved to be the perfect trigger. Now not only was the social and economic crisis of the country out on public display, but so too did the public pass judgment on the ANC government’s responsibility for the rapidly collapsing state of the nation. It could not govern the country without the support of other parties; and it could not begin to halt its downward trajectory if it could not demonstrate the ability to share in the effective governance of the country.

And so the ANC reached out to its fellow political parties. But instead of choosing between the fire-eating devil and the deep blue sea, it shrewdly invited all other parties with parliamentary representation to join it in overcoming the dire social and economic crises confronting the nation. It set few conditions — essentially support for the constitution and the rule of law and the imperative to confront the crises of poverty, unemployment and inequality.

There remain many powerful opponents within the ANC of the path chosen by Ramaphosa and his allies in the party’s leadership. Most dangerous are those who’ve come to view their leadership positions in the ANC as a mechanism for self-enrichment and political ambition. But they’ve also not had a good election. Too robust a counter on their part may start to raise questions about the quality and character of the ANC’s long-standing Gauteng leadership — where Ramaphosa’s most powerful ANC opponents reign — who led it to such a crushing reversal in the key province.

 The ANC was not the only political party that experienced an unhappy election. The DA’s national support has stagnated. Under the present terms of political engagement it has almost certainly reached the ceiling of its support. It could only raise this ceiling if it was able to demonstrate its ability to govern beyond its Western Cape redoubt. It grasped the opportunity to do so.

The EFF has lost electoral support, but it has yet to graduate beyond the performative politics of protest. It had promised its supporters too much, too loudly, to back down from its “principled” opposition to the DA and its grumbling about the constitution and the much-maligned 1994 “sell-out”. Besides which, the ANC, supported by the DA, IFP and the smaller black-led parties, doesn’t need the EFF.

If this bold realignment of our political landscape is to be consolidated, it’s not only the ANC that has to re-examine its approach to democratic governance. So too will the DA have to rethink some of its old shibboleths. If it is genuinely committed to sharing in the government of the country with the ANC, it will have to recognise that our political democracy cannot survive without the democratisation of the economy, an objective that involves a more equitable distribution of public resources and a more equitable distribution of ownership and control of the private sector. It will also have to do something about the racial composition of its leadership.

A cabinet has been appointed, the first step in the consolidation of the government of national unity (GNU). It’s mostly positive, but with some decided negatives. Aaron Motsoaledi? Health! Why? What came to mind when Gayton McKenzie was appointed minister of sport, arts & culture was Pieter-Dirk Uys’ lament at the death of satire when Piet Koornhof was given the freedom of Soweto. Well, satire has been murdered a second time.

Kudos to the president and his allies, wherever they may be, for re-engaging the wise adage “never let a good crisis go to waste”. But this is going to be challenging. Definitely not an occasion for dithering and indecisiveness.

• Lewis, a former trade unionist, academic, policymaker, regulator and company board member, was a co-founder and director of Corruption Watch.