ANTHONY BUTLER | Tribal solidarity and the rise and fall of powers

Optimistic citizens in post-apartheid South Africa initially viewed their new order in linear terms

First published in Business Day 20 February 2026

Long-suffering newspaper subscribers often observe that rambling columnists tend to go round and round in circles as they get older. This may reflect a deepening reservoir of experience on which an ageing scribe can draw, or more likely a recycling of tired old ideas by their increasingly feeble mind. However, it may sometimes display a belated realisation that history sometimes moves in cycles rather than along a straight line of progress or decay.

Christian theology is largely responsible for the dominance of a linear view of time, with creation, the fall, redemption and the last judgment occurring sequentially. But cyclical theories have continued to thrive in many non-Western intellectual traditions. Chinese political thought — on which venerable liberation movement sage Gwede Mantashe draws as if consulting an inner mountain range — has elaborated a sophisticated dynastic cycle theory that begins when a founding ruler unifies a territory, and there is a period of prosperity and just rule. This is invariably followed by corruption, fiscal strain and factionalism and, finally, by rebellion and the restoration of order by a new dynasty.

Meanwhile, conceptions of power and time in some African societies have embedded politics in cyclical cosmologies of seasonality, ritual renewal and ancestor veneration, and certain precolonial polities embraced the killing of rulers seen as cosmically exhausted.

The North African Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun, perhaps the greatest scientist of society in the Middle Ages, developed a cyclical theory in which tribal solidarity enables conquest, and a ruling dynasty consolidates power. However, luxury invariably weakens its cohesion, until it declines and is replaced by a new and cohesive tribal force.

Cyclical thinking about democratic advance and backsliding has re-emerged today in response to authoritarian resurgence. Cyclical language of civilisational exhaustion and imperial overstretch has even resurfaced in hilarious neo-Trumpian diatribes about the decline of European civilisation.

Optimistic citizens in post-apartheid South Africa initially viewed their new order in linear terms, commencing with liberation, the establishment of democracy and the forging of a developmental state, and leading ultimately to the creation of a national democratic society.

Today, however, the future is often viewed through a Chinese dynastic cycle lens. Founding legitimacy under Nelson Mandela was followed by an institutional consolidation that embraced social grants and constitutionalism, which was then succeeded by elite factionalisation and corruption, and finally by the erosion of legitimacy. Through Khaldun’s lens, liberation solidarity faded, administrative centralisation became patrimonial, and renewal became difficult without rupture.

Patterns, not prophecies

It is understandable that the optimistic linear projections of 1994 have been supplanted by a more pessimistic cyclical narrative of founding virtue, corruption and erosion. Cycles are just patterns, though, not prophecies.

Newspaper columnists who seem to be losing their marbles may instead be trying to think in both linear and cyclical terms at the same time, though their attempts to describe how repetitive political patterns co-exist with overarching linear narratives may inadvertently summon up visions of a celestial spiral staircase on which we are travelling upwards or downwards while also trudging round and round in circles.

Corruption may be a normal feature of societal change, but institutions can also be renewed. South Africa’s trajectory depends less on destiny than on administrative reform, party restructuring, electoral competition and economic inclusion. Whether renewal or replacement dominates will depend on whether economic stagnation persists, coalition politics stabilises and institutions regain enforcement capacity — and perhaps a little on political leadership and judgment.

Linear theories tend to flourish among political observers when expansion, science or economic growth dominate experience. In that sense the popularity of cyclical thought is itself cyclical, rising when societies experience stagnation, elite conflict and legitimacy crisis, and receding when successful reform or rupture re-establish political order and a credible narrative of linear advance.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.