Steven Friedman Worm’s eye view
The interesting story in next week’s local elections may not be the share of the vote the major parties win, but that which they do not.
Talk of electoral swings notwithstanding, it is a safe bet that the African National Congress will win the vast majority of local councils. But if its leaders automatically take this as a sign of public confidence, they may be missing an equally important issue how many people vote.
The ANC will win comfortably because party loyalties are strong in this society. Voters do not choose their parties like shoppers at a supermarket, shifting to the brand that most suits the moment’s needs: party choices are tied up with identities such as race, language and culture in short, who people think they are. They may switch from one party that has historically represented their identity to another from the New National Party to the Democratic Party, for example but not, in the main, to one which expresses a different identity.
This may also explain why the size of the poll will be crucial. If many ANC voters are disenchanted as a recent poll showing a sharp dip in support for President Thabo Mbeki suggested the obvious way to show it is not to bother to vote in the local poll. This is the logical option of voters who remain loyal to their ANC identity and are therefore unwilling to vote for another party but who want to send their leaders a message in the knowledge that sending it cannot propel another party into power; it would be our version of the swings to opposition parties in mid-term elections which are routine in some other democracies.
A low poll may also confirm survey findings suggesting weak voter trust in local government not, as is often claimed, because it does not “deliver” enough, but because councillors are seen to be self-serving and remote.
Stayaways for both reasons would make it harder for municipalities to govern since citizens would be unlikely to cooperate with them enthusiastically.
A careful comparison of the size of the poll to that last time should, therefore, give us an important guide to the current public standing of Mbeki’s administration. The accent here is on “careful”: in the last local election commentators misread the level of participation by looking only at official percentage polls. These tell us how many registered voters voted; a more useful guide is the percentage of eligible voters including those who did not register who took the trouble to cast a ballot, because it tells us how many citizens still need to be won over to cooperation with local councils.
Politicians who look at the outcome of the vote without looking at the size of poll will, therefore, be missing a crucial ingredient: ANC leaders who assume that an electoral majority will ensure public cooperation may, therefore, face a shock if the poll is low.
There is also a second sense in which the party non-vote will be crucial the degree of support for independent candidates who were once ANC representatives.
Precisely because people vote on their identities, one of the key obstacles to effective local democracy here is parties’ insistence on rigid internal discipline, maintained by expelling councillors who vote against the official line.
The importance of identities makes party discipline in local government inappropriate in our society for two reasons.
First, while party leaders insist that discipline is needed to ensure that representatives respect the choice of voters, the importance of identities means that citizens are choosing parties on identity issues, on which representatives will hardly, if ever, break ranks: if ANC councillors voted against affirmative action or Democratic Alliance councillors for it, they may well be betraying their electors. But precisely because opinions on these issues are largely shaped by who we are, this is highly unlikely and party discipline is therefore unnecessary.
Second, because voters are moved by identities their choice of party may say nothing about their stance on issues such as privatising services or demolishing shacks: this is particularly true of a large umbrella party such as the ANC. So, the more party representatives are permitted to vote their preferences on these issues, the more likely is it that the full range of views in our society and the preferences of local voters will be heard.
In practice, party discipline tends to work particularly against the poor and marginalised because it is often their interests which maverick councillors represent. Where party discipline has been used by the ANC to whip dissenting councillors into line, the victims have often been those who opposed shack demolitions or moves which they felt would disadvantage the poor.
Local democracy would, therefore, be far better off if there was space for mavericks willing to champion unpopular causes and interests while remaining loyal to the identities which their parties represent. But thus far the incentives for taking these stands have been very weak because expulsion from the ANC has meant almost certain electoral death.
In our first local elections, there were several cases in which township figures with a strong following failed to win the ANC nomination and fought the election as independents all lost, sending the clear message that the ANC banner is a necessary passport to election.
This election will show whether independents who are broadly in the ANC camp can fare better. The best-known attempt to stake their claim is the group of candidates assembled by Soweto councillor Trevor Ngwane, who was expelled from the ANC for opposing municipal privatisation. But there are other examples.
If the independents were to win a few seats, the local party line would suffer a setback since those who bucked it would know that popularity rather than loyalty to the movement could win them re-election.
Given the strength of party loyalties, this may not happen this time. But even a respectable showing by the independents could send a message to party leaders that local uniformity is harder to enforce than it once was.
If ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe’s surprisingly chastened response to Ngwane’s group is anything to go by he was quoted as suggesting that it was an indictment of ANC nominating procedures its leaders may be inclined already to see the independents as a warning rather than a threat, as a signal that ANC approaches need to shift rather than a reason to close ranks against dissidents. This response may be reinforced if the independents do fairly well and the poll is relatively low. Both these outcomes may signal to ANC leaders that allowing greater difference at the local level would lose it little and could turn public disenchantment with local government into enthusiasm.