Has the Polokwane moment ushered in a more material experience of democracy for ordinary members inside the African National Congress (ANC) to reclaim their popular sovereignty over the body politic of the organisation, and what are the democratic prospects of Mosiuoa Lekota’s initiative?
On the upside, the Jacob Zuma project has managed to profile the conspicuous intolerance of ordinary people with the dry and alienating effects of the representative political system. However, whether it will be able to translate the Polokwane democratic drive into a more participatory experience of democracy for its rank and file is cause for debate.
The fact of the matter is the key players on both sides of the contest are steeped in the ANC’s authoritarian style of politics. Despite the ANC’s radical talk of popular democracy and people-driven transformation, it espouses a hierarchical and a highly institutionalised relationship between the rulers and the ruled.
In line with the liberal paradigm, representative democracy is seen as the highest point of political achievement. Leadership and representation are privileged over the spontaneous actions of the masses. The masses and the ANC membership in general, are expected to toe the party line and not to be too critical of leadership and party decisions.
For example, both Zuma and Lekota were part of the Thabo Mbeki leadership that cowed the ANC’s alliance partners into accepting Gear and labelled as ultra-left those opposed to the ANC’s economic vision. Those who are perceived anti-Zuma have to endure all sorts of names — right-wing, counter-revolutionary, reactionary, charlatan, etc.
Meanwhile, the ANC’s supremacy to leadership, the practice of democratic centralism and the notion of vanguardism leave very little room for popular participation outside the ANC.
Popular influence in decision making on public matters is heavily skewed to party activists inside the ANC, ostracising a repertoire of plural voices. The Polokwane conference decision to dissolve the Scorpions is a case in point. It is inconceivable for the 4 000 odd delegates who attended the ANC’s conference to have represented the voice of the South African citizenry on this issue.
The evidence thus suggests that whilst ”democratic space” might have opened for those at the locus of power, the influence of ordinary members in the politics of the ANC would in all likelihood remain marginal. And as Zuma detractors are being turfed out from positions of power, dissenting voices are being neutralised inside the party and the victorious faction gets to cement their control over the political future of the ANC.
So, would a breakaway party by Lekota and company be able to mitigate the ANC’s democratic deficit?
At best, it will enhance the vibrancy of our liberal democratic framework by unsettling the ANC’s electoral hegemony. However, this camp’s fixation with constitutionalism and the rule of law masks the realities of power and politics.
Their democratic narrative is predicated on a fictitious logic that equality and rights will evolve into material change. It laces political equality with economic liberalisation that has resulted in a form of democracy that has very little relevance to poor people. In Africa, it has fuelled an exclusionary form of democracy that largely benefits the aspirations of the upper classes. In fact, this narrative has promoted an indigenous capitalist class and authoritarian political elites on the continent.
To enjoy liberty is not only to enjoy equality before the law, but also to have the capacities, the material resources to be able to pursue desired courses of action. Political equality, then, cannot be attained without a measure of economic equality, and without it democracy is likely to become a vehicle for the maintenance of elite dominance.
The political imbroglio in the ANC allows us to revisit and interrogate notions of politics to establish what is considered political and what is not. What is required is a new style of doing politics.
We need a form of politics that is genuinely people-centred with a language that appeals to ordinary people. It has to be underpinned by the values of equality, popular democracy and solidarity, and draw on innovative political practices to engage the state. And it has to be grounded in the concrete social struggles of people to give meaning to its content.
South Africa is replete with raw materials for this new style of politics, but is in need of revolutionary activism to process them. In tandem with global shifts in patterns of citizenship participation, we have been witnessing a changing participatory drama in South Africa since the early 2000s, which is playing out on the streets, in squatter camps, informal settlements, neighbourhoods, etc.
And whilst frequently criminalised by the ruling party and the state, this is a form of democratic politics that is aimed at reducing the delegation of powers to the political elite and to place in the hands of grassroots citizens more control and decision-making power over issues of public policy.
Ibrahim Steyn is the research coordinator of the Democracy and Development Programme and PhD student at the University of the Western Cape. He writes in his personal capacity.