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DA

Will the DA stick to its stated principles?

Sep 28th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
65 comments

Members of the Democratic Alliance (DA) caucus are facing an interesting choice when they decide whether to reaffirm Athol Trollip as its parliamentary leader or whether to throw their weight behind Lindiwe Mazibuko, who has announced that she is challenging Trollip for the position of parliamentary leader. An incumbent (who happens to be a white male) is facing off against a young challenger (who happens to be black and a woman).

The political editor of Beeld, Jan-Jan Joubert, has argued that for the DA to be true to its values, the caucus members should not take into account the fact that Mazibuko is a black woman and that Trollip is a white male. Elsewhere Joubert wrote that Trollip’s performance has been solid rather than spectacular, and certainly not on par with that of his predecessors, Sandra Botha and Tony Leon, but he has not indicated whether he believes Trollip or Mazibuko would be a better choice.

On this issue I believe that Joubert is dead wrong. This is why.

In discussions on talk radio many DA supporters have indicated that they would support Mazibuko because the DA “needs a black face in its leadership” or — less crudely — because of the fact that voters need to be able to identify with the leaders of the party it would vote for and because the DA needs to attract more black voters to break out of its Western Cape Zillestan.

Personally, I suspect that the DA would have to do much more than merely elect a black parliamentary leader to convince the majority of us South Africans that it is a credible alternative to the ANC. While some DA MPs and some of its leaders are hardworking and sincere, the tone which some of the DA representatives employ when they engage with important issues of the day still alienates many of us. The fact that the party also still far too often is seen as focusing its attention, at best, on the concerns of upper-middle class voters and, at worst, on the concerns of those white supporters who are extremely reactionary and in cases downright racist, rather than on the concerns of the majority of South Africans, leaves many of us with the uneasy feeling that the DA is essentially a party of white privilege and prejudice.

During the election campaign Helen Zille, Patricia de Lille and Lindiwe Mazibuko tirelessly tried to address this very debilitating perception. Premier Zille sang and danced and appeared at DA rallies held in many townships; and at the last election rally held by the DA before the election Zille threw in more than a smattering of Xhosa into her speech to remind us that the DA was supposedly for all of us.

But the DA faces a difficult problem: as it attempts to appeal to more than the narrow interests of the white electorate who has voted for the party in the past, it may well alienate some members of that very white electorate whose support it needs to retain in order to remain a viable party. Hence, since the election one has not heard Helen Zille speaking any Xhosa and when Dene Smuts issued a rather level-headed and sober assessment of the hate speech judgment of Judge Colin Lamont, many DA supporters were incensed by her analysis because it was mildly critical of the judgment, prompting Helen Zille to issue a clarifying statement.

Nevertheless, in my humble and completely unsolicited opinion, the election of Lindiwe Mazibuko as parliamentary leader of the DA would constitute an important (but not decisive) step towards rehabilitating the DA and towards positioning it as a credible political party in the South African landscape. In fact, not electing Mazibuko would undo some of the good work that Zille has undertaken during her term as leader, as it would send a signal that the DA is fundamentally a racist party who champions white mediocrity over black talent. This is so because its caucus would then have demonstrated that it had once again chosen to support a less than inspiring white man over an, admittedly, less experienced but obviously highly talented rising star who happens to be female and black.

In short, if the DA caucus members vote for Trollip because he is white, the party is doomed to remain an opposition party for decades to come (not that voting for Mazibuko will magically turn the majority of voters away from the ANC and towards the DA).

But does it mean – as Joubert seems to argue – that if the caucus votes for Mazibuko, at least in part, because she is a black woman, that the party is not being true to its principles and policies? Well, if one takes the actual policies of the party seriously (something that some of us admittedly find difficult to do), I think the only option for the DA caucus would be to vote for Mazibuko. If we assume that it was not mere window-dressing by the DA to elect Mazibuko as national spokesperson for the party and hence if we accept that she is a competent and credible politician, the DA’s own policy on corrective measures demands that she, rather than Trollip, should be elected as parliamentary leader.

Two weeks ago a DA MP sent me the DA’s policy on corrective measures to try and convince me that the DA does believe in racial redress of some sort. I quote the most salient aspect of that policy below:

[T]he DA believe in equitable programmes of admission, recruitment and appointment in all spheres. Equity means fairness. It means no-one may be excluded from competing for places on the basis of their immutable characteristics, except where differentiation is just and equitable: a near-sighted person cannot be expected to be trained as a pilot. But in order to advance the goal of equality and the reflection of the full diversity of our society in terms of race, ethnicity, sex, belief, culture, and able-bodiedness, underrepresented categories should enjoy “plus points” or favourable consideration when they are as well qualified for appointment as the next man or woman; or when they show comparable promise. To pretend that qualifications on paper, in examinations, in Curricula Vitae or on job performance scorecards  are the only appropriate or conventional criteria for eligibility for admission, appointment, selection, promotion and the like in any sphere of activity can potentially be as mechanical as demographic determinism.

This policy, authored by Dene Smuts and adopted by the DA Federal Council in 2005, thus embraces a mild form of race based corrective action. It explicitly endorses measures that would give weight to the race of a person when considering whether that person should be appointed, elected or promoted.

In a case like the one under discussion, where one candidate is less than brilliant (but happens to be white and male) and the other is black woman who is a rising star who might conceivable be said to show the promise of a good leader, the DA’s own policy says that the latter candidate must be given some “plus points” because she is black and a woman, and hence that she should get the nod above the white male candidate.

If the majority of the caucus fail to elect Mazibuko as parliamentary leader this might well mean that she has risen inside the party not because of her qualities as a politician and a leader, but merely as window dressings; that she was used to give the DA the veneer of credibility it needs to attract the majority of voters in South Africa.

