Opposition political parties face tough questions about their future if — as expected — they perform poorly at the polls this election.
Over three elections, more small parties have gained parliamentary representation, but the overall space for opposition parties has shrunk, courtesy of the continued growth of the ruling African National Congress.
Much of the weakness of South Africa’s opposition parties originates from within. Many of them are strategically inept and fail to sufficiently differentiate their policies and campaigns from those of the ANC — or from one another. Their leadership often prioritises power over policies and programmes.
Above all, there is a congestion of parties contesting in the right-of-centre ideological space. The near-extinct status of those left of the ANC frees the organisation to claim ideological space where it only rarely treads. In addition, 10 years of governance has not turned the ANC into the shrinking violet of party politics. The ANC is not at the point of sacrificing its juggernaut status in the name of the abstract ideal of multi-party opposition.
By design or default, the ANC’s opposition-containment strategies of cooperation and co-option have worked. The governance agreement with the Inkatha Freedom Party in KwaZulu-Natal was in the interest of peace and nation-building — it also ensured space to temper IFP mobilisation against the ANC.
The acrimony of the Democratic Party/New National Party union, into the Democratic Alliance, was not of the ANC’s making, but the ANC created a seductive escape route for the NNP.
It nurtured the NNP’s ”deep psychological need” to be associated with, and preferably in, power. The ensuing hatred between the NNP and the DA had the spin-off that the NNP embraced a storm trooper role, incessantly attacking the DA in the media.
It was also useful for the ANC to have the legacy of apartheid remain alive and the DA volunteered its services. Sometimes deservedly, sometimes not, the DA allowed itself to be portrayed as the reincarnated curse of the white, racist apartheid past.
One can only assume the DA did not wish to deny racially differential policies and actions too strongly as this might have been too alienating for their white, conservative supporters.
Another consideration is that the demands of parliamentary committees and debates combine with immense institutional pressures to render small parties politically impotent and isolated from the grassroots.
The longer the time served, the more difficult it becomes to transform into viable opposition. Ask the Pan Africanist Congress, the United Democratic Movement, the Freedom Front Plus and the African Christian Democratic Party. The Independent Democrats might soon echo this chorus.
Debates on the weakness of party opposition invariably turn to the reassuring assertion that the opposition of the future will be left of the centre and not on the congested, unchallenging right. Variations on the theme have new social movements, independently or in league with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), evolving into a viable opposition party of the future.
But the Cosatu-ANC glue holds. Recent survey findings were that more than 80% of Cosatu members favour political affiliation and that link would be with the ANC. ”Opposition politics of a special type” works for both Cosatu and the South African Communist Party, although flare-ups between the allies are expected soon after the elections.
Susan Booysen is professor of politics at the University of Port Elizabeth and an independent research consultant