A Buddhist text of the second century BC recounts the emergence of agreements among people about government. Greek thinker Epicurus two hundred years earlier, described the binding agreements among men to refrain from inflicting or suffering harm to others as the distinction between humans and animals.

The Enlightenment and the Renaissance enshrined the contract between ruler and ruled, the basis of modern political systems. This also forms the basis of the modern rules-based international system, the basis of economic and societal development on a global scale.

A case in point: the 1996 South African Constitution, crafted with great care through years of negotiation and numerous town hall meetings to unite a deeply divided society. The author, Cyril Ramaphosa, at present President of South Africa, expressed the desire and attempted to have discussions in every town and village to obtain the vision and wishes of the people at that level. 

Since then, social cohesion and contract have sadly fallen apart. The high-profile Zondo Commission highlighted a litany of corruption among senior politicians, the looting of state enterprises and the politicizing of security services. No high-level prosecutions have emerged. 

Collective services fall apart. Covid 19 dramatically demonstrated fault lines in the social contract, with a Coronavirus Command Council riding roughshod over constitutionally enshrined rights. Unemployment remains stubbornly high and foreign investment low in the face of the government's ideological insistence on a certain percentage of 'previously disadvantaged' workers, 28 years after the end of racial discrimination. 

An illustration: The national electricity supplier, ESKOM, once producing the cheapest electricity in the world, has less than half its installed capacity available at a given time. Politicization, grand theft by party appointees, maintenance ignored to keep the lights on, a picture repeated in other State Owned enterprises. Recent offers by the private sector and Trade Unions to source experienced power industry workers to supplement the over-staffed but experience-poor utility ran into difficulties: the need for 'inclusiveness' prevented the employment of most. Proposals for alternative energy suppliers are handicapped by insistence on local content and local suppliers. This means politically connected middlemen get a cut. 

The national passenger rail system, PRASA, is running out of steam. The South African Post Office, likewise, is in disarray.

After recent elections in Kenya, the incoming President, William Ruto, pledged to move away from consumption subsidies on fuel and food, long used by governments to 'buy' support. Instead, he appealed to his electorate to help restore sanity to the economy based on his engagement with civil society - the very idea of a social contract.

In Cuba, a new Family Code was discussed with some 26 000 voters in Cuba and abroad during numerous Town Hall meetings. In most jurisdictions, such Town Hall meetings are opportunities for politicians to exhort the faithful instead of consulting the public.

We need to negotiate a new social contract. Who else?