It is probably mean to be disparaging about the chances of newlyweds staying together long after the honeymoon bliss has worn off. Yet the latest local political marriage, that of the Democratic Alliance and the Independent Democrats, faces massive challenges.
The ID leader, Patricia de Lille, feisty as ever, anticipated scepticism from unnamed "self-appointed analysts" about the prospects of her love affair with the DA leader, Helen Zille, lasting. Tellingly, however, she failed to set out the reasons for this scepticism. Furthermore, she gave no reason for these challenges being a mere figment of analysts' imaginations or, if they are genuine, why they will not prove to be a barrier to marital longevity. It is worth looking at each of these challenges in turn.
The ID captured only 0,92% of the national vote last year. When combined with the DA's 16,66%, the two parties jointly excited 17.58% of all South Africans who cast a vote. These numbers speak for themselves. The ID does not bring many voters to the DA table. De Lille is not a massive vote-pulling political magnet despite her penchant for bright orange.So, if the cold facts offer cold comfort to these newlyweds, where else might well-wishers look to sustain the proposition and hope that the synergies of the merger will defy recent electoral history?
Some argue that the DA will become more attractive to black and coloured voters because of De Lille's presence in this party. The thinking here is that De Lille will add much-needed colour to the leadership structure and this, in turn, will be rewarded by voters at the ballot box.
This line of analysis is as unconvincing as it is crude. Although many South Africans rightly admire De Lille as one of the best MPs we have had since the advent of democracy, the DA brand is much stronger than that of De Lille. The DA remains the party of Tony Leon and now Madam Zille, the party that offered disillusioned South Africans, mostly whites, a "fight back" motif. One swallow, in the form of De Lille, does not a summer make. Change requires much more. It requires an ideological and tonal shift that was not even hinted at this past week. In the absence of such a shift, the merger with the ID will yield small to zero returns.
Furthermore, racialism in South African politics remains a big deal. The DA handles this fact clumsily. Right or wrong, the black African majority is more likely to react favourably to a Bantu Holomisa occupying a senior position within the DA than a maverick coloured politician whom most of us view as a decent parliamentarian, but someone essentially belonging to the political battlefields of the Western and Northern Cape. The DA's recent failure to elect blacks into senior leadership positions at its federal congress cannot be undone by a merger with De Lille's ID.
Most importantly, however, there are ideological differences that cannot be wished away. Either the ID will forget about its roots in the Pan Africanist Congress or it will continue in that Africanist tradition. The latter position means a commitment to social justice that is crafted in a language and a set of policies that are unashamedly racial and based in a historical, materialist analysis of existing inequities. This means that the DA mantra of "an equal-opportunity society" should give De Lille's conscience a tough time. One cannot imagine the De Lille of old times agreeing to the DA's recent wish, for example, that its members classify themselves as "South African" on state documents rather than as individuals with particular racial identities. How else will we measure transformation?
These are not mere ideological differences. They entail differences in policy. It means, for example, that the earlier De Lille would be more likely to endorse quota benchmarks in various sectors of society, not as a bean-counting end in itself as the DA often implies with its scathing use of phrases such as "racial mobilisation", but rather as a means to achieving substantive equality by dealing with structural inequality in the racial terms in which such inequality was brought about in the first place.
It is pretty obvious then that an Africanist, historical approach to social justice founded in the ideological convictions of the earlier De Lille would not go down well in the debate chambers of the DA where former (New) National Party folks with ahistorical intuitions still wield influence. If De Lille does not forget her own past, it is difficult to see how the libertarian, colour-blind approach to social justice at the heart of DA thinking will not spoil her appetite for growing old with Zille.
One possibility is that De Lille might, somewhat prudently, under emphasise these differences. After all, the DA is essentially doing her a favour by rescuing her from a political party that almost certainly would have died in 2014. This pact is best seen as an unspoken promise to give De Lille a DA lease on political life in exchange for her putting up with core DA principles. The DA hopes to shed its white image in the process.
There is little wrong with that kind of politicking. Political leopards have a right to change their spots and voters will then indicate what they make of it all.But if it does turn out that the political philosophy of the DA remains unchanged, then this political marriage will not attract additional black voters. After all, it is the well-founded perception that the DA remains a middle-class party, which partly accounts for its failure to make major inroads into black communities across the country. So either De Lille will rattle the philosophical foundations of the DA (and thereby cause trouble that could lead to divorce papers eventually being served) or she will be living in false consciousness like a self-deceiving battered spouse (in which case political history will judge her to have become, in the end, something of a political prostitute). That would be a terrible fate for someone with an earlier career that brimmed with admirable, principled politics.
The real significance of this political pact, ultimately, is not that the opposition will, in general, become stronger. Rather, it is a confirmation that multiparty democracy is pretty much dead. We are headed, within the next few years, towards a two-party political system.
