Ebrahim Harvey left field
On the eve of the local government elections political analysts are, again, not sure which party will win the hotly contested and crucial coloured majority vote in the Western Cape.
The fluctuating and complex political sentiments, moods and psychology of coloureds make electoral analyses and predictions, and identifying the subterranean motive forces, difficult. Why?
No group of people, spawned by the hated and divisive racist past, are today, at the personal, political and social levels, more confused, alienated, misdirected and bitter about the new South Africa than coloureds. No people in this country have historically experienced such a deeply painful and recurring crisis of identity as they, torn between our former white masters and the ”African” majority, into which apartheid sandwiched them. Apartheid manufactured no more bogus and destructive an identity, which was imposed upon people, than that of ”coloured”.
Yet the indisputable historical fact is that coloureds, 90% of whom are poor, unemployed and working class, have been an organic part of the black working class of this country. Not even the Coloured Labour Preference Policy of the past, more a divisive tool than a privilege, and the fact that they were not subjected to certain aspects of the avalanche of racist legislation can detract from that fact. Today, as a direct consequence of it, the vast majority of them live in conditions of deepening poverty, squalor, unemployment, homelessness and crime.
The National Party victory in the Western Cape in the 1994 elections and the conspired racist ousting of the African National Congress (which won most of the votes) last year by the Democratic Party and the New National Party which formed a coalition government excluding the ANC have shown how these parties have successfully used the coloured majority to protect white privilege and power.
Today, despite the overthrow of apartheid, the full weight of our divisive and traumatic past falls, in many ways, on the shoulders of coloureds, still trapped in the historical divide between whites and other black people. This was captured well by the sayings of ordinary coloured people: ”Before we were not white enough. Now we are not black enough” a reflection of their perception that they have not benefited as much as they should have from affirmative action policies in the Western Cape, where, like elsewhere, sections of the working class frantically vie for scarce jobs.
Though the ANC made big advances in last year’s election, compared to 1994, current surveys predict that the Democratic Alliance (DA) will win most of the votes. But is it surprising that most coloureds will again vote for parties that have historically been responsible for their oppression and exploitation, either overtly or covertly?
The consciousness of the poor coloured working class is a mixture of extreme and diverse contradictions informed by their peculiar historical status in this country.
A pertinent example: in the 1994 elections many coloured workers whose unions are affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions which is part of the ANC-led tripartite alliance voted for the NP and referred to black workers as ”kaffirs”.
But no region shows better that it is not true that the electorate gets the leaders they deserve, even if they vote them into power. Though on the surface this sounds contradictory, the deeper processes, tough to understand, illustrate the dynamics of this contradiction. The coloured people, most of whom supported the former United Democratic Front, who openly supported the ANC, have been embittered by the fact that they are not only materially worse off than before 1994, but that this is a consequence of the ANC government neglecting them. They therefore feel more alienated from the ANC than they did from the previous regime because they expected much better.
However, what they don’t realise is that most other black people are not any better off, but worse off, and that the entire working class has been victims of economic policies that are not designed to satisfy basic needs but to serve the interests of capital.
The ANC has not ruled the Western Cape since winning the elections in 1994. It was the NP, between 1994 and 1999, and now the coalition government of the DP and the NNP. So if their basic needs and interests have not been met since 1994 and their conditions have worsened, who better to blame than these parties? But no, they continue to blame the ANC. This striking irony will probably be perpetuated if the DA wins the elections.
Since the ANC and the DA have similar economic policies, most coloured people vote for the white-led opposition not because it has delivered but despite that it has not, as do supporters of the ANC. But while in the case of ANC supporters it is understandable, in the case of the coloured supporters of the DP and NNP there is a better alternative. It is, in relative terms, and with all its problems, the ANC. How does one get them to see that important difference?
Most of these people fail to see that these parties are not their friends not that the ANC is much of a friend either and that without their support they, particularly the NNP, would collapse. For them the historical role of these parties, bad memories of that past, lack of delivery and racist ganging up against the ANC appear to count for nothing. The NNP’s victory in earlier elections was based on subtly manipulating the most backward prejudices among coloured voters that they, in the apartheid days, nurtured. This is a tragic contradiction.
Where have you had oppressed people voting for their oppressors of more than 300 years in, and after, the first democratic elections? It is unheard of.
That is why it appears that most coloured voters go to the polls vengefully wearing their hearts on their sleeves and their brains in their back pockets. It is very sad. Let the ultra-left flinch at me. My fervent wish is that the ANC wins the Western Cape and breaks the stranglehold of white-led parties. It will for the first time see a government in that region that does not have any links with slavery, colonialism and racism. That in itself would be a big victory. Right now only the ANC is strong enough to beat the DA.
Not even my strong criticism of the ANC can blind me to the need to be more objective and strategic about the Western Cape.