The 2004 elections saw the poor and working class voting for the African National Congress in even greater numbers than in 1999, a result that clearly left Dale McKinley, an activist within the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) and Social Movements Indaba, grasping at straws.
McKinley (”New power to the people …”) reports the number of spoilt ballots as if these votes might indicate a preference for socialist revolution. He confuses the voting age population with the number of eligible voters, and arrives at grossly exaggerated claims of low voter turnout — by ignoring the number of undocumented migrants and others not eligible to vote. From this he imputes that the election was ”rejected” by the majority of people.
These are the statistical acrobatics that are required to reach his bizarre conclusion that ”institutionalised, representative democracy in our country is in trouble”. According to McKinley, ”The lack of participation confirms the huge potential that exists for South Africa’s social movements … to fill the political vacuum and build a viable and radical people’s power alternative to the ANC.” This would forward the objective of ”replacing the … limited choices that presently characterise institutional democratic representation”.
The truth of this year’s election is largely the opposite of McKinley’s presentation. In many African townships, both rural and urban, the main dampener on voter turnout was not the APF’s ”election platform”, which advised the working class ”not to vote for the ANC or other bourgeois political parties”. Rather, it was the inability of the Independent Electoral Commission to supply adequate resources to accommodate the huge number of voters who were prepared to queue long into the night to exercise their democratic rights.
It is true that fewer people voted this time round. But the ANC increased its votes well beyond its 1999 tally. While retaining and increasing its huge majorities, the party mobilised hundreds of thousands of additional votes, which were located conspicuously among the poorest of the poor and the black working class. Huge gains were made in rural KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, while thousands of new ANC voters came out among the rural coloured populations of the Western and Northern Cape. Another significant shift in the ANC’s favour was in the working class areas of coloured and Indian townships.
Ironically, it is among whites, the middle class, those dwelling in formal housing with access to services and urban residents that McKinley is most likely to find his elusive constituency of the politically apathetic. Both voter turnout and the levels of ANC support were significantly higher among the rural poor, residents of informal settlements and the unemployed than in the rest of the population.
South Africa is not unique in attracting massive participation among the poor and the working class in the processes of representative democracy. Recent victories for left parties in the South clearly demonstrate that representative democracy, far from being in trouble, remains at the centre of a progressive politics.
In 2002 53-million Brazilians elected President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, that country’s first leader drawn from the ranks of the working class, on a platform of pro-poor governance.
Just last week in India the rural poor turned out in awesome numbers to give the forces of religious fundamentalism, caste oppression and national chauvinism a bloody nose. Not only was a Congress-led government the outcome, but the Communist Party of India received its largest mandate since independence in 1948 to become the third-largest party in the Lok Sabha, India’s national Parliament.
These victories of Congress and the Communist Party in India, the Workers Party in Brazil, and the ANC in South Africa are based in well-organised mass constituencies rooted among the poor and working class. The election campaigns of all parties were characterised by direct interaction with the people, through organised structures on the ground. For its part the ANC’s campaign constituted the largest and most significant grassroots mobilisation since the dawn of democracy in 1994.
In all three countries the poor have voted in huge numbers for parties that place the eradication of poverty at the centre of their policy agenda. They have voted for parties with an unwavering commitment to affirmative action. They have given a decisive mandate to secular politics and an inclusive nationalism, rejecting the racisms, caste-isms and religious fundamentalisms that form the staple of right-wing politics.
In all three countries, they have chosen parties that led from the front in the struggle against colonialism, imperialism and minority dictatorship. This was not the result of atavistic allegiances to the freedom fighters of old, but because these parties continue to be the most consistent and capable advocates of national development, Third World solidarity and global peace.
Voting is certainly not the last act of democracy. In the daily struggle to deepen democracy and advance social transformation, the social movements of the poor act as a crucial catalyst by contesting the boundaries of debate and action. But democratic institutions are themselves the outcome of such struggles and act as the guarantors of the space for such contestation, which is constrained in conditions of minority dictatorship and colonialism.
Furthermore, where democracy has been won through popular struggle, and where the poor constitute the overwhelming majority, the institutions of democratic states are often the allies of pro-poor social movements. This is exactly the case in South Africa, where a vibrant and diverse civil society has emerged. Trade unions, churches, NGOs and a multitude of voluntary associations and social movements at a local level are contributing towards the solutions to difficult problems throughout society by engaging the democratic state at all levels.
Sometimes in tension with the government, sometimes in cooperation with it, the majority of these movements do not take a stand of principled opposition to institutions of representative democracy. By maintaining their autonomy, but constructively engaging the state through constitutionally enshrined mechanisms, they not only expand the space for contestation, but also contribute to the entrenchment of democracy itself. Indeed, it is those social movements that have displayed a capacity to engage strategically with elected representatives of the poor that are increasingly able to point to real victories, resulting in tangible material progress for their constituents.
It is high time the APF came out of the closet and declared itself a political party, which is what it is in all but name. As a political party it would be better equipped to mobilise the citizenry on a platform of principled opposition to the ANC, since it would be free from the uncertainties and contradictions that plague such a stance when it is dressed in the guise of a ”social movement”.
No doubt, South Africa’s system of representative democracy would be greatly strengthened by the APF’s entry into the real world of democratic politics. On the other hand, the APF may end up in a similar position to its counterpart on the right, the Democratic Alliance, whose principled opposition to the liberation movement has resulted in its outright rejection by the electorate, especially the black poor and working class.
Michael Sachs is national research coordinator for the ANC. He writes in his personal capacity and his views do not reflect the position of the party