It would mean either that she does not possess the promise that the DA policy speaks of, or that the majority of DA caucus members do not agree with the policy on corrective measures adopted by the party. Either way, it would make the DA the laughing stock of any mildly well-informed member of the public and would suggest that it is just as (or more) dishonest than the ANC when it comes to sticking to its supposed principles.

I therefore believe that Jan-Jan Joubert is dead wrong on this issue. If the DA wants to demonstrate that it is a party of principle, its caucus can only elect one parliamentary leader — and that is not going to be Athol Trollip. The fact that the tie-break in this case will be the race and/or gender of the candidate squares perfectly with the policies on redress adopted (but seldom spoken about) by the DA.

Hold off with the schadenfreugasms

Aug 30th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
70 comments

It is not always easy to be principled and consistent, more so when one happens to be a politician in a constitutional democracy and one has to keep one’s core supporters happy while also fending off one’s enemies inside and outside the political party one belongs to. Most politicians cannot help but act in expedient and self-serving ways in order to advance their immediate interests and careers. In a well-functioning constitutional democracy this impulse is checked by ordinary voters who help to hold politicians accountable and force those politicians to pay at least lip-service to a set of core principles.

In a country like South Africa, there are far less pressure on politicians to act in a principled, honest and consistent manner.

Unlike Constitutional Court judges, who are constrained – at least to some degree - by the text of the Constitution and by the legal precedent established by a long line of judgments, politicians do not have to be consistent, particularly honest or principled. As long as they achieve their short term goals – which usually entails, on the one hand, avoiding humiliation and avoiding being exposed as charlatans or crooks and, on the other hand, advancing their careers to climb the greasy poll - they have a relatively free hand to say and do anything that the voting public will let them get away with.

Thus, a politician like Helen Zille could effortlessly lambast ANC leaders for launching a scathing and unwarranted personal attack on the judges of the Constitutional Court, only to launch a scathing and unwarranted personal attack on a judge of the Cape High Court a few months later. Those who support her party almost all staunchly defended her – regardless of the principles involved – just as many of those who defended Jacob Zuma during his legal troubles did so – regardless of the facts.

But sometimes even politicians get caught out and then the ensuing spectacle presents such a bizarre and macabre contrast between what the politician used to say and do and what he or she now says or does, that the politician runs the risk of completely losing any credibility – even with the very gullible voting public who might once have defended the politician regardless of the facts.

Recall that after Schabir Shaik was convicted of bribing Jacob Zuma and then President Thabo Mbeki removed Zuma as Deputy President of the country in anticipation of him being charged with fraud and corruption, Zuma skilfully exploited his image as a victim. Zuma subtly encouraged his supporters to defend him and to attack his “enemies”, especially Mbeki. This Cosatu, the SACP and the ANC Youth League and their supporters did with little care for the consequences of their actions or any appeal to reason or principle.

Thus Mbeki was vilified and branded as a snake, and ANC T-shirts with his face on it was burnt by Zuma supporters who claimed that they would die for their leader – no matter whether he was corrupt and no matter what he might or might not have done with that baby oil in that room with the young daughter of an old and dear comrade friend. Cosatu, the SACP and the ANC Youth League all rallied behind Zuma because they had the short term goal of getting rid of Mbeki to unite them.

Very few of these politicians paused to ask whether Zuma might not have a case to answer in court – given the fact that Shaik had already been convicted of bribing him. They did not ask whether Zuma would make a good President of the ANC and the country. They did not really explore questions about President Zuma’s values and never stopped to ask whether – as supposedly principled and progressive organisations – they should support a leader who seemed to be rather surprisingly patriarchal and conservative in his views.

One would therefore be excused if one had a bit of a schadenfreugasm – to use a phrase popularised by Jon Stewart’s Daily Show – about the events today outside Luthuli House. While ANC Youth League President Julius Malema was facing disciplinary charges inside ANC headquarters, outside some of his supporters were pelting police and journalists with bricks, burning ANC T-shirts with the image of President Jacob Zuma and chanting slogans about how they would kill for Malema. How ironic that ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe, who blindly supported Zuma, today issued a statement condemning the behaviour of ANC Youth League supporters, conveniently forgetting the behaviour of the crowds outside the court when Zuma was charged with rape and when he made appearances during his many court battles with the Scorpions

Of course, many reasons could be advanced for the embarrassing but not unfamiliar display outside ANC headquarters today: the fact that Malema’s message of nationalisation resonates with some unemployed youth, that Malema is a role model for people looking at his flashy success, that the ANC leadership had encouraged this populism with their own behaviour, as well as any number of other explanations could be offered. But as I am not a professional political analyst I am far from sure that anything I could say on this topic would be of much interest or would show any special insight.

The point I would like to make is perhaps more mundane. If we had lived in a more normal society - a society not haunted by the lingering ghosts of our apartheid past - the bizarre events of today, which harks back to the events that led up to the ANC’s Polokwane conference and then to the dropping of criminal charges against President Zuma, might not have happened. If we had lived in a better functioning constitutional democracy, one in which the gap between rich and poor were not so vast and so obscene and in which conspicuous consumption by those with old and new money alike were not celebrated and held up as the ideal, it might have been more likely that reason, debate and sober reflection - instead of illogical rage – would have dominated the public discourse.

If we had lived in a more normal society, reason and logic might have had a better chance of being the dominant mode of doing politics. In such a democracy, leaders and ordinary citizens would have been required to be far more rigorous in justifying their decisions and would have more quickly been called to account if they failed to justify their words and actions in a credible manner. Politicians would at least have had to pretend to have principles, intellectual prowess and integrity (although, granted, in the UK of “New Labour”, Tony Blair – who was very good at pretending - turned out to be a disastrous leader). Most voters would have been shamed into opposing leaders who so clearly did not have the best interest of the poor at heart and were possibly corrupt.

