Yeats seems to have presaged the political anarchy we are currently facing in South Africa today when he wrote the lines … ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…’.
Our Constitution has been desecrated by former president Jacob Zuma, who blatantly undermined and eventually refused to participate in the Zondo Commission on state capture.
Yet his party, the ANC – which is charged with supporting and defending the Constitution – is patently split and thus unable to rein him in. It is more interested in promoting party interests that are diametrically averse to our Constitution.
The question that defines South Africa’s moral dilemma is that, given our world-renowned Constitution, how was it so relatively easy to loot the country’s resources over so short a period? Has the Democratic Alliance (DA) succeeded in exercising its mandate in being a bulwark against constitutional excesses, primarily corruption? Certainly, the Zondo Commission will provide answers.
To understand what has happened, one has to examine the features of our Constitution that have been cited as profoundly undermining of our democracy, namely our electoral system, and the lavish executive presidential powers.
Nothing has been so inimical to our nascent democracy as our electoral system. Yet, though the Van Zyl Slabbert Commission was appointed in 2003, its recommendations that half of the 400 MPs be directly elected while the others be proportionally representative have never been implemented. Evidently, the status quo is beneficial to both the ANC party bosses and their sycophants.
To utter the refrain, ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people’ is useless, as people’s voices are muffled. The failure of multiple votes of no confidence against Zuma, when ANC members were instructed to toe the party line rather than follow their conscience, proves the decay of our electoral system. As Makhosi Khoza concluded at the Zondo Commission: ‘The situation in the ANC was that anyone who sought to uphold the rule of law would be punished.’
Unfettered executive powers
People like Dikgang Moseneke (2014) and Willie Hofmeyr (2019) have denounced the unfettered executive powers of the president to appoint senior members of the government and SOEs as being ‘not always optimal for advancing the democratic project’. And many appointees are simply unqualified. Clipping those powers is long overdue.
These are monumental constitutional mountains for both the DA and any democratic reformers to climb.
In the consolidation of democracy, the role of the opposition parties cannot be overemphasized. In concert with other political authors, as Courtney Jung argues, an opposition party must shape up and campaign to be an ‘alternative government’ and must ‘expose the abuses of power and establish recourse through the courts’. Moreover, it should facilitate debate on political issues.
The DA has exquisitely executed its obligations as an official opposition party, but it has not so far threatened to be an alternative government. The ANC hegemony remains unscathed, though its support base has been sliding since 1994, from 62.7% to 57.50 % in the last general election. It is this hegemony that prevents our young democracy from reaching maturity.
Since the start of our democracy, the DA (with around 20% of voter support) has been ferocious in holding the ANC to account. Despite the ANC’s insulating Zuma, the DA has pressed him to account for himself through our courts. The so-called ‘spy tapes’ that finally forced Zuma to appear in court after ten years attests to the DA’s hot pursuit of justice.
But to become an alternative government, the DA must fully appreciate the quality of voters in South Africa. Our voters vote according to perceptions rather than policies. Perceptions, fuelled by leftist parties’ propaganda and indoctrination, that the DA would bring back apartheid and abolish the social grants that 18 million citizens rely on, abound.
Such false perceptions are mired in toxic race politics akin to the pre-1994 swart gevaar tactics used to frighten whites against uniting with blacks. Today, the ANC and EFF peddle the race card as a divisive instrument that defiantly instructs blacks not to vote DA. Black DA members are gratuitously labelled as ‘sell-outs’ or ‘puppets’. The DA’s mantra that ‘race does not matter’ does not wash with black voters. Voters are thus ushered into what Prince Mashele calls ‘political kraals’. Political freedom is lynched.
Bertrand Russell observes of political freedom that where democracy does not exist, the government behaves as a master over dependants, but that where there is democracy, the relationship is one of equal co-operation.
Votes bonanza
Despite the empirical evidence showing that the DA governs well in the Western Cape and the municipalities it controls, this does not translate into a votes bonanza. According to the Auditor General’s Report of 2018/2019, only 13 of the country’s 278 municipalities attained clean audits. Most of the clean audits are in DA-governed municipalities. Cape Town, which has been under DA control since 2006, has received the accolade of being placed first in Good Governance Africa’s 2016 Government Performance Index.
While South Africa consolidates its democracy, the DA must continue to be exemplary in its governance performance and in its oversight role. To increase its voter support, especially in the traditional black ANC strongholds, the DA must devise strategies that appeal precisely to, for instance, the 18 million youth who boycotted the 2019 election. This includes unequivocally deepening its non-racial stance and dealing swiftly and firmly with any whisper of racism within its own ranks. This will enhance its credibility among the electorate.
Also, South Africa will be saved from the miasma of corruption if opposition parties explore coalition possibilities and, in partnership with democratic civil organizations, galvanize the society to wrestle power from the kleptocratic ANC. Such coalitions must be established on the principles of constitutional democracy, combating corruption and forging unity among South Africa’s people.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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