Corruption and crime have dominated the election debates up to now. But there are other critical issues that are germane to how South Africans will vote on June 2. These are just three.
Education
The African National Congress has always been strong on education policy. It brought to office an ambitious vision for a radically restructured education system, underpinned by the principles of lifelong learning and outcomes-based education – a vision which most other political parties bought into. However, the vision has been over-ambitious.
The ANC would have been better off putting some of its grandiose plans, like Curriculum 2005 and a restructured higher education system, on hold, and grappling with some of the more urgent problems, like poorly trained teachers and incompetent provincial structures.
Hampered by the bureaucratic nightmare of turning 17 departments into nine provincial ones and faced with the political imperative to bring equity to a skewed education system, the ANC has been up against a lot and hasn’t done a bad job. And having its one arm pulled by the penny-pinching Department of Finance (read the growth, employment and redistribution strategy) and the other by the powerful teacher unions has not helped. But the Department of Education should have stood up better to both, and could have done so with a more powerful minister.
More money is essential. The R37, 2-billion budget for 1999/2000 barely keeps abreast of inflation and soaring student numbers. To its credit, the ANC has built 100 000 new classrooms, and managed to bring in 1,5- million learners and 100 000 higher education students to the system. But the provincial overspend has left many schools worse off than they were 10 years ago.
Bending over backwards to please the unions has also had destructive consequences: provincial budgets are still slurped up by salaries, not to mention corruption and inefficiency, leaving nothing for vital resources like textbooks.
We are still left with insecure teachers who have recurring nightmares about the neverending redeployment saga. Thousands of the best were lost to the public system via the disastrous voluntary severance package scheme.
Delivery has been fettered by the Constitution, which makes education a “provincial competence”. But those at the top have too often exploited this by saying, “It’s not our problem.”
The ANC has sometimes had the courage to admit its mistakes, which goes a long way towards winning sympathetic supporters rather than enemies (although outgoing Minister of Education Sibusiso Bengu’s defensive swipes at the media have not been endearing).
It has also been responsive to new problems: setting up the culture of learning, teaching and services directorate, trying to boost capacity in the provinces and helping them get their finances in order, and coming up with creative interventions through its partnership with SABC education to produce high-quality educational television and radio. – Philippa Garson
The environment
Making your vote count for the environment is a dilemma: none of the mainstream political parties appears to be interested in lobbying for the “green” vote, and there is little substance to the only party that is intent on doing so.
The Government by the People Green Party, headed by Judith Sole, has jumped into the gap left by the other parties. Unfortunately, it comes across as too breathless, too loopy, too fringe.
Is a vote for the this party wasted? Perhaps, but having a strident voice in Parliament concentrating on some of the issues it promises to deal with may not be a bad idea.
None of the mainstream politicians seem to believe environmental issues are worth platforming about. The Pan Africanist Congress and the Democratic Party make the occasional feeble gesture, but the United Democratic Movement seems to have forgotten that its leader, Bantu Holomisa, used to be a committed deputy minister of environmental affairs and tourism.
There have been a lot of complaints about the way his successor, Peter Mokaba, and his boss, Pallo Jordan, have handled their portfolios, but there’s no denying the ANC government has worked hard to make conservation more accessible. Before 1994 conservation was understood to be about a few people saving rhinos; now there’s a wider understanding that it’s also about improving the quality of life of all people.
The ANC is the only mainstream party to have dedicated more than a few throwaway words to green concerns. But how will the party tell that it’s this in particular you’re endorsing – rather than its other promises – if you vote for it? Therein lies the dilemma. – Fiona Macleod
Women’s rights
A woman would be hard-pressed to vote for any South African political party based on its performance in government, or in vigorously campaigning for a woman’s rights.
Although there are more women in seats of government power in South Africa than in many other countries of the world, this is a touch not worth much more than a powder puff. Few of those women have done much more than occasionally drag themselves to Parliament kitted out in expensive clothes.
Probably the most active and consistent campaigner for women’s rights is Patricia de Lille of the PAC, who has also set an example to other politicians who mostly ignore Aids – she has adopted an HIV- positive child.
De Lille – with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela – is the woman most likely to be seen visiting impoverished women, consoling the victims of violence, pushing a PAC policy demanding anti-Aids drugs for rape victims, or anti- retroviral drugs to stop mother-to-child HIV transmission.
The Inkatha Freedom Party’s Suzanne Vos has worked tirelessly on improving the lot of the millions of women who battle to sustain their single families after the fathers fail to pay maintenance. Dene Smuts of the DP has the capacity to do well, but rarely does – just like Sheila Camerer of the New National Party.
The less said about Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma the better. Zanele Mbeki, the wife of deputy president Thabo Mbeki, privately champions the cause of women, but she has not developed the public stance that her predecessor Graa Machel has on the rights of women and children. Machel has proved a more powerful champion and role model than any woman active on the political scene at present. However, no one in Parliament yet matches the vigour with which Helen Suzman fought for not only human rights, but women’s rights. – Charlene Smith