But today’s events remind us that we do not live in an ordinary or normal country. We live in a country where some people (politicians and the old business elite among them) eat sushi from the bodies of semi-naked models; are protected by bodyguards and high walls from the young men and women who have no money, no jobs and little to lose; a country where some people travel across the world in first class and throw lavish parties, while the majority of South Africans languish in poverty and do not have the life chances to make meaningful decisions about their own lives.

Railing against Julius Malema and his supporters and calling them thugs and rioters will not change this basic fact – just like railing against Jacob Zuma during his battle with Thabo Mbeki had little effect. Unless we do something to address this bizarre and immoral state of affairs so many of us often seem to take for granted, everything that Mr Malema and his supporters represent will not disappear. That is one reason I support a wealth tax and why those who rail against the idea – just like they rail against Malema and his supporters – do not seem to me to have the best interests of South Africa and all who live in it at heart.

Why provinces have little real power but huge responsibilities

Aug 11th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
47 comments

The exact contours of South Africa’s quasi-federal system of government, in which legislative and executive powers are distributed between different spheres of government in a way that seems to tilt power away from provincial governments towards the national government, has not yet been fully worked out. The Constitutional Court has only been asked to consider this rather complex issue in very few cases, perhaps because provinces — even the Western Cape government currently controlled by the opposition Democratic Alliance – have not pushed the envelope on this issue.

There are reasons for this reluctance on the part of Provinces to challenge the powers of the national legislature and executive. Provincial governments do not have the power to raise much revenue and is also required to co-operate with the national sphere of government. Besides, provincial legislatures do not have any residual powers to pass legislation. In other words, unlike the national Parliament, which enjoys plenary legislative power within the bounds of the Constitution, the legislative authority of provinces is circumscribed by the Constitution.

Schedule 4 of the Constitution lists those functional areas on which both the national Parliament and the provincial legislatures can pass legislation. These include important areas such as housing, health care, education, policing and education. Schedule 5 lists functional areas with regard to which provincial legislatures have exclusive legislative competence, but these exclusive powers relate to subjects of little importance such as beaches and amusement facilities; billboards and the display of advertisements in public places; cemeteries, funeral parlours and crematoria; fencing and fences; local sport facilities; noise pollution; street trading; street lighting; and traffic and parking.

Provinces have no power to legislate on a matter falling outside Schedules 4 and 5 unless it is a matter “that is expressly assigned to the province by national legislation” or is a “matter for which a provision of the Constitution envisages the enactment of provincial legislation”.

This does not mean that provincial governments have no power to affect the lives of ordinary citizens. A good provincial government can make a huge difference to the delivery of basic services and can also wreck the best-laid plans of a national minister if it does not do its job properly. This is because provincial executives are tasked with implementing not only provincial legislation in the province, but also with implementing all national legislation within the functional areas listed in Schedule 4 or 5 (except where the Constitution or an Act of Parliament provides otherwise).

That is why a national minister of housing, health or education has limited powers to ensure that the services provided in a province is of a high standard. Where the MEC for education and her officials in a province fail to ensure that textbooks are delivered on time or that ARV medication is freely available at hospitals and clinics, the national minister can usually do little more than discuss this problem with that MEC during a MINMEC meeting (a meeting of the minister and relevant MEC’s).

Our system of co-operative government means that the national government and provincial governments have a duty to co-operate with one another “in mutual trust and good faith”, but as anyone knows who has tried to delegate work to an incompetent or lazy person, these requirements work best when the MECs are diligent and their departments are run efficiently. Unless the national government decides to intervene officially in a province in terms of section 100 of the Constitution (in cases where a province cannot or does not fulfil an executive obligation in terms of legislation or the Constitution), the national minister has limited power to interfere in the day to day running of the affairs of a provincial department.

But despite the fact that these general principles are now quite settled, it is far from clear exactly where the powers of the national Parliament and Executive end and where the powers of provincial Parliaments and Executives begin. We would need more test cases to be brought to the Constitutional Court to clarify the boundaries of the powers that may constitutionally be exercised by provincial Parliaments and provincial Executive Committees.

That is why the Constitutional Court judgment handed down today in the case of Premier: Limpopo Province v Speaker of the Limpopo Provincial Government and Others is of some interest — even though the case dealt with a seemingly rather technical question. The question presented in the case was whether the Provincial Legislature of Limpopo had the authority to enact legislation dealing with its own financial management. It arose out of the Financial Management of the Limpopo Provincial Legislature Bill, 2009 (Bill), which was passed by the Provincial Legislature, but which the Premier – very properly, it must be said — declined to assent to and sign. (Maybe the Premier’s legal adviser could be promoted to assist the State Law Adviser with the more complex constitutional questions with which he seems to have such difficulties.)

The Bill mirrored to a large degree national legislation on how to deal openly and transparently with the finances of the Limpopo legislature by creating an oversight committee; setting out the responsibilities of the accounting officer in relation to the money of the provincial legislature; how to deal with the financial misconduct of its own employees and several other related issues.

Schedule 4 or 5 of the Constitution does not allow the provincial legislature to pass laws dealing with its own financial management. The most important legal question was therefore whether the Bill dealt with a matter “that is expressly assigned to the province by national legislation” or a “matter for which a provision of the Constitution envisages the enactment of provincial legislation”. It is the second question that is of particular interest here.

In a minority judgment, Justice Yacoob (in a judgment concurred in by Justice Cameron) argued that the Constitution did “envisage” that a province could pass legislation like the Bill under discussion. Finding that the word “envisages” means something different from “expressly assigned”, Yacoob argued that section 215(1) of the Constitution envisaged that provincial legislatures had the power to pass legislation dealing with its own financial management.

