Thinking the unthinkable about democracy in South Africa sounds like an exercise in pessimism. But it need not be. Invited to ruminate about the ”wicked issues” of contemporary politics, each of the three ideas I offer is as hopeful as it is concerning. Each must be grappled with if the first decade of democracy is not, with hindsight, to become a grand illusion and the second decade a devastating disappointment. The first idea concerns political parties. The second, people and participation. And the third, corporations.
But first a major digression. Urinals are rarely the best place to start any conversation. So when I bumped into Mandla Tisani, director of public affairs Coca-Cola: Southern and East Africa, I chose to follow him out of the bathroom and pause before introducing myself. This was last Monday, at the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) resplendent celebration banquet. Tisani had been the second speaker. I had wondered why. The first speaker, naturally, was Brigalia Bam, the chairperson of the IEC. Whoever chose her for the job chose well.
She slipped up just once. ”At this election, the youth did something special …” she began. But before she could complete the serendipitous thought, a well-placed wag at my table finished her original sentence: ”Yes, they didn’t register to vote!”
And so, for the first time, the Ghost of Banquo raised its alarming head. The silent minority: the great unregistered. Why did the analysts (and I include myself) not raise this before? Now it looks like an attempt to undermine the self-evidently emphatic victory of the African National Congress. There is a dispute about the precise figures that must still be resolved, but up to seven million eligible voters may not have registered, the majority being potential first-time voters.
If this is so it matters not a jot to the majority party. In fact, it far from undermines its victory; if having 70% of 80% of those people entitled to vote tempers your exuberant celebration, what does it mean to the little parties? If, like the Democratic Alliance, you are 12% of 80%, it means you only have one in 10 of those entitled to vote. If you are the United Democratic Movement, the Independent Democracts, the New National Party or the African Christian Democratic Party, it means you have acquired barely more than one in 100, which is a rather sobering contemplation.
Judge Johann Kriegler was the third speaker, Deputy President Jacob Zuma the fourth. So why was Mr Coca-Cola the ham in this illustrious sandwich? I checked the menu, the invitation, the signage. Nada. I gazed at the big screen and a sign pointing to the toilets, my eyes followed the arrow and there it was: in a delicate pale white, the famous Coca-Cola insignia ingrained beneath the IEC logo on the long wall hanging. Admirably understated and, but for the helpful toilet arrow, probably so discreet that few would have noticed. I save the details of my conversation with Tisani for another time, save to say that the extent of his company’s sponsorship is not, apparently, for public consumption.
So there we have it, the textured backdrop of the new South Africa. The ever-impressive sight of First World South Africa in all its glory, with its delicate but coy corporate sponsorship. Off stage, a silent but substantial minority of mostly young people who chose not to vote. And an opposition in complete disarray and crisis, with an apparently chronic inability to tap into this latent market of potentially anti-ANC votes.
Thus does the character of the ANC and its alliance partnerships become ever more important. It has always been the pivotal factor in any prog-nosis of democracy in South Africa. After such an election victory, this is even more the case. As it has broadened its ideological reach, commanding the whole of the centre-ground of South African politics, so its welcoming arms scoop up the great majority of the available talent.
It’s obvious: if you want a career in politics and you are ambitious, you go to the ANC. Who can possibly blame the individuals who make this choice? But for the opposition parties there is pitifully little residual talent to share; they are left with the scraps, which is why their candidates have more baggage than the Mumbai to Delhi express.
This is the picture inside the tent of formal, representative politics. Outside, the picture is rather different. There is a new brand of social activism emerging, articulated in the mobilisation of the Anti-Privatisation Forum, the Treatment Action Campaign, the Landless People’s Movement and the Basic Income Grant coalition, to give examples. While it is clumsy to lump them all together as I have just done — there are important differences in strategy and tactics, and in ideology — these social movements will be a painful thorn in the side of the ANC over the next decade.
How will the ANC respond? Will it retreat within the cosy comfort zone cocoon of its massive electoral victory, dismissing this angry resistance to its policies in government with a contemptuous pasting of the label ”ultra-left”?
And will the concomittantly self-labelled ”sensible left” within the ANC alliance continue to persuade itself that it is serving the goals of social democracy within the camp? Will it ever summon the courage to depart? This discussion about a possible split is as old and tatty as your average Metrorail train, though considerably less dangerous. Because it remains so unlikely it appears unthinkable. But the real unthinkable thought is that without a split by the left, representative politics will descend deep into crisis.
It is not that opposition parties are necessarily in and of themselves a good thing — as liberal democrats believe — but that opposition can help deliver the ingredient that Adam Habib has recently argued is essential for democracy to flourish: uncertainty. Without uncertainty about power and control of power, ruling parties tend to get lazy and arrogant. The big question is whether the left best germinates such uncertainty by staying within the alliance. In the longer term, I say not. A left party that can forge a strong relationship between representative politics, the unions and the social movements is essential for democratic politics in this country.
What then of the corporate sector? Conducting research interviews recently for a new book about political power, two things I was greatly impressed by. First of all, this is a very strategic government — at least at the very top. One may not like either the destination or the journey, but there is a strategy to get there. Second, the centrepiece of this strategy is to get the different sectors to pull in the same direction. This is especially so with the corporate sector; the ANC leadership came to the conclusion very early on in this first decade of democracy that its options were tightly constrained by the dual forces of globalisation and transnational capital.
Getting capital to align with the ANC’s transformation goals is central; the emergence of a black capitalist class a crucial and deliberate tactical deployment. No other political entity in this country could, I have come to realise, embark on such an ornate strategic journey; only the ANC has the capacity to bridge the political-private sector divide.
”Social capital” is the outcome, but what exactly is social capital and is it worth the investment? There is now some serious thinking going on about whether such an engagement with capital will achieve anything other than what the Marxist sociologist Bill Robinson has described as the congealment of the transnational political and capitalist elite, but at a domestic level.
In this process, the democratic state’s interests are devastated through co-option. As one of Mbeki’s most senior advisers told me, ”we are starting to ask of capital ‘get with the programme’”. In other words, we have given you wonderful stability and a perfect macroeconomic framework, now do more to help us help the poor and close the manifestly glaring inequality gap. Can the government — dare the government — be more forceful with business? Or are the ”constraints” too great? This is the wicked issue for the democratic state. As the latest edition of Prospect magazine reports, David Marquand’s new book, Decline of the Public, has reinvigorated the call for a reinvention of the public domain. The unthinkable thought then is that the ANC, more than deepening what its manifesto called ”a people’s contract”, must restore democratic ownership to the top of its policy agenda. This is a core policy debate that somehow escaped the attention of the election campaign — mainly because there is no party of the left to properly argue the Marquand thesis. Which is my point.
The ANC’s campaign was successful nonetheless partly because President Thabo Mbeki ”got out there”. The mythology is already in place — that the reinvention of Mbeki as Man of the People paid off. Was this also an illusion? Will this calculating and stubborn strategist bend now against the recollection of the humanity he encountered (not to mention the self-evident spoils of election campaign success)? And armed with this deeper understanding and the consolidation of power it now enjoys, will the ANC forge a new relationship with capital on the one hand, and with social movements on the other, thus squaring a circle that threatens to engulf South African democracy?
These are the wicked issues for the next 10 years. For political parties, people and capital; and for the democratic state. Unless a left party emerges from the ANC alliance, the chasm between representative politics and the social movements that most potently articulate the anger of the poor will deepen.
For democracy the consequences of such a chasm are, in the longer term, truly, and dreadfully, unthinkable.