Sadly and ironically, however, the two dominant parties that will remain, the DA and the ANC, are cut from the same ideological cloth. The ANC is also a middle-class party. This truth is hidden behind the veil of alliance politics and a massive welfare budget that obscures the neoliberal economic structure dominating the policy landscape. All of that, however, requires another day's reflection.
In the final analysis, the fact that more parties might be subsumed under the DA banner, including the Congress of the People and the United Democratic Movement, is a less interesting development than appears at first glance. Only when a party that is truly based in principles and policies that speak to the material needs of the poor majority, as well as their conservative outlook on the social and moral universe, will we have reason to be excited about the ANC's hegemony being threatened. Until then, polygamous political marriages between opposition parties will remain but a curiosity for the news cycle of that week to get excited about.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
ANC must come into the open
If you were a brilliant freedom-fighter does that guarantee you will also be an exemplary champion of freedom? That is a question one cannot help but raise, with increasing sharpness, in respect of many within the African National Congress. It is far from clear that the answer is a happy, obvious and unequivocal ‘yes’. The ANC’s single greatest challenge in the upcoming National General Council will play out in the session focusing on its organisational culture and leadership renewal.
Put bluntly, while the ANC’s capacity to ensure a better life for all is not nearly as woeful as many opposition parties and critical media and some analysts would have us believe, nevertheless, the ANC has failed dismally to successfully transform itself into a classic – boring, even - parliamentary party. In short, it is stuck in the organisational ethos of liberation politics. It is worth reflecting on this shortcoming, thinking through its implications for our democracy and having a stab at a constructive way forward.
The ANC’s greatest organisational challenge is less a structural one than a cultural one. It needs to allow for greater internal disagreement. It also needs to allow for greater public transparency about such disagreement. That is not to say, as defenders of the party wrongly respond when that suggestion is put to them, that it must air all of its dirty laundry in public. Not so. Of course no organisation is ever that transparent. It would be self-destructive to be brutally honest about deep differences.
However, keeping some lid on differences of opinion about ideology and policy does not mean that complete secrecy is the answer. Take, for example, the culpable silence from many within the ANC (including the Zuma-ites now pretending to be veteran champions of scientific orthodoxy) with regards to the politically late Thabo Mbeki’s Aids denialism not too long ago. One simply cannot believe the flimsy claims that behind closed doors the ANC is a debate society more robust than the Oxford Debate Union. If that were the case, the rest of us who are not allowed inside those secret debate chambers should at least see occasional evidence of such, such as a clear victory of rationality (Aids orthodoxy) over irrationality (Mbeki having an African identity crisis at the cost of his country’s health - literally.)
This lack of internal democracy continues. Polokwane was not a panacea for the ANC’s organisational challenges. It got rid of one symptom, Mbeki, but not the problem, liberation ethos’ uglier reach. The print media got horribly excited a few days ago, for example, when cabinet minister Tokyo Sexwale made vague noises in pseudo-support of the media. This was seen as lethal criticism of the mooted Media Appeals Tribunal. Yet Sexwale had to be vague about his support.
But, given just how dangerous the idea is, why does the ANC not have a culture of internal debate and disagreement that would allow a Sexwale or a Jeremy Cronin, the deputy minister of Transport, to not hide behind unclear, ambiguous language which not even a skilled diplomat could decipher?
In short, the ANC remains internally undemocratic. It has yet to internalise the norms of democracy. It is little wonder that when it comes to respecting such norms outside the party, individuals like the Defence Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, has a tough time engaging parliamentarians. After all, she is used to a top-down approach within the party to key debates.
This lack of transformation has bad consequences for all of us.
First, it acts as a disincentive for talented youngsters to enter politics. South Africa is no place for young politicos. If you grew up after 1994, went to a multiracial school, and belonged to a debate club and an environment where disagreement was cherished within the confines of logic and evidence-based reasoning, then ANC politics would turn you off. The winners are corporate companies and the losers are political parties and state departments.
Yet, we need a state bureaucracy that is highly skilled. But when the organisational culture of the most powerful political party is unforgivably ugly, and has an impact on the civil service as a result of the control wielded by these same politicians over the state machinery, then you have a government and a state system that young South Africans are not keen on being a part of unless forced into that system due to lack of alternatives.
Second, the lack of organisational transformation within the ANC negatively impacts our body politic. Democracy is not just about formal benchmarks like free and fair elections every five years or simply about respecting court judgments against the state, most of the time. It is about substantive norms; it is about democratic culture.
This means, for example, not introducing legislation that may result in whistle blowers being locked up or journalists who act in the public interest not having recourse to a legal defence on that ground when they let an important, even classified, state document come into the public space. It means not arresting a journalist just because he or she is tjatjarag. It is obvious that this lack of respect for democratic culture within the wider political system is directly related to the lack of an internal democratic ethos within the ANC.
So what is the solution? To be fair, the discussion document on this organisational question makes the right noises. Cadre deployment for its own sake retards development in cases where those cadres lack the skills for jobs, especially at local government level. That should be eliminated. At the root of it all, ultimately, lies money. It is understandable that none of the so-called cadres aspired to freedom-with-poverty. But that should not entail money driven politics.
