We made the assumption that we would always share the same desires and hopes as our political class for a future that was markedly different from our past. This, unfortunately, brought about a sense of complacency on the part of citizens. We left politics to politicians and deemed it sufficient to have weak opposition parties as the best hope of keeping the ruling party accountable and advancing democracy.

Somehow it escaped our minds that the politicians, in whose hands we entrusted power, were ordinary men and women who were not incorruptible or immune to the hubris of power. We also believed, wrongly, that the evolving social contract that was to be the basis of a new order would be firmly cast on the collective hopes, desires and imaginations of the nation.

We have become disappointed at the betrayal of the hopes that millions of people invested in the African National Congress (ANC). We are not only still in the grip of the rusting shackles of the past, as the ANC continues to prop up history to justify all and sundry, but we are also in need of transformational leadership to broaden our view of what is possible in the future.

Although its problems appear fatal, the ANC is not alone in its leadership deficiency. The Democratic Alliance (DA) has also failed to offer transformational leadership. It has been unable to fill the void opened up by the ANC and to present itself as a genuine alternative. It has failed to break new ground in a meaningful way and broaden its appeal to a diverse range of interests beyond its traditional constituency. Instead, it appears stuck with a strategy of merely capturing electoral gains.

It lacks a narrative about a SA that is different from that created by the ruling party and what it would take to build it.

Its leader, Helen Zille, has fine competencies as a technocrat but lacks a leader’s edge. Prone to getting into the swamp with the ANC, she struggles to maintain an elevated leadership posture for an extended period. She seems more equipped for running a city or a province than leading large-scale social change and animating new hopes for the future. She has not yet formulated a fluent position on addressing the intractable challenges of race both within her party and the country. Zille’s DA is ambiguous on equity issues and struggles to evolve a richer discourse about an alternative social structure.

Further, as a leader of a major opposition party, Zille lacks a set of compelling political values that could be a lightning rod for the creation of a new South African nation beyond the ANC’s reign. Like the ruling party, the DA and the rest of the opposition parties are our failed gods.

The bleak state of our politics suggests there is a need to revive strong civil society initiatives that would act as a bulwark against excesses of power. In recent times, there have been a few pointing in this direction. The Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, spearheaded by Sipho Pityana, and the soon-to-be-launched Citizens Movement for Social Change, led by Mamphela Ramphele, are some examples of such efforts. They signify a reawakening of active citizenry.

If we are to alter the state of our politics for the better, citizens will need to take greater responsibility for holding politicians to account. In his influential book, The Politics of Hope, Jonathan Sacks offers an inspiration for the new kind of politics we need in SA.

It is politics grounded on civil society involvement and should create a space for a robust debate on leadership, governance and social change.

Sacks suggests that such politics can help advance "a richer language of public discourse (that) … would seek, wherever possible, to increase participation in public life", and that would need to understand the "wider repertoire of policies than those which rely exclusively on coercive legislation, economic incentive, or direct government control".

It is in the context of active citizenry and a broader space for robust engagement between civil society and political leadership that we can develop a new kind of leadership and a vocabulary for change that is less self-serving and more transformational. This could also open up possibilities for credible political parties to emerge.

This article appeared in the Business Day of Friday 20 April 2012