The November national convention

Submitted by MF Cassim

The November national convention will be taking place against a backdrop of slowing world economic growth and terrible financial turmoil. The consequences for the country are many and serious. The emergence of a new political party will therefore be very timely because pressing issues need a dynamic response.

The new party should have multiple levels of leadership to cater for gender, race and interest differences; and most importantly it must visibly and consciously span the different generations. The leadership should be broad but integrated so that the party can simultaneously work with multiple time horizons, negotiate dynamically on core issues, and manage the administration of the organisational structure efficiently and democratically. The focus should shift from personality and the cult of personality to interaction, policies, outcomes, deliberation, dialogue and administration.

The national convention is an opportunity to eschew the “mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of us all” question. Focus should fall squarely on substantive issues. Lekota and Shilowa have presented South Africa with a rare gift horse that should not be looked in the mouth. The convention should certainly not be about Lekota or about Zuma. It should not be about the ANC. It should be about South Africa and the decade to come.

The vast reservoir of political goodwill accruing from 1994 is now nearly exhausted. The fat years are also at an end. Hardship, poverty, and hunger for the majority loom. South Africa, a net exporter of food, has now become a net importer. To add to the growing gloom, the markets are in terrible turmoil and will in all likelihood remain that way for a while. As though this was not enough, climate change is accelerating in a threatening manner. The new party should advance innovative and sustainable policies on the economy, governance, social security, jobs, housing, education, health, safety and the environment.

The convention is an opportunity for South Africans to interrogate the electoral system and to exert pressure for its reform. Trust in politicians is wearing thin because the system depends extensively, if not entirely, on patronage.

While it has succeeded in ensuring representivity, it has failed dismally in allowing for accountability to the electorate. As everyone in this country clearly witnessed, the president, the premiers and the mayors are all made to answer exclusively to the party, not to the country. The party can do with each of them what it wishes while the people are rendered mere helpless onlookers.

It is the same with every MP and every councillor. A very small number of people in South Africa have the authority to influence sudden and dramatic changes in the political sphere and this is not reflective of representative democracy. Parties just have too much power while individual MPs are rendered ineffectual because of the party list system.

Only a mixed system of direct and proportional representation will ensure that both representivity as well as accountability are kept in balance. No one should settle for anything less than this. Complacency in this regard will be nothing short of complicity.

South Africans also witnessed how the majority party went about dismantling the Scorpions. No MP in the majority party dissented. No one could. This does not bode well for the future because party interest will always trump every other interest.

Much earlier the majority party abolished interpellations in Parliament because these tended to be rough on the executive. No less a person than ANC luminary Matthews Phosa roundly condemned Parliament’s failure to hold ministers properly accountable. The new party should undertake to strengthen Parliament so that it no longer operates in the shadow of the executive and even at the behest of the executive.

Lekota has already identified the muzzling of party members as an unacceptable practice and therefore any new party that forms must establish freedom of expression and freedom of conscience as the right that each party member will enjoy without any fetters or threat of punitive action. At the moment political parties will happily harbour members implicated in corruption but aggressively turf out those who stand up for a principle. A new party that forms must get its priorities right: the corrupt should be kicked out and those who have the courage of their conviction should be embraced.

A new progressive movement must ensure that the government genuinely exists for and on behalf of the people. Zimbabwe offers a glaring example, right on our door step, of how blind loyalty to a political party, illustrious as it may have been, can utterly and totally ruin a country inside of ten years.

Today Zimbabweans still have their Zanu-PF intact, but no country worth speaking of.

A malleable instrument
Our democratic institutions are certainly in greater danger from a majority party that obsesses about its members and has too much leeway. Under the present circumstances, whatever a ruling party decrees, the MPs will have to oblige. Parliament is a most malleable instrument. This is because it is by favour of a political party that an individual comes to Parliament and therefore that individual has to be obligated to the party.

The party demands and enforces conformity and is answered without even a demur. The wishes of the few, who have power, get carried every time. Thus it is that the leader of the ANCYL can say with certainty and full assurance, before a scheduled meeting, that president Mbeki will be recalled and, hey presto, the president is recalled. As simple as that!

Power corrupts and absolute power, as Lord Acton observed, corrupts absolutely. The humiliation of Nelson Mandela in 2002 by certain members of the ANC, as reported in the newspapers recently, indicates how thoroughly rotten the situation can become when morality gives way to ugly expediency.

Not even a man of the iconic stature of Mandela could speak to power inside his own party without being crushed. Professor Kader Asmal, in an interview with Mandy Rossouw of the Mail & Guardian on February 22 2008, emphasised the need for members of the party “to speak out”, but how can they under the present dispensation? No one, but no one, speaks out. Every MP in South Africa operates under the radar. This is utterly dangerous and every democrat in the country must work to alter the situation.

Any new party that emerges must exert itself to reform the electoral system. The direct election of mayors, premiers and the president will make them accountable to the people and not to a party. All public representatives should also be made more directly accountable to the electorate.

Poverty and unemployment are seriously impeded by corruption in the public and private sector. In Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index, South Africa slipped from 46th position to 51st. The national convention must express itself on this cancer that is destroying the social fabric.

Anyone implicated in corruption must be blacklisted and never allowed into public life, or employed in government service, or given government contract. The corrupt should be declared the permanent pariahs of society. When the new party forms, every member who wishes to hold office or stand as a representative should be thoroughly screened so that the corrupt can be kept at bay. Political morality has to be given serious commitment in deeds.

In order for people to believe in politicians, transparency of the highest order should prevail. While the legislation on the prevention of corruption is commendable, it is important to include provisions therein that will cover the funding of political parties.

The national convention should not shy away from requiring the new party to uphold transparency as the first principle of the organisation. It is so much better to play open cards with the electorate and lose a few votes than to conceal the truth from them and take their votes deceitfully. In this regard members should be free to speak to the media instead of having to leak sensitive information surreptitiously to the media. Debate and transparency are essential to growth.

The convention should also require the new party to give extensive encouragement to intellectual discourse and the continuous and systematic critique of policies, ideologies, leadership and organisation. Specific provisions should exist in the Constitution to make this possible and to create a senior position within the party for this purpose to be adequately discharged and reported on annually. This is where the new party can take a quantum leap and help South Africa to keep abreast of best international practices.

The formation of a new party should also make clear provision for the separation of party and state. State resources should never be employed for party purposes nor should state employees be suborned to serve narrow party interests. Party members who serve the state should uphold the Constitution and never compromise it on account of party affiliations. The national convention should take a strong stance on this so that the party keeps its credibility with the nation.

MF Cassim is a retired member of Parliament