You know that the election campaign has begun when the Democratic Alliance mounts its first assault upon the lamp-posts of the nation. The message everywhere is ‘150 000 more cops on the street” and Michael Moore’s new film Bowling for Columbine springs to mind. Moore’s coruscating attack on the United States’s obsession with owning guns concludes that the engine of the country’s appallingly high murder rate is not guns themselves, but fear — stoked deliberately by those who control the levers of political and economic control.
The great advantage of fear is not only that it encourages hatred, but also consumption. People buy more things — food as well as consumer durables and guns — when they are scared. It also provides tidy cover for all manner of draconian social policy reforms and curtailments of human rights.
‘The United States is still at war,” President George W Bush tells his people; ‘150 000 more cops on the street,” says Tony Leon.
At least we can say that South Africa is no longer run by Stupid White Men (the title of Moore’s recent book), but my fear is that as with 1999, next year’s election will be dominated by fear.
Can you recall the issues upon which election ’99 were fought? Were they tax and redistribution, or HIV/Aids policy and primary health-care? Or were they fear and crime and who could shout the loudest that they would bring back the death penalty? I fear a repeat: the real issues buried beneath a welter of scare tactics about the crime rate and an examination of the causes eclipsed by an obsession with the effects.
Since 1999, the opposition parties have gone from bad to worse. Not a single one can claim, with any credibility, to have gained ground. All, if they are honest, will admit that they have gone backwards in one way or another.
The DA took two steps forward with its takeover merger with the New National Party, then three steps back with the chaos of the divorce. The Harksen affair tarnished the ‘clean governance” agenda of Leon’s party and the fallout of the NNP split cost it the chance to build a site of alternative government in Cape Town.
The Inkatha Freedom Party wanders on, no nearer to establishing a national branding beyond the inevitably dwindling legend of its leader than it ever has been. No doubt it will contest victory in KwaZulu-Natal, for all the usual reasons, but the prognosis for its future as a political player is too dependent on its leader — a growing theme in South African politics.
Both Bantu Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement and the latest serious entrant to the game, Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats, are parties that have yet to convince us that they have a life and meaning beyond the charisma and integrity of their leaders.
The decimation of the UDM’s membership in Parliament, asset-stripped by the craven expediency of 10 floor-crossers (out of 14), is less of a threat than the apparent failure to persuade voters across the land that it constitutes an entity of substance beyond Holomisa’s ongoing appeal in the Eastern Cape.
At least the UDM has spent the time since the last election pondering its policy positions, which indicates that it understands that once the honeymoon of the launch period is over parties need to offer more than just a strong leader and a million poster-laden lamp-posts.
The fact that one tends to speak of ‘Leon’s DA”, ‘Buthelezi’s IFP”, ‘Holomisa’s UDM” and now ‘De Lille’s ID” says it all. We know who leads them but can we say what they stand for with such clarity and confidence and what differentiates them from the ruling party?
De Lille’s honeymoon period will carry her up to the election, and so she can choose to avoid the question if she wants, relying on her not inconsiderable national reputation and charm. This may work in the short term. She may well attract plenty of voters who see her as a person who is able and willing to ‘stand up” to the African National Congress, not least because so much of her reputation, at least in recent years, has been carved from her stance on corruption issues.
She may take gatvol and racist voters away from the DA and the NNP. Indeed, De Lille is probably more of a threat to them than to the ANC. At least, again, in the short term.
But then what sort of a party do you have? You need the votes and the members and their donations in time and money, but what sort of expectations do you create? How far can you go from there?
This is what the DA story tells us. Determined to collect as much electoral capital as possible, it sold out on the decent liberal heritage of the Democratic Party and invested in fear politics. The short-term gains in the 1999 and 2000 elections, with the ‘fight back” slogan, were striking but counterproductive.
Strategically, they put themselves in a corner. We haven’t noticed that the DA has failed to advance into the black working-class areas of the country as it promised it would in stage two of its ‘great strategy”, because of the entertaining distraction of its falling-out with the NNP. But the failure would have happened anyway because you cannot convert a ‘fight back” message into something more apposite and appealing for black working-class voters, especially when your leader is so obviously anything but.
This is a central conundrum for South African politics. Fight back, adversarial messages send you down political culs-de-sacs. But the alternative model of ‘constructive engagement” — à la Van Schalkwyk, Holomisa and now, apparently, De Lille — has its own inherent problems. Telling the voters that you think the governing party is trying hard, has got many of the right policies, but keeps screwing up their implementation, is a very awkward message to package and sell. In essence, it offers no real reason to change your vote from the ruling party. Why should you, if the alternative is in fact offering more of the same?
The opinion polling since 1999 tells us that employment is even more of a priority for voters than it was before. The most reliable polls have around 80% of people putting jobs as the number one issue; the next issue, human security, is way behind at around 10%.
At the same time, voter identification with the ANC continues to steadily decline, yet no opposition party has proved capable of winning sufficient trust to take advantage of this important trend. And the floor-crossing charade has further fractured opposition; more parties but even less substance.
For the ANC, the threat, then, is not from opposition, but from stayaways. The most important indicator of support for government policy and the health of democratic politics will be the turnout next year. The reliable polls suggest that as many as 40% of voters may choose not to exercise their right. There are votes to be won, I am sure of that. But only by offering a serious, credible alternative position on jobs and the role of the state in managing the economy. Spreading fear will not be enough.
Archive: Previous columns by Richard Calland