We can do better: People march to the Union Buildings to protest against corruption. The author says we have placed our fate in the hands of people who, in many instances, seek political office to raise their own profiles, rather than serve the people. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
“The 2024 elections are our 1994.” These are the words of Tebogo Moalusi, a young South African black professional, law and economics graduate, entrepreneur and active citizen. His sentiments are shared by a growing number of people in South Africa who, almost two years before the next national and provincial elections, are already feeling an impulse of change.
An impulse that change is necessary, change is urgent. An impulse that what is at stake in the 2024 elections is the future of the country, rather than the leadership positions in government.
An impulse that resembles that anticipation millions of South Africans felt when the announcement of the first democratic election on 27 April 1994 was made. An election of hope for the future.
South Africans have gone through the motions of elections in five-year voting cycles since 1994. Our political rituals have been entrenched. Parties go to internal conferences, certain they are choosing the next president of the country, even though it is only parliament whose vote will finally count.
Marketing firms and PR agencies are on high alert awaiting briefs to create the colour schemes and slogans that will best titillate the voter’s palate. Voluminous manifestos are patched together in closed, often smoky, rooms never to be read by a single voter, while politicians ready themselves to become the merchants of political taglines, selling their charisma, charm, songs and promises to the electorate.
Door-to-door salesmen of the democratic promise, political parties and their leaderships have taken on various guises to animate and draw people into democratic participation on the all-important voting day.
It is, however, what happens in between the five-year cycles — between the votes is where democracy has needed to be animated most. South Africa does not need less democracy, it needs more democracy. Democracy cannot be reduced to what voters do at the polls every five years. It has to be something that filters in and through our daily experiences.
If democracy is truly to be acts and systems of self-governance, we all must rise up to exercise our power to act every day. The people of South Africa, in all our corners, must take on the task of governing our homes, our neighbourhoods, our communities and our places of business and work, whether we are in government or not.
We have the responsibility to hold each other accountable and, even more important, to hold those who, through our votes, access state power as their participation in governance.
While co-governance of and with the people of South Africa must be ongoing, the event of an election does serve two important functions. First, elections focus our minds to think about what it is that we want as a society.
It is a time of focused reflection on the state of the nation and the opportunity for change.
Second, it is an opportunity to think deeply about who we trust with the power and resources in the state — our government, which is our collective asset in which we invest our identities, resources and our hopes.
In the next 18 months, voting South Africans have a small window of opportunity to shape the future on these fronts. As we sit in literal darkness and despair, it is time to individually and collectively think about what we want to do with the 2024 moment.
There are lessons we can learn from those who voted in 1994.
The first lesson is to not only vote against the past but to vote for the future. Voters in 1994 rightfully wanted to ensure the end of apartheid. For many, the vote was about freedom from a repressive regime and oppressive past, without clear ideas of what they wanted their freedom to enable them to do.
For many who went to the polls, that promise of freedom had very little content in terms of what freedom would bring.
What would freedom look like in terms of economic participation? What would freedom feel like when it came to the choice of educating your children? What would freedom feel like and look like when it came to the idea of having access to a basic, decent quality of life?
Today, many people speak about 2024 as an opportunity to rid the country of one or other political party but the future requires more of us.
The Reverend Frank Chikane said in a conference speech in July that his hope for South Africa in the lead-up to 2024 is to see people rise up and have their voices heard in a “People’s Manifesto”.
Well before the politicians and marketers craft their manifestos and slogans we, the people, must set the agenda.
We need to determine the priority issues and set the bar higher for who we are willing to elect and make clear the terms and conditions that anyone who wants to be hired to serve the South African electorate must meet, whether as a president or a member of a provincial legislature.
The 2024 election must be about changing the rules of the game, not simply the players.
Another lesson is not to allow the urgency of the moment to transfer too much of our power and agency to those who want to be voted for.
So determined and eager was the voting public in 1994 that many blindly handed over their power to govern to political parties and politicians, wholesale.
The power of a few to govern came not only with the responsibility to execute the plan but to create the roadmap to the future on behalf of the majority, not cultivate a culture of superficial public participation and messianic politics in which those elected will save us rather than serve us.
This has become one of the failures of the 1994 moment and its consensus has since almost collapsed. Some community leaders who, even without political affiliation, fought for liberation in NGOs, religious organisations, unions, schools and universities were asked to swell the ranks of public service and parliament, leaving the lives and professions they knew behind in service of the country.
But many who did not join the state, rightfully some would argue, left the work of governing to their comrades in political and public office. Assuming that the hard work was done, they waited for the promise of freedom, only to be disappointed by acts of incompetence at minimum and, at worst, betrayal.
Almost 30 years later, as we stand at the precipice of another election, we have found that our political system has not only become a space for a few but it’s also become a space that does not necessarily represent the best among us.
We have placed our collective fate, resources and our identity as a country with people who, in many instances, seek political office to raise their own profiles, rather than raise the flag of South Africa and our quality of life.
Given the poor state of politics and governance, it has become easy to say that, as the majority of South Africans, we want nothing to do with politics and government. It is easy to decide to opt out of voting to avoid any relationship to the government and political class of the day. However, the problem is we are leaving them alone to decide the future of our country.
If South Africa were a car being driven at speed toward a cliff, many citizens, activists, workers and voters would, at best, be described as people outside the car shouting for the driver to stop, while we noisily beat on the outside of the vehicle. When the car is seconds away from plunging to disaster, many might even give up and decide to let it and its wayward driver end in a wreck.
Back to the future: People queue to vote in the first democratic election in 1994. One thing we can learn from it is to not only vote against the past but to vote for the future. (David Turnley/Getty Images)
The only problem is that, if the car is South Africa, we are all the collective owners of the car. The car does not belong to the driver, it is ours, and we need to do more than make noise from the outside.
Some of us will need to get into the car, in an effort to stop the driver, while others will have to muster the courage to get in the driver’s seat and steer the car away from danger toward a better future.
South Africa needs more than resistance in 2024, we need people who will rise to the challenge of stopping the current path to disaster and steer us towards the future we all deserve. We have become comfortable in resistance through protest, activism, lobbying and analysis but the time for progressive action has come.
As we march on to 2024, an opportunity beckons to change the course of history. We have an opportunity to rewrite the rules of what a political election cycle looks like. We have the opportunity to dream together and collaborate about a new version of, not only what our politics look like, but what our future as South Africa could be.
People from all backgrounds have an opportunity to write and set the agenda for the 2024 election. In the words of youth activist Irfaan Mnagera, we can write a new chapter and title it “A new hope rising”. This is hope derived from collective power, young people’s energy and political action that breaks all the known moulds of politics-as-usual and steers us towards radical solidarity, devolution of power and solutions birthed in communities.
For the South African future we deserve, three things must rise toward 2024 and beyond.
First, our expectations must rise. We all must expect more from those who seek public office, and from each other, as we co-govern the country into the future.
Second, voter participation must rise. The mandate for government cannot be determined by a minority. We have 18 months as voters to research voting options, create the options we want to vote for, or even be those options, but raising the number of voters is a goal to which we can all contribute.
Finally, true public representatives must rise.
We all know people in communities, businesses and civil society who we would trust to represent us. We must convince them to raise their hands, we must support them and hold them accountable.
Or you can determine for yourself that you are not only willing to vote but to be voted for. The qualification for political office is not political pedigree but the willingness to represent and serve.
South Africa will only rise because we rise. We are the ones we have been waiting for.
Tessa Dooms is a sociologist, development practitioner, activist and a director at the Rivonia Circle, a hub for policy and political alternatives.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.