analysis
Raymond Suttner
Many commentators have said one should not be surprised that the African National Congress wishes to form some form of cooperation agreement or alliance with the New National Party.
Some see this as confirmation of a “truism” that even freedom fighters, once they get involved in “normal” politics, are prepared to bed down with anyone, should it serve their aims. In this view, politics is basically cynical and sordid. Others see it as a natural relationship, based on what are described as common values or experiences on the part of the ANC and NNP.
Some kind of cooperation may be justifiable, in my view, though not for these reasons. Cooperation or an alliance may mean more than one thing, may indicate a variety of degrees of closeness, and a greater or lesser degree of shared values and objectives.
Despite there not being a complete sharing of values, an agreement may be advantageous to both parties. An alliance identifies commonalities or shared objectives, however limited, and tries to build cooperation around these.
These shared objectives may relate only to the short term, though it could be that over time objectives of a longer-term nature, and even shared values, are developed. At a given point all parties to the agreement see some gain for themselves in the relationship.
They may have quite different reasons for entering, beyond the areas of agreement. There also may be other agendas that the parties have, outside the areas of the relationship, which they remain free to carry out.
And it is common for longer-term objectives over which there is not agreement to be phrased relatively vaguely. What these come to mean depends on the struggle between the cooperating parties over time.
None of this vagueness or difference prevents such cooperation from being viable for both parties. Thus the NNP leadership may in the main be entering the relationship in order to secure parliamentary or Cabinet positions. That does not preclude the ANC from using the same relationship to further reconstruction objectives. It seems likely that an ANC-led administration in the Western Cape is more likely to follow transformative policies than any other, even if the reason NNP members support such a government may be of a short-term, and even opportunistic, character.
Some may object to an alliance with the NNP under all circumstances. But it is only in libraries and lecture halls that politics is conducted in such pure terms. In the real world of politics, organisations need allies and try to reduce the range of allies of those forces who oppose their objectives.
This may take a variety of forms and may necessitate cooperative arrangements with some who are, in many ways, distasteful. It is precisely because one wants to consolidate democracy and build a new nation that it is necessary to be open to a variety of possible relationships.
The ANC relationship with the Inkatha Freedom Party is a case in point. Whatever the differences between the two organisations, the IFP’s presence in the national government may have been one of the factors that reduced the level of political violence in KwaZulu-Natal to a minimal level. This was inconceivable a few years ago. Who can deny this was a price worth paying; that the lives saved warranted the presence of the IFP in the government?
But there may be two problems with the way in which the current steps towards alliance with the NNP are being projected.
The first is if the alliance is sold as an attempt to thwart the Democratic Alliance “fight back” project, it should nevertheless be recognised that there are elements within the Democratic Party who are not wholly opposed to a democratisation and transformation project.
Many of these, mainly old Progs, may well be more reconciled to the new developing order than the NNP. It is important that an alliance with the NNP should not see all these other people cast as “the enemy” or irredeemable. We need to try to win these people over. It is important to understand that Tony Leon’s vulgarisation of liberalism, while dominant, is only one strand within the DP.
Secondly, there is a danger in the way this alliance is being sold. It is correct that all who can be won over to transformation and liberation must be drawn in. Building alliances may be one of the ways of doing this and it may be beneficial to the project of building a new nation.
But it is one thing to build common values and quite another to assume the existence of commonality, as has been the case in some of the statements of sections of the ANC leadership. By so doing we underestimate the character of the process that may, in fact, take generations to achieve.
It is undeniable that there are important and legitimate short-term questions that motivate such an alliance. It is quite legitimate that the ANC as the strongest party in the Western Cape should take steps to form an alliance enabling it to govern in the province.
But such short-term projects must not be conflated with the long-term goal of building and consolidating non-racialism in South Africa. It is a mistake to depict the coming together of the ANC and NNP as organisations as in itself guaranteeing such a project.
It is important also that in advocating alliance politics nothing is done to give the impression that the sordid opportunism that is called “normal” politics is indistinguishable from our liberation struggle. Steps to hastily alter the provisions of the constitution to allow floor crossing for a limited period play into these sentiments. People voted for a certain proportion of parliamentarians to represent different parties. That should not be lightly tampered with.
It is clear, however, that for the same democratic reasons something needs to be done at a local level to accommodate the dissolution of the DA into its component parts. It may be that enabling former members of the DA to return to their previous parties, for a limited period, would be a correct and democratic solution here.
The ANC is viewed by many as representing a set of moral values, for which large numbers have fought and sacrificed. It should be very careful not to do anything that compromises the goodwill, esteem and moral hegemony it has built up as the party of liberation. It may be that it should go slowly on floor-crossing legislation, in order to show its commitment to these values and to constitutionalism.
Raymond Suttner is visiting research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, and affiliated to the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala. He was previously in the national leadership of the ANC and SACP