This section requires provincial budgetary processes to promote transparency, accountability and effective financial management of the economy, debt and the public sector. The section then provides that national legislation must prescribe certain pre-requisites that must be complied with by provincial entities and prescribes what budgets in each sphere of government should contain. This, in effect, implied (although the minority is careful not to use this term) that a provincial legislature has the power to determine its own budgetary processes and that it could determine this process by passing legislation regulating that process.

The majority disagreed. In a judgment authored by Chief Justice Ngcobo, a slightly narrower view was taken on the powers conferred on provincial legislatures by the Constitution. It did so by arguing that where the Constitution does not expressly grant legislative powers to the provincial legislature, it does not “envisages” the enactment of provincial legislation. The majority judgment thus confirmed the view that one cannot assume that provincial legislatures have the power to pass legislation merely because they have the power to regulate their own processes and  can do so administratively.

Our constitutional scheme does not permit legislative powers of the provincial legislatures to be implied. Were it to be otherwise, the constitutional scheme for the allocation of legislative power would be undermined. The careful delineation between the legislative competence of Parliament and that of provincial legislatures would be blurred.  This may very well result in uncertainty about the limits of the legislative powers of the provinces. In the light of the plenary legislative powers of Parliament, it would result in the provinces having concurrent legislative competence with Parliament in respect of many matters. This is not what the drafters of our Constitution had in mind.

If the legislative powers of the provincial legislatures are to be implied beyond those expressly set out in the Constitution, this would, in my view, diminish, through an expansive reading of the Constitution, the residual legislative powers of Parliament. This would be inconsistent with the scheme of the Constitution, by which the provincial legislatures are given specific powers under the Constitution and Parliament is assigned the rest. In my view, the plenary legislative powers granted to Parliament are not to be diminished by implying legislative powers of provincial legislatures not expressly stated in the Constitution. The assignment of powers to the provinces must be expressed in clear and unequivocal language.

Chief Justice Ngcobo argued that the sections relied upon by Justice Yacoob do not envisage the enactment of provincial legislation but, on the contrary, expressly envisage the enactment of national legislation. The national parliament could therefore pass such legislation for provinces, but provinces could not pass such legislation themselves.

In a formal legal sense, I suspect this reading is the more accurate one. It is also more in line to the spirit of the Constitutional Court’s previous forays into this area of the law as it is based on the assumption that provinces only have those powers explicitly provided for by the Constitution and that our Constitution was drafted to secure the upper hand in such matters for the national sphere of government.

On a policy level the (perhaps) slightly more strained interpretation of Justices Yacoob and Cameron is probably preferable to the more logical and coherent interpretation of the majority. If we are going to have a provincial sphere of government that works effectively, a sphere of government where each province established its own character and its government could demonstrate its ability to do better than the national government, our courts should be hesitant to interpret the Constitution too narrowly in a way that favours the powers of the national sphere of government.

At the moment this will make little difference but as the political landscape changes and as more provinces are governed by parties who are not represented in the national government, this could become important. Imagine the SACP or some other party of the left governs three provinces while the ANC retains power at national level. In such a scenario one would probably want the provinces to have the freedom to experiment with different policies that might demonstrate — within the boundaries of what is constitutionally permissible — the benefits of such progressive policies. Whether this will really make any difference — given the fact that budgets are mostly determined at national level — is another question.

However, because the case dealt with a rather technical issue, it does not really help us to understand how the Court will rule in cases where provincial governments push through legislation aimed at further regulating the administration of health, education, policing and housing and where such legislation is in conflict with national legislation on the same topic.

One may argue that it is time for provincial governments to become more adventurous by establishing particular legislative standards and criteria for the delivery of very important services in the fields of education, housing, health and policing as they are co-responsible for these along with the national government. But because provinces have very little independent revenue raising capacity and depend on an allocation from the national budget, this will be rather difficult — especially if a province wished to establish higher standards for the delivery of a particular service and this would have budgetary implications.

Political parties must be more open and democratic

Jul 14th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
8 comments

Can political parties in a multi-party democracy rightfully claim that they have a right to privacy and can such political parties refuse to share information with the public at large regarding their inner-workings or about dealings between their leaders and private individuals or institutions?  Should political parties not be legally compelled to be more open, democratic and accountable to ensure that voters are adequately informed about their actions inside and outside government?

For example, should voters be able to gain access to information about donations made to political parties and about how that money is spent? If voters want to find out whether Premier Helen Zille does receive a second salary from the DA as claimed by Tony Eihrenrich, should voters not be entitled to get access to this information? And if voters wish to know whether the ANC has taken donations from the Gupta’s or from Muhammar Ghadaffi, should they not be entitled to this information?

Political parties seem reluctant to share information about their finances as well as other information that might show them or some of their leaders in a bad light. When Idasa requested information about party funding from the DA and the ANC both parties refused to provide such information and when Idasa went to court to compel the parties to provide such information the Cape High Court, in the case of  Institute for Democracy in South Africa and Others v African National Congress and Others, rejected this application.

Access to such information is regulated by the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). PAIA was adopted to give effect to section 32 of the Constitution, which states that everyone has the right of access to any information held by the state; and any information that is held by another person and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights.

The Act makes a distinction between public bodies (whose information – in theory at least – is easier to access) and private bodies (whose information is more tightly guarded by the Act). The practical sig­nificance of the distinction is that, as far as private bodies are concerned, one can only gain access to information if, inter alia, one can show that the information is “required for the exercise or protection of any rights”.

In the Idasa case, the High Court – after analysing the relevant sections of PAIA – found that the definition of “public body” is a fluid one and that the division between the categories of public and private bodies is by no means impermeable.