The ANC should therefore try to come up with mechanisms that will aim at two things: first, diminishing the possibility of corruption and the impact of money-driven politics; second, it needs to adopt and enforce rules that allow for the open – public, even – contestation of ideas, policies and leadership positions.
A secret debate society is no debate society. Liberation politics and ethos have no rightful place in a multiparty, liberal and open democratic society. Ke Nako!
Put bluntly, while the ANC’s capacity to ensure a better life for all is not nearly as woeful as many opposition parties and critical media and some analysts would have us believe, nevertheless, the ANC has failed dismally to successfully transform itself into a classic – boring, even - parliamentary party. In short, it is stuck in the organisational ethos of liberation politics. It is worth reflecting on this shortcoming, thinking through its implications for our democracy and having a stab at a constructive way forward.
The ANC’s greatest organisational challenge is less a structural one than a cultural one. It needs to allow for greater internal disagreement. It also needs to allow for greater public transparency about such disagreement. That is not to say, as defenders of the party wrongly respond when that suggestion is put to them, that it must air all of its dirty laundry in public. Not so. Of course no organisation is ever that transparent. It would be self-destructive to be brutally honest about deep differences.
However, keeping some lid on differences of opinion about ideology and policy does not mean that complete secrecy is the answer. Take, for example, the culpable silence from many within the ANC (including the Zuma-ites now pretending to be veteran champions of scientific orthodoxy) with regards to the politically late Thabo Mbeki’s Aids denialism not too long ago. One simply cannot believe the flimsy claims that behind closed doors the ANC is a debate society more robust than the Oxford Debate Union. If that were the case, the rest of us who are not allowed inside those secret debate chambers should at least see occasional evidence of such, such as a clear victory of rationality (Aids orthodoxy) over irrationality (Mbeki having an African identity crisis at the cost of his country’s health - literally.)
This lack of internal democracy continues. Polokwane was not a panacea for the ANC’s organisational challenges. It got rid of one symptom, Mbeki, but not the problem, liberation ethos’ uglier reach. The print media got horribly excited a few days ago, for example, when cabinet minister Tokyo Sexwale made vague noises in pseudo-support of the media. This was seen as lethal criticism of the mooted Media Appeals Tribunal. Yet Sexwale had to be vague about his support.
But, given just how dangerous the idea is, why does the ANC not have a culture of internal debate and disagreement that would allow a Sexwale or a Jeremy Cronin, the deputy minister of Transport, to not hide behind unclear, ambiguous language which not even a skilled diplomat could decipher?
In short, the ANC remains internally undemocratic. It has yet to internalise the norms of democracy. It is little wonder that when it comes to respecting such norms outside the party, individuals like the Defence Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, has a tough time engaging parliamentarians. After all, she is used to a top-down approach within the party to key debates.
This lack of transformation has bad consequences for all of us.
First, it acts as a disincentive for talented youngsters to enter politics. South Africa is no place for young politicos. If you grew up after 1994, went to a multiracial school, and belonged to a debate club and an environment where disagreement was cherished within the confines of logic and evidence-based reasoning, then ANC politics would turn you off. The winners are corporate companies and the losers are political parties and state departments.
Yet, we need a state bureaucracy that is highly skilled. But when the organisational culture of the most powerful political party is unforgivably ugly, and has an impact on the civil service as a result of the control wielded by these same politicians over the state machinery, then you have a government and a state system that young South Africans are not keen on being a part of unless forced into that system due to lack of alternatives.
Second, the lack of organisational transformation within the ANC negatively impacts our body politic. Democracy is not just about formal benchmarks like free and fair elections every five years or simply about respecting court judgments against the state, most of the time. It is about substantive norms; it is about democratic culture.
This means, for example, not introducing legislation that may result in whistle blowers being locked up or journalists who act in the public interest not having recourse to a legal defence on that ground when they let an important, even classified, state document come into the public space. It means not arresting a journalist just because he or she is tjatjarag. It is obvious that this lack of respect for democratic culture within the wider political system is directly related to the lack of an internal democratic ethos within the ANC.
So what is the solution? To be fair, the discussion document on this organisational question makes the right noises. Cadre deployment for its own sake retards development in cases where those cadres lack the skills for jobs, especially at local government level. That should be eliminated. At the root of it all, ultimately, lies money. It is understandable that none of the so-called cadres aspired to freedom-with-poverty. But that should not entail money driven politics.
The ANC should therefore try to come up with mechanisms that will aim at two things: first, diminishing the possibility of corruption and the impact of money-driven politics; second, it needs to adopt and enforce rules that allow for the open – public, even – contestation of ideas, policies and leadership positions.
A secret debate society is no debate society. Liberation politics and ethos have no rightful place in a multiparty, liberal and open democratic society. Ke Nako!
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