With the third democratic election looming, campaigns are gaining momentum as parties position themselves to attract voters.
An election presupposes choice — the right of citizens to choose their leaders.
However, in South Africa, the result is a foregone conclusion: the African National Congress is going to win the election. The question is by what percentage? Depressing reports, analyses and views have been advanced in the media about this issue.
But should South Africans really be overly worried about this?
Unsurprisingly, of course, opposition parties vehemently denigrate the ANC’s successes, as they cannot condone the party they are supposedly challenging.
But the truth of the matter is that opposition parties know that they cannot defeat the ANC.
Consider that the Democratic Alliance — the official opposition — is concentrating on “keeping out” the ANC in the Western Cape, and in alliance with the Inkatha Freedom Party “challenging” it in KwaZulu-Natal, and “threatening” its power in Gauteng.
These are strangely minimalist ambitions for the strongest opposition party — not forgetting that it has 10% of voters’ support. This arguably — because the DA will never admit this — indicates that the DA is thoroughly resigned to its position as a perpetual opposition party.
This then quite legitimately and urgently calls for deep soul searching as to what causes this state of affairs.
An inquiry into this matter must concentrate on why the ANC is so dominant in South African politics. What is it that allows this party to command the support of the majority of South Africans?
In this regard, opposition parties — quite understandably so — undercut the ANC.
The reasons they give include the ANC’s “liberation credentials”, its ability to manipulate voters, its access to state power and so on and so on, ad nauseam.
This is fair enough, as it is the cut and thrust of opposition politics.
However, these interpretations are limited and do not adequately explain why the ANC is so popular. It is therefore imperative to look elsewhere for answers.
A clear reason is that the ANC is highly respected as the liberation movement that put up spirited opposition to oppressive apartheid rule.
One can even accommodate the jaundiced view that the ANC is a “black” party and as most voters are “black”, they will always vote for the ANC.
But as usual, and as in most controversial issues, this is not the whole story.
Plain reality — divested of emotions, electoral gimmicks and political bickering — asserts that ANC policies emphatically represent the views of the majority of South African voters.
This is largely a result of the unfortunately and simplistically understood “broad church” character of the ANC.
The ANC is unique in that at its core it accommodates diverse views that cater for almost every interest: from Afrikaner nationalists (yes, one has been a deputy minister since 1999) to African nationalists, from social democrats to neo-liberal conservatives, from communists to Christians and so on — save for maverick fanatics like the Boeremag who want to rewrite history.
The ANC’s culture of not sticking to any rigid ideology is the party’s source of flexibility and hence strength. This is crucial in such a diverse society as South Africa: the ability to absorb different views.
On economic policy — the most contentious issue that confronts South Africa — the ANC has adopted a centrist position with which many citizens broadly agree.
Under the tough environment of globalisation it has been able to balance the tensions between workers and capital, for example.
Contrary to the view that the ANC has “sold out the revolution” — which misses the basic fact that the ANC was never a revolutionary movement, a view held by the “loony left” — workers, the most critical voting component, have achieved a lot under the ANC.
The battery of labour-friendly legislation instituted by the ANC has protected workers, despite many job losses.
In addition, its success in nurturing a black middle class — another critical component of South African society, estimated to have grown to close to a million since 1994 — has added to the armoury of the ANC.
Most importantly, the value of the ANC’s broad nature has been its ability to keep the centre of South African society from imploding, which is the case in many other countries undergoing democratic transitions.
What must be conceded is that since 1994, the ANC has been able to contain seriously diverse, competing and intense interests — racial, ethnic, cultural, economic and more — within the framework of a stable society.
Whether this state of affairs bodes well for the country’s long-term future is patently debatable, purely on the basis that the future cannot be predicted.
But contemporary trends do not indicate a threat to South Africa’s democracy, despite the scare-mongering of opposition parties.
Contemporary South Africa, despite its many and profound problems, needs the ANC.
The party is not infallible, but South Africans across their multifarious divides should be much more magnanimous in crediting the ANC.
Dr Thabisi Hoeane is a lecturer in the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University Grahamstown. He contributes regularly to national print media. His PhD was on South African Electoral Studies and Democratisation.