Once again COPE misreads political landscape

I PREDICT that the Congress of the People (COPE) will soon be dead. The problems with the party are so wellrehearsed that it would be rather coma- inducing to regurgitate them. A fellow analyst once joked with me that when you are struggling to write a piece of political commentary, just rehash COPE’s headaches. It is a gift for political pundits that never stops giving.

Yet I am choosing to ruminate about COPE yet again, not because my creative faculties have gone into exile (I hope), but because there is a new element to COPE’s demise that hit me this past week. It is this: besides the obvious leadership squabbles, organisational weaknesses and lack of ideological self-identification, there has also been a lack of effective strategic thinking at the heart of COPE’s politics. This lack of strategic skill provides an instructive lesson in realpolitik that is worth reflecting upon.

Two examples illustrate the point. This past week, COPE decided it would move for a motion of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma when Parliament opens. They deemed this such an incredible political coup that Mbhazima Shilowa and Mosiuoa Lekota put aside their differences and shared a platform. The basis of the motion? Zuma is morally bankrupt, has tarnished the image of SA abroad , set back the fight against HIV and cannot be trusted with his friends’ children.

A very different example was COPE’s decision last year to team up with the Democratic Alliance (DA) in defence of labour brokers. Trade unions and ordinary workers were the irrational enemies and the middlemen of the economy, labour brokers, were the good guys working in service of the very ungrateful workers, who were now thoughtlessly seeking their dissolution.

Here is the heart of the matter. On both issues, COPE fundamentally misread the political landscape. They made huge strategic errors by picking the wrong issue to focus on. Their timing as well as their stance on issues have been out of kilter with what really matters to most people. These strategic missteps aggravated the more famous weaknesses.

It is tempting to think that COPE is in fact spot-on with its views on Babygate. It seems both liberal elitists and conservative communitarians are disappointed with Zuma. For once, Mbeki’s two nations are on the same wavelength about something. Right?

No. The liberal media has grossly exaggerated this story. In fact, they are simply getting it wrong, again. And COPE is lazily, if understandably, going along with the hype.

No one has bothered to send out reporters to the far corners of the country — or even city — to do a proper audit of what most South Africans think. One weekly newspaper sent a lone reporter on a solitary taxi ride through northern Jo’burg and then used the soliloquy of one angry old gogo to lie to its readers rather melodramatically by claiming that “people at taxi ranks everywhere” think that Zuma is not fit to govern anymore.

Zuma’s position, so the media concludes, has become untenable. One would have thought that a media, with its tail still hiding between its legs from the embarrassment of getting the Zuma story wrong for the past three years, would be more careful about how it collects and weighs the evidence .

The salient point here is that COPE erred strategically by wrongly picking an issue that will simply come and go. Just as COPE wrongly thought morality would be a political deal breaker for most of the electorate (and so chose the unknown churchman Mvume Dandala as its presidential candidate), it has now repeated the error in a desperate bid to become a news item. It needed to separate media hype from realpolitik. Policy issues related to the opening of Parliament rather than morality should have been the subject of a COPE news conference this week.

The labour broker issue was an earlier instant of this pattern of poor strategising. Recall that at the time COPE had been very silent. Its communications boss, Phillip Dexter, had been about as visible as a shy tortoise. Not even the party website said much. So when we finally heard COPE’s name resurfacing, it was with some sense of expectation. Lo and behold, they then made two rudimentary mistakes: first, teaming up with the DA and thereby playing into the African National Congress (ANC) narrative that they are a black version of the DA; second, choosing the wrong side of the broker issue. Of course, COPE may simply have been intellectually honest.

Politics, however, is presumably as much about power as it is about truth. If so, effective strategising is critical. COPE has never understood this elementary rule.

When you are up against an incumbent monster such as the ANC, with its irritating monopoly on the liberation narrative and access to state resources, you need to play smart. A leadership conference and a policy symposium are useful. But they will not stop imminent death unless you also think strategically like a skilled Russian chess player. Time will tell if it is all too late for COPE.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=93524