It’s quite possible that in ascending the mount of democracy in 1994 we became bedazzled by our achievement, forgetting the words of Nelson Mandela when he said: “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more to climb.’’ We thought a new, liberal constitution would be enough to put SA irrevocably on a trajectory of democracy and, inevitably, prosperity. We forgot there’d be other, steeper, hills to climb. One of them is called reality.
In the 27 years — some of them great, others less so — that have intervened in the meantime, the novelty of being a democracy has worn thin. For those of us who lived as adults in the years before 1994, it’s incredible to think that the emotions that animated SA’s liberation struggle would be so carelessly forgotten and set aside for more pressing recreational duties on election day, or to mow the lawn and clean the pool.
That fewer than half of voters turned out for this week’s local government elections reflects a society that’s forgotten where it came from, and now appears to take democracy for granted. Voting has become as unappealing, and pointless, as an outing on a public holiday. And don’t forget the voter turnout is only in respect of those who have registered, which is a fraction of the number of people eligible to vote if they’d bothered to register.
Is it possible that in common with other aspects of our public life, our multiparty democracy is foundering on the implementation side, while remaining a good idea in principle? Certainly, the silence of the people in formal politics is at odds with the clamour of protests that unfold noisily in towns around the country each day. So it’s a type of politics that’s dying, the formal constitutional variety, a type of politics that appears designed only for the parties and their politicians to gain.
Two conclusions are clear from the results. The first is the decline of the ANC, now slipping below half in the vote count. Will it do much better when the next national and provincial elections are held in 2024? Unlikely. Coalitions will be the future of our politics.
That fewer than half of voters turned out for this week’s local government elections reflects a society that’s forgotten where it came from, and now appears to take democracy for granted.
The second reason relates largely, but not exclusively, to the ANC, and has to do with a loss of faith in establishment politics generally. The ruling party has paid a heavy price for service-delivery lapses and corruption. It hasn’t lived up to its promise, or its promises. Losses in northern KwaZulu-Natal, the big metros and in Mpumalanga have hurt the party. People live in squalor, but their elected representatives vote themselves huge pay hikes and build vanity projects to benefit the inner circle. Voters have realised they are fodder, their loyalty to be bought off with a T-shirt or a food parcel. Many of these, disillusioned with the charade in which they play a walk-on part every five years, stayed at home.
The disillusionment factor was not confined to the ANC, with the DA suffering a similar fate in Western Cape municipalities where it once ruled. The big establishment parties, principally the ANC and DA, have taken a knock, and the centre of our politics has shifted.
Just as ANC and DA voters stayed away in traditional strongholds, the parties on the fringe were able to mobilise relatively more of their voters. The winners were Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA, the kingmaker in a hung Joburg metro, the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Freedom Front Plus and the Patriotic Alliance, so expect to see much more of its leader, Gayton McKenzie, flexing his biceps on your TV screens in future.
“Normal politics’’ has been given a bad name, principally by the ANC, for which “sorry’’ became a campaign slogan in these elections.
Its deputy secretary-general, Jessie Duarte, putting a spin on the results, said the party’s mood was “optimistic’’. In any event, it’s going through a process of renewal. Renewal aside, Duarte blamed Eskom (they had blackouts in Soweto before the last election as well, she said), defended cadre deployment (all parties do it, she assured TV news viewers), and said any potential metro coalition partner would have to support black economic empowerment. But aren’t these the very policies that arguably collapsed so many of the local governments the ANC rules, or ruled? And no matter that outsiders see BEE as a system whereby connected insiders get municipal contracts at the expense of getting the job done at the least cost and in the shortest time. And even though cadre deployment has seen incompetent people ruin municipalities, this too is non-negotiable? But “nothing is off the table’’, she said, which suggests a party desperate for coalition action. As for blaming Eskom, wasn’t that where ANC cadre deployment was perfected?
The idea that the ANC would rule indefinitely or, in the immortal words of former president Jacob Zuma, 'till Jesus comes', now looks like a prediction that belonged to another era.
This is the beginning of the end of the post-liberation era of predictable politics. The idea that the ANC would rule indefinitely, or, in the immortal words of former president Jacob Zuma, “till Jesus comes’’, now looks like a prediction that belonged to another era. Similarly, the idea that so-called minorities would permanently seek political protection within the DA, which is another living remnant of our apartheid past, has also proved untrue. Eyes have been opened to options.
In the proliferation of independents, too, millions of South Africans made deliberate choices to support new parties, and to get involved. In doing so, they voted for their own interests, and without a view to the wider political picture, which may be appropriate in local government elections, but illustrates the transactional nature of the new political mood.
In other countries one has seen how people such as business tycoons, media moguls, movie stars and even professional comedians have swept aside traditional players in waves of mostly reactionary politics, often with a populist flavour. There is no reason why celebrity-style politicians will not become a factor in SA too, especially with social media playing so pervasive a role. This will be a certainty if our political parties fail to rise to the challenge now.
The big winner, arguably, has been Mashaba, the self-made billionaire for whom no BEE was required. Elite critics say Mashaba is a dangerous xenophobe, a rich right-winger who imagines himself as a future president of SA. That may be true, but what’s equally true is that what he says about undocumented foreign migrants, for example, resonates with many who may previously have hesitated to articulate their true feelings within the politically sanitised broad church of the ANC.
So the big question of our politics is whether this fraying of the centre will continue, and perhaps become the great unravelling which will leave us in uncharted political waters. If that happens, how safe will our constitutional democracy be in the hands of those whose words and actions suggest they don’t care that much for it?
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