Some small but significant leftist organisations, such as the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), have called on the electorate not to vote in the elections next week.
The APF says that the African National Congress has betrayed voters by adopting neo-liberal economic policies after 1994, which have led to huge job losses, privatisation and commodification of vital municipal services — such as water and electricity — and brutal cost-recovery policies that resulted in cut-offs, evictions, pre-paid meters and increased poverty.
It would be hard to find fault with this argument. But there are several problems with the call not to vote:
Winning the vote was the most important demand of all organisations in the broad liberation struggle.
But because leftist organisations either were not strong and resourceful enough to participate in the 1994 and 1999 elections or did participate but did not make any significant impact, the ANC dominated both elections with resounding victories and hence were in an unchallenged position to determine government policies.
Too often, ANC policy changes — predictable in a period of rampant globalisation, which has unleashed compromist pressures on a reformist ANC without a powerful socialist party to its left — are used as an excuse for the weaknesses and failures of the left itself to independently make a compelling impact.
The boycott call is likely to increase demoralisation and apathy among the electorate and make rekindling interest much harder in future elections.
The electorate — particularly the working class — must not be subjected to boycott calls when those making them are unable to provide any alternative in the elections.
The APF view that all parliamentary parties are bourgeois or capitalist is mistaken. Despite the weak electoral performance of the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) and the Pan Africanist Congress, their policies cannot be described as capitalist.
Dismissing the elections as bourgeois rings of hollow leftist rhetoric and shows little sense of the period we are in and the current balance and relationship of forces.
However, if the main objective of the APF and others who call for a boycott is to weaken the ANC, surely that would better be achieved by calling on voters not to stay away from the polls but to vote for the PAC, Azapo, the Socialist Party of Azania or the Workers International Vanguard League, all of whom have much more in common with the APF than the ANC?
The APF is making the mistake many leftists have made for a long time: substituting their own higher consciousness for the earthy experience of the masses they wish to lead.
Ebrahim Harvey is a doctoral student and freelance writer