The Act recognises the principle that entities may perform both private and public functions at various times and that they may hold records relating to both aspects of their existence. The records being sought can thus relate to a power exercised or a function performed as a public body, in which event Part 2 of PAIA is applicable, or they can relate to a power exercised or a function performed as a private body, in which event Part 3 of PAIA is applicable.

As information that was sought by Idasa related exclusively to the fundraising activities of the political parties, the High Court found that when a political party dealt with its fundraising it was acting as a private body. It also concluded – wrongly in my opinion – that this information sought by Idasa was not required for the exercising or protection of any rights. (What about the right to vote, I would ask? Surely one cannot exercise that right properly if one is not informed about the funding sources of political parties?)

This history came back to me when I read in the media that the ANC is opposing an application lodged by the Cape Argus to compel the party to hand over documents in its possession that relate to the so called brown envelope journalism scandal. The “brown envelope” saga relates to an allegation made in an affidavit by former Cape Argus journalist Ashley Smith that he and former colleague Joseph Aranes had been paid by then ANC office-bearers in the Western Cape administration, under former premier Ebrahim Rasool, to write articles designed to promote the “Rasool faction” in the party’s regional branch.

It seems to me that the ANC is on shaky grounds in refusing access to these documents. As the documents relate to actions allegedly taken by ANC officials while in government, I suspect that it would not be possible to argue that in this case the documents relate to or was generated by the ANC when it was performing a private function. As Premier, Ebrahim Rasool is alleged to have used public funds to influence positive coverage of a particular ANC faction in government.

Chapter 4 of PAIA does contain a long list (too long to discuss here) of grounds on which a body can refuse access to information and I would guess that the ANC would rely on one of these grounds to justify its refusal to part with documents that could incriminate some of its leaders.

But the larger question remains: why would the ANC refuse to hand over such information of they have nothing to hide? And why would both the ANC and the DA refuse to provide information about their donors if they have nothing to hide? Political parties – especially parties like the ANC and the DA who are in government – are hungry beasts who require donations and positive publicity. The temptation for such parties to be corrupted to gain such donations and publicity are great. The present scandal in the UK regarding the untenable influence of Rupert Murdock and his media empire on politicians in that country, reminds us of just how democracy can be corrupted by money and by the influence of the media.

It seems to me what is needed is separate legislation on democracy and political parties which will compel political parties to adhere to a degree of openness and transparency regarding their finances as well as their internal workings and which will set minimum norms and standards for political parties to ensure internal party democracy, openness and transparency. As we vote for parties and not for individual candidates at national and provincial level, the manner in which political parties select candidates are crucial for our democracy. Such a law may help to limit the potential corruption associated with both party funding and – related to this – with the selection of candidates that will appear on party electoral lists.

In all of this, the most important principle must be openness and transparency. As the Rasool saga and the Idasa funding case have both shown, these things are in short supply in our political system.

And the winner is…..

May 20th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
35 comments

This Business Day cartoon sums up the election rather well. Maybe local government officials and politicians of both the DA and the ANC will now begin to treat people with dignity and respect. Maybe they have learnt from the toilet scandals that one cannot only tell people what they want and what is best for them, but that one must also listen to what they say and take their needs seriously. One lives in hope – despite evidence to the contrary.

20110519

More thoughts on election results

May 19th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
90 comments

In the absence of exit polls asking voters why they voted for their party of their choice, it is not possible to explain large swings in voter support with any certainty. In the Western Cape, making sense of the large swing to the DA is further complicated by the fact that the ID did not stand in the 2011 local government election. As the ID is in the process of merging with the DA and fought the election with the DA, one would have to know how many ID supporters decided to vote for the DA and what percentage threw their weight behind the ANC.

In KwaZulu/Natal where the IFP is in decline, the new kid of the block, the NFP, seems to be rising and where President Jacob Zuma’s presence as leader of the ANC has boosted the ANC.

Because there had already been a swing in the Western Cape from the ANC to the DA in the 2009 general election, it further complicates any analysis of the 2011 local government elections. Merely comparing 2006 results with 2011 results and drawing conclusions from that might well not give the full picture.

And of course, what happens in the Western Cape will not be replicated in Mpumalanga, KwaZulu/Natal or Limpopo. For me the two most interesting provinces to watch is the Western Cape (perhaps because I live here) and KwaZulu/Natal (where the IFP seems to be imploding and the ANC seems to be making steady gains).

Did the DA’s largely positive campaign sway undecided voters in the Western Cape? Was there a “Jimmy Manyi backlash” in the Western Cape amongst voters alienated by the ANC?  Did local factors, including allegations of corruption and mismanagement play a role in the swing to the DA in many towns across the Western Cape? Did infighting in the ANC in the Western Cape play a role by dissuading traditional ANC voters from going to the polls? Did voters actually buy the relentlessly punted message of the DA that it was the party that “delivered for all”?

Without exit polls it is really impossible to say. All one can do is speculate.

Taking the Breede Valley (Worcester) election results as an example, it is clear that the DA won a larger percentage of the vote than the DA/ID combined vote of 2006.

In 2006 the ANC won 18 seats with 46% of the vote, while the DA received 33.3% of the vote and 13 seats and the Independent Democrats won 5 seats with 11.4 percent of the vote. Preliminary results suggest the DA won Breede Valley (Worcester) in 2011 with 55.03% (22 seats), with the ANC second with 34.09% (14 seats), while 5 seats were shared among smaller parties.

About 75% of residents of this region is said to be “coloured”, 17% is said to be “African” and the rest is said to be “white”. A further swing to the DA (from 2009) would suggest that the “Jimmy Manyi factor” might have played a role here. But because the IEC website is frozen I could not check the results for this region for the 2009 election. It is therefore impossible to ascertain right now whether the DA did better in 2011 than it and the ID did together in 2009.

