state
Rhoda Kadalie
crossfire
Glenda Daniels captures very eloquently in ”Give us a good reason to vote”(October 27 to November 2) the sentiments of people on the left about voting for the African National Congress in the next election.
She mentions her lack of confidence in her party; that to abstain from voting is to neglect one’s civic duty; that she is disillusioned like everybody, but that the political landscape leaves her with no alternative.
Furthermore, she says that she disagrees ”on fundamental issues of principle with the ANC over far too many of the party’s stances” on Aids, Zimbabwe, the obsession with race and racism to deflect attention from the real issues.
She accuses the president of using his views on race to deflect issues of major concern by attacking the opposition at the Congress of South African Trade Unions conference, instead of addressing their concerns. She then talks about a national depression engulfing the nation and concludes that: l She cannot vote Democratic Party/ Democratic Alliance as they protect white privilege;
l There is no viable political alternative; l There is a desperate need for a party that will accommodate black and white, rich and poor, men and women, feminists, environmentalists, gay activists, Aids activists, anti-gun lobbyists. Until such time, she cannot vote and she hopes against all hope that the ANC will get back to its principles. Given all of the issues I mentioned earlier, I wish to suggest that Daniels’s view, and it is the view of many on the left, is deeply flawed and highly problematic for the development of democracy in South Africa. It is based on a sentimentalism and nostalgia for the sense of common purpose that characterised the liberation movement.
Our common purpose was to overthrow apartheid, and nothing more, even though we in the liberation movement assumed common interests across class, race, ethnicity, gender and so on. The post-apartheid era has demonstrated very vividly that even people on the left (former comrades) had very little in common with each other, as fights soon broke out among comrades in the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the Human Rights Commission, the SABC, the Land Bank and the ANC.
Many of my friends admit that they have lost political perspective because of their loyalty to the ANC. Loyalty to the party has taken precedence over loyalty to justice.
As liberation movement, the ANC had the moral high ground. As the majority party in government it no longer commands that moral high ground and can be found wanting on many levels, because it has reneged on many of its own very noble policies. The challenge is to grow and consolidate democracy in South Africa by looking very closely at other post-independent countries in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. And this requires respect from both government and civil society for the development of a democratic culture that, at times, requires precedence over party loyalties.
Unfortunately the donor community withdrew a lot of their funding from NGOs after 1994, preferring to pump money into government, weakening civil society quite dramatically after 1994. There is an acknowledgement that this was the wrong decision, and attempts are being made to redress this situation. The culture of political correctness has also contributed very seriously to the silence of civic organisations who did not want to be seen criticising a democratic government and a black one at that. In addition to this silence was a failure to reposition themselves strategically vis-…- vis the new state. Instead of being proactive and assisting the government with delivery and developing capacity, the NGOs react to government failures smugly. A vibrant multiparty democracy needs a multiplicity of voices and Tim Modise’s programme (The Tim Modise Show) is an example of how one grows tolerance and respect for a diversity of views. Patricia de Lille has played a crucial role in holding the government accountable on the arms deal, children in detention, Aids and so on.
The proliferation of one-party states in Africa demonstrates the importance of encouraging multiparty views, however unpalatable some of them are. Respect for the concept of loyal opposition is a very alien concept in post-independent countries in general and in the ANC in particular!
The Aids debacle and the racism in the media conference are indications that internal democracy is not alive and well in the ANC. Opposition parties, too, can be loyal to democracy, even should they differ on matters of policy. To dismiss them by constantly racialising them is to fail to assess them on merit.
Developing opposition requires that we look past race and look at how opposition as an institution needs to be cultivated and developed. It is customary for the left, after independence, to dismiss opposition and wait for the fateful day until a social democratic/socialist movement is formed to oppose the new government in power. And what happens when nobody is looking is that people vote again and again for the ANC, for sentimental reasons, entrenching their majority and so eroding the possibility of a real opposition developing. The all- inclusive opposition that Daniels is looking for only happens in 20 years’ time, as in Zimbabwe, when it is far too late.
There is a growing alliance between the trade union movement, the South African Communist Party and the South African NGO Coalition. No real democratic centre is developing that will keep the country on track in terms of its accountability to the citizens. Hence the proliferation of litigation on issues of socio-economic rights.
The public will increasingly use the Constitutional Court to challenge the non- delivery of services to the public. The Grootboom community housing case, the Aids lobby, pensions by the Black Sash, are examples of how people are going to use other institutions to hold the government accountable as they increasingly lose faith in the government to prioritise their concerns.
Social and political scientists have studied this for years and, true to form, this is what happens in most post- independent countries, to the detriment of the development of truly democratic states. The role of Parliament is steadily being marginalised as decision-making shifts more and more to the executive. Question time has been restricted and increasingly Parliament has become a rubber stamp for the government, as exemplified by their support for the presidential view on Aids, the serving of subpoenas on the media editors, the Zimbabwe issue, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Penuell Maduna’s utterances and so on. MPs are not engaging with issues as they should. They seem to be more on recess than in office, except for a few. They key question is how parliamentary oversight should interact with executive authority. To quote a Centre for Development and Enterprise report: ”This unfortunate disjuncture between Members of Parliament and voters weakens MPs within their parties and in Parliament as a whole. It adds to a feeling of isolation between ‘leaders and the led’ and strengthens the hand of the party leadership.” But just recently we had a brief glimpse of what Parliament could be like with the public disciplining of an MP. But he is a small fry, so it is easy to make a public example of him. What about Winnie Mandela, Maduna and many others who have not been called to order?
The public accounts standing committee’s handling of the arms deal is another good example. It is rare that an ANC MP challenges the executive on their performance or lack of it.
Due to its dominance in Parliament, the ANC dominates the committee system, and even outvotes the opposition wherever it can. Yet many ANC MPs are reluctant to use their powers to hold the executive accountable.
It is easy to expose soft targets, and not those within the ranks. The two-thirds majority is therefore detrimental to growing a vibrant democracy. Furthermore, the independence of the media should be guarded at all costs. The persecution of the media under the guise of the accusation of racism was a blatant attempt to control it, as it was to undermine it, and the HRC acted as a willing agent to carry out the government’s agenda sideways. By racialising the media, government has been consistently guilty of trying to weaken it as an institution.
Then there are those journalists and editors who have given their fair share in contributing to compromising media independence – by becoming the mouthpiece of the government, by avoiding criticism of government and by suffering for the disease of political correctness because of white guilt. The recent Shaun Johnson fiasco over free advertising given to the government is a case in point. Independent media institutions such as the IBA, the SABC, and even certain editors, have been complicit in eroding the freedom and independence of the press because of white guilt. In conclusion, a two-thirds majority government is detrimental to democracy in South Africa, because then Parliament and government are very much one and the same thing.
Everybody is shocked about the arms deal, which seems to be escalating by the millions the deeper the investigation goes.
We constantly hear that there is no money to address issues of national concern, but then there is money for a 15% increase, above the inflation rate, to MPs and ministers; R78-million has been found to revamp the civic centre for the Cape Town Unicity. Money was found to put together an Aids Council that was not needed. Money was found to mount a racism conference in Sandton.
We have been rocked by our fair share of corruption scandals and in many instances the money has still not been recovered. I am convinced that there is enough money to do what is doable, but somehow we have failed to hold government accountable.
For all the money that has been wasted, Crossroads and Alexandra, by now, could have been redeveloped to give hope to the poor. The poor clearly is not the government’s priority. The solution is to challenge and decrease the ANC’s majority in the local government election, as a majority government is not good for any democracy.
This is an extract of a speech delivered by Rhoda Kadalie to the Cape Town Press Club