The Rubicon. That mythical river so closely associated with and used in political rhetoric and discourses to indicate a point of no return; to cross it means to never return to what came before.
In the South African context the reference is met with scorn because apartheid-president PW Botha used it in his infamous and disastrous speech delivered on August 15, 1985.
Broadcast to audiences around the world, instead of announcing major reforms as was widely anticipated, even from within his own party, Botha doubled down against majority rule, refused to release then-prisoner Nelson Mandela, and blamed violent political unrest on communist agitators – Botha’s “Rubicon” was for him a determined, obstinate attempt to retain power.
For the country, the speech indeed represented a crossing of a Rubicon into an unmitigated disaster.
In recent times, the phrase has re-entered political discourse, both locally and internationally.
Just earlier this year, in Burundi, the decision of President Évariste Ndayishimiye to arrest his former prime minister was defined as a Rubicon the president crossed.
When former US president Donald Trump appeared in court after an indictment by a grand jury, commentators described it as a Rubicon moment for America.
When Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, of Japan, recently announced new “defence guidelines” that depart from the current peace constitution that allows Japan to only take military action in self-defence, the development was also considered a Rubicon crossed.
Decisions and campaigns by Russian President Vladimir Putin have, over time, and on several instances, been described as such; crossing one Rubicon after the other.
The same goes for other current or recent past world leaders, such as Xi Jinping in China, Narendra Modi in India, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Recep Tayyep Erdogan in Turkey – all of them leaders who are considered by analysts to conform to the archetype of the political strongman.
The resurgence of the “Rubicon” as an indicator of major political interventions has become shorthand for the return of strongman politics on a global scale.
Strongmen today still build forces to cross Rubicons in the same way Julius Caesar, early in the first century, crossed the Rubicon river in what is now Northern Italy to enter the Roman Republic, precipitate a civil war, and establish his dictatorship.
Strongmen, as political actors, share common traits – the claim to embody the will of the people more so than a representative structure such as a parliament or Senate does; they clash with institutions and conventions that limit their power, actively seek to dismantle it, and extend their power.
They claim to represent conservative values and moral codes, often despite their own moral flaws; they put high stock on toughness and unilateral decisions; and they deliberately cultivate, by any means, and thrive on cult-like support.
This is, however, not the full picture. Their armies keep strongmen in power.
It is the power hierarchies in formal structures of the state and state-aligned institutions, as well as the social hierarchies of citizens and collectives, that carry popular sentiment, which ensure that the strongman retains the power he needs to create points of no return – to enact his Rubicons and cross them.
In South Africa, as we approach the national elections, many assess the leaders of political parties along the same axis of power and draw conclusions on what the people want – a virtual Roman-style democratic republic governed by a senate, safe beyond a Rubicon, or the dictator republic when we cross it.
* Rudi Buys, NetEd Group Chief Academic Officer and Executive Dean, DaVinci Business Institute.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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