At the moment, results in large parts of Johannesburg are also unavailable. It is thus not possible to verify the DA claim that it has made some inroads into traditional ANC voting areas. Ultimately it might well be that the ANC overall portion of the vote would not have dropped as much as some pundits predicted before the election. Because of its success in KwaZulu/Natal, the ANC might well do better overall than some expected.

Whatever happens, the emerging narrative among chattering class pundits is that the DA is the big winner of the election while smaller parties have been the big loser. Money and the organisation it can buy, wins elections. The ANC and the DA had money. Smaller parties had none. Imagine Azapo or the PAC had the same funds as the DA. I suspect they would then have done far better than their dismal performance so far indicates.

Time, perhaps, to revisit the entire manner in which political parties are funded in South Africa?

Election results update

May 19th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
27 comments

Watching the SABC and ETV coverage of the election results is a bit like trying to watch a rugby game blindfolded with very loud and drunk spectatiors sitting all around you. There is a lot of noise but one is not able to gather much hard information from this exercise. And if one analyst or presenter says “It’s early days yet,” I am going to scream.

The leaderboard at the IEC results centre also provides utterly meaningless statistics because one does not know which wards or municipalities have reported their results, whether more results have come in from traditionally DA than ANC strongholds and which province has reported the largest percentage of those results so far. Idiotic. 

In any case, this is a local government election, so what happens in each Metro and in each town is far more important than the overall vote tallies for the parties. If one wants to get real information one must go to the Internet. Unfortunately the Electoral Commission site is outdated and is far too complicated to use and unless one is a serious number crunching geek it does not seem of much use.

News24 has probably the best and easiest to use page. It contains a map with both 20o6 and 2011 results, which gives one a far better picture of what is going on than the TV reports. Otherwise, for those on Twitter, it is very useful to search for #LGEResults or #LGER2011 and follow those feeds. From what I gather from my sources the DA did very well in Cape Town and will win in a landslide, while the ANC probably did better than expected in Johannesburg. (And, no, I am not going to caution that it is early days yet.)

What about the “Steve Hofmeyer” vote?

May 16th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
51 comments

This weekend I watched the DA’s final election rally on ETV-news and it was quite enlightening. The rally was clearly aimed at projecting the image of a party of the future that embraces people from all races and cultures. (The SABC decided not to broadcast this rally live, which probably means it was in breach of the law that requires it to treat political parties equitably during election campaigns.)

I also watched the ANC’s final election rally (this time on SABC) and it, too, was enlightening, as the ANC seemed to want to project the image of a party of the past, harping on about apartheid and what the ANC had done before and saying very little about how it will fix the mess that many municipalities find themselves in.

Tentative conclusions.

The ANC is much better at the razzmatazz of election rallies than the DA and its core voters appear to be more emotional  and enthusiastic – at least on TV. Packing the FNB stadium with tens of thousands of supporters was very impressive and until President Jacob Zuma started his speech, things were going very well for the ANC (with a little bit of help from SABC TV reporters who acted as if they were at a World Cup Soccer match, not at a political rally which they had to report on as neutrally and objectively as possible).

But President Jacob Zuma’s speech was once again a huge disappointment. Helen Zille is a far better public speaker than President Jacob Zuma, whose speech was – as usual – so boring that I was considering painting the walls of my house and watching the paint dry instead of watching him stammer through a list of achievements of the ANC in government that (although impressive) had very little to do with local government and the election at hand. The ANC’s election campaign seems to be based on the argument that the DA is a white apartheid party and that the ANC is not too bad at national level, so let us just forget local government and vote for the ANC in any case.

Helen Zille, trying to get away from the liberation deficit her party suffers from and from the linger perceptions created by past anti-black election campaigns, hammered home the point that the election was about local issues. Ok, there is the small problem with the TV add which turned out not to be entirely true and the claims about service delivery which might have stretched credulity, but she skirted these controversies and stuck to her guns, using three languages in an impressive display of respect for diversity. And she wore a nice purple dress, too, which would have made Lindiwe Sisulu quite envious (and reminded me of the witty slogan of 1989 after the police blasted protesters with purple water: “The purple shall govern”).

Pity about the often hysterical and self-righteous tone taken by DA spin doctors, who often seem incapable of rising above the pettiness and the selfrighteousness that has infected the DA in the past. The stubborn refusal to admit mistakes also remains a big stumbling block for the party and the management of its image. Sometimes logical aruments are not enough: one needs to manage perceptions and one needs to act humble, not only say that one is humble. If only the DA’s spin doctors and advisors could rise to the same level as their leader, quite a few more people would vote for the party.

In any case, as I was watching Helen Zille trotting out her best Xhosa and Afrikaans and the DA faithful dancing and singing for all they are worth, I was suddenly struck by a question which has not really been raised in this campaign. Would the DA lose some of its traditional support amongst right-wing white South Africans because it has been aggressively courting the vote of all South Africans – also those who are not white?

Will some of the “Fight Back!” and “Stop Zuma” voters (the Steve Hofmeyer’s of this world who are deeply racist and have given their vote to the DA because they perceived the DA to be fundamentally anti-ANC and anti-black) desert the DA and vote for the Freedom Front Plus, or will they stay at home, crack a Castle and put a tjop on the braai while they complain about the country going to the dogs?

I have no idea how such voters will react. I do know that quite a few white voters are deeply racist and might be put off by the DA’s inclusive new image. If I was a DA strategist I would not worry about this possibility.

Those people belong to the past. Like Steve Hofmeyer, who is famous for singing Neil Diamond cover versions (I mean, he was not even hip enough to choose Abba) and for singing an apparently autobiographical song about a Pampoen” (“pumpkin”), they represent a small minority with little political clout.

