‘We are not going to be branded communist, socialist or capitalist. We are going to be constitutionalists…”
So said Patricia de Lille at the launch of her Independent Democrats party last week.
The comment signals a trend in South African politics: the end of ideology.
The new party’s motto of ”back to basics” doesn’t define the ”basics”, but neither does the ruling African National Congress define what it means by its identity as ”social democratic”.
The six new parties formed during the defection period are similarly woolly — all purveyors of ”good governance”; ”job creation” and a ”crime-free” South Africa.
Meanwhile, the black left is in stasis, its black consciousness and pan-African philosophy stolen from under it by President Thabo Mbeki’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) and his stewardship of the African Union.
Moreover, the Pan Africanist Congress, the Azanian Peoples Organisation (Azapo) and the Socialist Party of Azania (Sopa) have not made their socialist principles relevant to a globalised, post-Cold War era.
”People do not have to understand ideology, but just what it means for them. We cannot simply talk of black consciousness and socialism without talking about their suffering. People define themselves in terms of their experiences and it will be clear who is affected by landlessness and hunger,” says Dan Habedi, Azapo’s secretary-general.
The era of genuinely competing ideas, of ferment and debate has spluttered to its close through the Nineties — its demise attributed both to the end of the Cold War and the peculiarities of South African electoral politics.
Its replacement is a form of hybrid or mongrel politics: everyone is pan-Africanist and all want to protect the ”macro-economic fundamentals”.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) supports both the basic income grants and privatisation. De Lille’s party launch reverberated to the sounds of the struggle-era Viva, Vicky Sampson’s My African Dream and ”For she’s a jolly good fellow”.
”There has been a narrowing of the ideological divide,” says Professor Adam Habib of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of Natal. ”All parliamentary parties have agreed on the parameters.
”The real tragedy of the South African parliamentary opposition context is the failure to fill the gap to the left of the ANC [where the issues are] jobs, unemployment, land and the abandonment of the Reconstruction and Development Programme,” he adds.
With her history as an active trade unionist, De Lille’s early policy bases are remarkably centrist — in fact, she is at one with the ANC on key policies such as economic and health and jobs, though she differs on HIV/Aids.
”Some policies are good, but there are failures of implementation. We will not rejoice in government messing things up and we will not allow anyone to mess up this country, not government or the opposition,” said De Lille, positioning her party midway between the New National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party, which are in coalition with the ANC , and the DA which is a traditional opposition.
What of the black left? Though these parties theoretically offer the best ideological alternative to the ANC, they have failed to win the support of South Africa’s working class.
Parties like the PAC, Azapo and Sopa all articulate a socialist alternative that will put the interest of black Africans first, but their message has either been ignored by the electorate or has just not been properly marketed.
Vista University academic and PAC activist Thami ka Plaatjie says the former liberation movements have failed to sustain the message of the importance of ideology.
”Some among us have conveyed the incorrect message that our struggle was to end apartheid and once that was achieved we were finished.
”We are now paying the price in the form of depoliticisation of our society. If people are depoliticised they become increasingly vulnerable to the emergence of charismatic parties and personalities. Personal popularity is now crystallised into customised political brands that emerge everywhere,” says Ka Plaatjie, who recently pulled out of the race for the PAC’s presidency.
What is the future of this political spectrum?
”They need to say at what point they are going to be antagonistic to the ANC and at what point they will be complementary. Individually these parties are not strong enough but collectively they could challenge the ANC. Maybe these parties are not desperate enough yet to realise the importance of unity,” says Ka Plaatjie.
He denies that Mbeki has pulled the rug from under their feet with his African Renaissance.
Professor Bob Mattes from the Centre of Social Science Research in Cape Town said it was natural in a maturing democracy for political parties to de-emphasise ideology.
”In a growing democracy such as ours it sometimes becomes difficult to stay consistent to ideology.”
The ANC is an increasingly managerialist party — its policies and debates are now an alphabet soup of development-speak.
Rather than a discussion of ideas, its conferences and meetings are about managing the implementing of policy, of getting delivery (of houses, public works, food aid, electricity and water) to work as the third general election looms.
Habib says the only consistenly left alternative is extra-parliamentary.
”Within the ANC, the real discourse is at the Tripartite Alliance level articulated by the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party.”
But even then, says Habib, debate is constrained by a ”need to blur the divides” among the three parties.
”When the chips are down, there is always the fear of a divide in the ANC and things are patched up.”