Jeremy Cronin Crossfire
Cynicism about politics in general plays straight into the hands of the oligarchs. Cynicism is the great ally of those whose inordinate wealth flourishes best without an active citizenry, without organised communities and without an electoral politics with real substance.
The farce that has been unfolding in the United States presidential election has rendered transparent, for all to see, the kind of political dispensation most favoured by the big corporations.
In our current South African local government election campaign there have been signs that here, too, we might be heading, if not all at once, then over the coming decade, for a society characterised by deepening voter apathy, alienation and cynicism low-intensity democracy. Of course, it is unrealistic to expect April 1994 levels of popular enthusiasm to endure. But that does not mean we should now shrug our shoulders and mumble something about a maturing democracy.
If the promise of April 1994 is to be sustained, then we must continuously foster more, not less, effective citizen participation.
The ruling party has a major responsibility in this respect. It was a point emphasised over and over at the African National Congress’s July national general council (NGC). The documents of the NGC, the keynote speeches and hundreds of delegate interventions all agreed that, since 1994, the ANC and its alliance have not always effectively sustained popular participation. The NGC also underlined the dangers of careerism, corruption, bureaucratic arrogance and of social distance between the leading cadres of the movement and its core constituency. The self-corrective resolutions of the NGC have to be taken forward.
But the struggle against political cynicism and low-intensity democracy needs also to look beyond the ANC, at other powerful forces shaping our political terrain. It is impossible to understand contemporary South Africa without understanding the impact of neo-liberal forces. Theirs is the agenda of low-intensity democracy and it rests on four pillars.
In the first place there is the attempt to deprive politics of real content by placing the big decisions about the economy beyond debate, declaring them pre-given, market-ordained realities.
At the same time, the agenda is to weaken the capacity of democratically elected and mandated public structures, through privatisation, deregulation and downsizing.
Nonetheless, there is a concern to retain some residual repressive powers within the state, to protect private property and to keep restive trade unions, the poor and marginalised in their place (nail them and jail them).
The danger with this is, of course, that the residual repressive powers will be turned against you hence the great panic in these circles about Zimbabwean farm invasions (but not about Swaziland, where sustained human rights abuses are directed at the appropriate targets, trade unions, peasants, teachers and black youth).
Finally, and linked to all of the above, there is the attempt to reduce politics to electoral razzmatazz, to the demagogic delivery of admiring but otherwise fast-asleep constituencies.
Nothing illustrates this illiberal agenda better than the Democratic Alliance’s Cape Town mayoral campaign. Here, for our neo-liberals, unlike in the rest of the country, the uncertain Faustian bargain of attempting indirect rule through influencing and putting pressure on the ANC might not be necessary.
The DA mayoral candidate, Peter Marais, is avowedly anti-gay, anti-choice, pro-capital punishment and wobbly on the Constitution. Never mind, he has a demagogic appeal among some poor strata in the coloured community. That’s good enough for our neo-liberals.
At a recent meeting on the Cape Flats I heard Marais milking the grievances of his audience. “Who catches tons and tons of fish? It’s us. But it’s I&J that makes all the profits. Who makes these Rex Trueform suits?” he asks, flapping open his own impeccably cut jacket. “It’s us. But we don’t have fancy suits, do we?” And, before his audience can quite figure that out, our worker-friendly Marais is assailing the trade unions for creating an investor-unfriendly climate. He slams politicians who drive around in BMWs and Mercs, and then leaves the meeting, climbing into one.
Harmless entertainment? It is not, if you stop to notice how this buffoonery out on the Cape Flats is appreciated, up there, in the genteel, gabled manors on the slopes of Bishopscourt. How they love him.
If Marais wins, “mayoral dinners would be an absolute rave”, DA MP Sheila Camerer gushed patronisingly last week in a Sunday newspaper. “He could provide entertainment.”
There you have it. The old colonial plantation tradition. Give them a dop and a banjo. Let them croon away their frustrations. It’s all very amusing and I&J shareholders really have nothing to fear.
The challenge facing voters, especially in Cape Town, is a serious one. Mere cynicism, though it might well up in our throats, is not the answer.
Jeremy Cronin is an African National Congress MP and deputy general secretary of the South African Communist Party