After all, if one ever wished to be politically relevant in South Africa, one would be advised to distance oneself from these people. But if these people fail to vote for the DA or vote for the Freedom Front Plus, it might shave one or two percent from the DA’s vote. Instead of 20% the DA might end up with 18% nationally, say.

I for one, will be watching the results to see if the Freedom Front Plus has been boosted by the DA’s turn to the centre of the political spectrum in South Africa. Once again, before the results start flowing in, I would not make any predictions about the final tallies.

Notes on the “toilet election”

May 12th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
89 comments

Because no accurate public polling data is available in South Africa to measure the voting intensions of members of the electorate, it is impossible to make any meaningful predictions about the outcome of the local government election, which will be held next Wednesday. In the past, available public polling data had consistently underestimated support for the African National Congress (ANC) and had overstated support for the Democratic Alliance (DA), so even if polling data had been available this data would have been less reliable than similar data in the USA.

I will therefore refrain from playing the ignorant pundit by making any predictions about how well the various parties will do in the upcoming election. In any case, as a middle class white person living in Cape Town, I do not have sufficient information about what is happening in various communities to make any sensible comments on the outcome of the election. Nevertheless, I will venture a few preliminary thoughts about the manner in which the election was fought — based on the manner in which the media has reported on the campaigns and on the election debates broadcast on radio and television.

(I make no comment about the nature of the practical aspects of the campaigns and the efforts made by political parties to get their voters to the polls, something that might be crucial as a low voter turnout by traditionally ANC supporters or DA supporters might well make a huge difference to the outcome of the election in various municipalities.)

Bearing these caveats in mind, the following aspects stood out for me.

  • The DA has run by far the best election campaign of any political party in terms of formulating a simple, positive and coherent message, ensuring that everyone in the party stays on message and managing the media aspects of its campaign. Whether one supports the DA or not, one has to admire the discipline of the DA team and the manner in which it has managed to begin the long and difficult process of repackaging itself as a party for all South Africans and not just for white elite interests. I have seen more pictures of Helen Zille with scores of black supporters in blue DA T-shirts in the last two months than in the previous 10 years.
  • The ANC, on the other hand, has not run as good an election campaign as it has shown itself capable of in the past. It lacked a coherent and simple positive message and often came across as desperate and, hence, it failed to dictate the terms of the campaign as it has done in previous elections. It is unclear whether this was because of divisions within the ANC, weak leadership, or because it is faced with the challenges inherent to any party who has been in power for a long time. The fact that — for the past two years — we have been bombarded with so many stories about ANC corruption and misgovernment, which have created a narrative that was difficult to change, might also have made the task of the ANC in this election more difficult than before.
  • Judging from the media, smaller parties have almost completely disappeared from the electoral radar screens. This election was presented in the media as a two-horse race between the ANC and the DA, which probably benefited the DA (whose stature was enhanced by being treated as being in the same league as the ANC) and for obvious reasons disadvantaged the ANC.
  • More generally, I have been disheartened by mind-numbing superficiality of the way in which the political parties have generally engaged with very serious and important local government issues. It seems to me that there are several structural problems with the way municipalities are organised and run in South Africa. The tax base for many municipalities are so low that even if they were governed efficiently, they would not be able to deliver on their mandates. The “pay-as-you-go” principle for the delivery of services (which is implemented by both the ANC and the DA run municipalities) are fundamentally anti-poor and the band-aid solutions currently in place do not address the larger question, namely that the very poor can often not afford to pay for the basic services like water and electricity which municipalities are constitutionally and legally required to provide them with. Yet, we all seem to be obsessed by open toilets and by election stunts such as the ANC claim that it was laying criminal charges against the DA for the alleged DA pamphlet which quoted Trevor Manuel’s own criticism of the ANC.

But there is an important matter of electoral design that has also been highlighted by this election. This election campaign has been largely run as a national campaign and has not focused much on pressing local issues. We are often told that one reason why our national and provincial legislatures are not working as well as they should is because of the electoral system which makes those representatives accountable to their political parties and not to the electorate. If we brought back the constituency-based system, so some analysts argue, our representatives would be more responsive and accountable.

But at local government level half of the councillors are elected to represent geographical constituencies, and one would have imagined that those standing in these wards would try to demonstrate to voters in that ward how they would improve the lives of their constituents. Yet, although I stay in a fairly affluent area in Sea Point, I do not have a clue what the names of the ANC or DA representative is who is standing in the election for this ward. I have had no communication from the prospective ward councillors about how they intend to serve me and why I should vote for him or her. All I know is that my previous councillor is not standing for re-election. (Trust me, I was looking forward to see his face smiling at me from the lampposts!)

Which goes to show, even if one has a constituency-based electoral system very little would change as far as accountability is concerned. As long as elected representatives are in effect appointed by political party leaders, they will be accountable to those leaders and not to the electorate.

Because the ANC is not going to win this Sea Point ward (like most wards in South Africa, my ward is dominated by one political party), the DA leadership has in effect decided who will represent me and that leadership will also decide whether this councillor will serve another term after the next election.

Changing the electoral system will therefore probably not make provincial and national legislative representatives more accountable and effective unless the voting patterns of the electorate changed dramatically and the elections in most wards or constituencies became far more competitive. Even then, as long as party leaders in effect had the right to impose or remove candidates representing the party, the accountability might not be as strong as one would wish.

Predictions? Nah – I will leave that for the professional pundits.

Dancing on the grave of apartheid

May 9th, 2011
by Pierre De Vos.
45 comments

News that the DA-run municipality of Midvaal had removed a statue of former apartheid prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd after the ANC had pointed to the statue as evidence that the DA was an apartheid-loving party, made me think about the ways in which we deal with the physical and symbolic manifestations of colonialism and white domination in our democracy.

