They have been described as ephemeral and the loony left; they have been demonised as superficial; and they have been chastised by the government for making droom-politiek economic demands.
But the momentum of the country’s 13 social movements as a simmering political force can no longer be scoffed at.
They employ the history and the tactics of the past and use the law to their advantage — flouting it if they consider it unjust. And they have made a powerful impact by highlighting the plight of the poorest.
While political parties grind ideological axes within a legally defined space, social movements have legitimised illegality. For them, the larger NGOs now merely caricature their once-proud oppositional role, and have become almost a branch of the government.
The message of social movements is that democracy means equality and equality means power to the people.
“With all their contradictions and weaknesses, social movements have almost established an alternative pole of reference,” said Salim Vally, acting director of Wits University’s Education Policy Unit and a founding member of the Education Rights Project.
The social movements talk the talk and walk the walk of those South Africans that have been belched from a set of economics far more white-collar and pin-striped than the reconstruction and development rhetoric of 1994 led them to expect. And they are challenging the trade union movement, which some activists say is shining the marble tops in the halls of power rather than filling the lacunae between the workers and their rights.
“The reality is that organised labour and unemployed people are facing similar problems in their communities,” said Dale McKinley, spokesperson for the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF). “In that sense, and in spite of the politics of some of the trade union leadership who are trying to avoid the social movements because they are being told to do so by the African National Congress, the reality on the ground is that workers are not anti-social movements at all.”
From the most vociferous and politically influential social movement, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), to the most bellicose, the Landless People’s Movement (LPM), to the smallest, the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, South Africa’s social movements are influencing policy.
The R1,4-billion Eskom write-off of electricity arrears announced by Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe in May was linked to the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee’s (SECC) illegal reconnections of electricity in Gauteng’s informal settlements. And the impetus behind the landmark decision last month by the Ministry of Health to roll out anti-retrovirals came almost single-handedly from the TAC.
Although they are unlikely to field candidates for next year’s national election, some members of social movements will stand for the local elections in 2005. They should also be watched as a possible political alternative in the next national election in 2008.
“The social movements have to confront the issue that the ANC has failed to turn the vote into a weapon of liberation. The vote has not brought the people power. The vote has made a few individuals in Parliament and in councils fantastically rich,” said Trevor Ngwane, chairperson of the SECC.
Some movements, such as the LPM, will boycott next year’s election; others, such as the APF, will cast spoilt ballots. “Personally I don’t agree with encouraging people not to vote. I’d rather we encourage the people to use the vote for political protest,” said Ngwane.
As much as these social movements may be lampooned as a loosely knit nuisance they are carrying the baton of their predecessors, such as the United Democratic Front, of the 1980s and early 1990s. And they are making an impact where it counts —on power and poverty.
“They [the trade unions and the ANC-led government] don’t speak to the [liberation] vision anymore and that radical praxis is now carried by the nascent new social movements,” said Vally.