Let us leave aside for the moment the fact that the ANC complaint seemed rather opportunistic as the party had not removed the statue when it was in control of the Midvaal municipality. Let us also not comment on the curious manner in which the statue was removed in the dead of night by a man only identified as “Piet”.

Let us instead focus on the broader issue relating to the manner in which we deal with this symbolic aspects of our past, our present and our future. All over South Africa rivers, mountains, towns, streets and squares are still called by the names given to them by those who colonised the country. Driving over another Black river, past another Landsdown, over another Retiefskop, one is reminded of the fact that for many of those who arrived in South Africa from Europe, the people who originally lived here and named these places before the arrival of the colonists were at best invisible and at worst less than fully human.

One also finds statues, museums and monuments which celebrate not only the language and culture of the colonists but also the very racial domination which subjugated the majority of South Africans.

Obviously, to leave everything as it was in 1994 is not tenable. The vast majority of South Africans do not want to honour HF Verwoerd and PW Botha, Jan Smuts and Jopie Fourie, DF Malan and Piet Retief. Renaming some towns, streets, mountains and rivers therefore seems advisable and even laudable. It is also necessary to decide how to deal with the many monuments and museums erected in years gone by in memory of some or other aspect of colonialism or apartheid. Surprisingly some people seem to feel rather strongly about the need to keep things exactly as they are and resit any form of symbolic adjustment that would allow for changes to the names we give to things in our world, better to reflect the diversity of the people who live in our country.

I am not sure whether this resistance to any kind of change is born out of sheer arrogance that sometimes comes with a white skin, or whether it speaks of other – as yet unmentionable and unexamined – fears and worries. I am sure those who are opposed to any kind of change represent only a very small minority, so we can leave their weird anxieties aside for the moment.

It is not very interesting or relevant to ask whether there should be changes to the world around us, better to reflect the diversity of cultures, languages and races in South Africa. Far more interesting and relevant is to ask how this should be done.

One way to deal with this problem is to try and erase the colonial past completely and to impose a new rather self-serving and distorted version of our history on all South Africans by renaming everything after the heroes of the political party who happens to have won the last few elections. This is always a tempting option. After all, as George Orwell wrote in 1984: ”Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

This kind of wholesale rewriting of history is not very helpful or wise as it seems to reflect a mirror image of the way in which arrogant colonialists dealt with their surroundings. One version of the past is then held up as the only version of the past – which is both untrue and politically self-serving.

Another option is to pretend that we have no past and to rename everything after bland and uncontroversial things like flowers and trees and to remove all traces of the memorials and monuments of the past regime and not to create new memorials for a new world. This approach calls for a kind of moral, cultural and political amnesia, which would in effect rob us of part of our identity as South Africans. In any case, this approach would not satisfy too many people.

A third option is to be a bit more creative and to play with the often absurd, shocking, contradictory, delightful and moving aspects of our past and of the ways we are grappling with how to deal with our different perceptions of ourselves, our pasts and our futures. Sometimes such attempts will not be very successful. I mean, what can be more absurd than to drive past the Mandela-Rhodes building in Cape Town. These people must have a rather perverse sense of humour: commemorating the arch imperialist, racist and colonialist in the same breath as the father of our nation.

But sometimes the weird juxtapositions can work wonderfully. This usually happens when complexity and nuance wins out over slogans and ideological certainties and platitudes. Where there is a willingness to remember the horrid aspects of our past in an open, honest and inclusive manner – to remember without erasing, to memorialise without monumentalising - the effects can be rather startling.

Where the version of our past held up by the white minority at the time as the only and official version of our history is not completely erased, but overlaid with other versions of our past that commemorate the struggle against oppression, where the lives of ordinary (previously invisible) human beings are remembered, where memorials are living testomonies to our people, where monuments and memorails excavate the histories that were so successfully erased by the colonial rulers, then the names and memories create a complex tapestry that reflect the complicated nature of our society.

On a recent visit to Freedom Park, I was deeply moved when I read the inclusive list of names of all those who had fallen in the name of a struggle and then looked up and spotted the Voortrekker Monument, commemorating a very different and more problematic kind of past. That is where we are coming from, I thought, looking at the Voortrekker monument, and let us not forget that. But this is the way we really want to be, I thought as I quietly wandered around Freedom Park.

Of course, when it comes to statues the problem is rather daunting. If we remove all the statues that commemorate colonialism and apartheid we would be erasing an aspect of our past and would be pretending it never happened. Cecil John Rhodes, Queen Victoria and all those ugly busts of Prime Ministers will have to be carted away and melted down for scrap metal. How will we be able to remember not to repeat the mistakes of the past if we have erased it? But if we leave every statue of Verwoerd and his cronies in place, are we not saying that we find it quite normal and acceptable that this man should be honoured and remembered – even in a democratic South Africa?

Perhaps we can deal with this issue on a case by case basis. But where we decide to remove a statue, I would plead that the statue should NOT be locked up somewhere in a cellar. Perhaps, following the example of the Hungarians after the fall of communism, we could create an apartheid cemetery where all these statues could be taken and placed in their proper context.

Imagine a vast park at the Voortrekker monument littered with busts of DF Malan, HF Verwoerd, Louis and PW Botha, Jan Smuts, JBM Hertzog and the like along with other statues commemorating the Groot Trek and other parts of our dubious pasts. One could attach informative signs to each statue with information about the original place where the statue was erected and something about the person commemorated so that we can remind ourselves what bizarre and oppressive place South Africa used to be.

I am sure the Freedom Front Plus would not like my solution, but I for one would love to visit such an apartheid graveyard at the Voortrekker Monument. Imagine, one could have a rave or a fabulous queer fancy dress party or a rock concert there between those statues. We would all be dancing on the grave of apartheid, so to speak. Now that would be lekker.

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