Category Archives: elections

Padkos: “They thought they had taken power. In reality they were taken by it.”

This week in South Africa, political parties compete for votes in nation-wide local government elections.

As we in South Africa experience another round of party politics, we offer, attached, some brief reflective comments from Padkos and also share, from a Latin American context, an interview with Alvaro Reyes.

The respondent, in the interview attached as your Padkos reading, is Alvaro Reyes, and he speaks from this contemporary Latin American context. In the short piece titled “They Thought They Had Taken Power. In Reality They Were Taken By It”, he adds some particularly useful insights to these questions and suggests that the kind of “disheartening

outcome[s]” alluded to above are also “due in no small part to an underestimation of the global political situation”. He also responds to the suggestion “that social change won’t be the outcome of government action, but of the mobilization and the fight of those ‘below and to the left’”. Reyes recalls that the concept of ‘below and to the left’ comes from the Zapatistas. He says: “I think that it is important to mention this because they coined this concept in order to point out that given the structural constraints placed on the contemporary state…, they have concluded that today, ‘above and to the left”’ can exist only as an oxymoron”.

Attachments


Interview with Alvaro Reyes

Reflective Comments

City Press: ANC’s pre-election olive branch to Abahlali

Paddy Harper, City Press

The ANC chairperson and mayoral candidate in eThekwini, Zandile Gumede, has offered an olive branch to Abahlali baseMjondolo, the movement representing shack dwellers, on the eve of the local government election.

It is a move that may shift its 17 000 members situated around Durban to vote for the governing party.

Her commitment to engagement with the movement, and her assurances that “demolitions are not the answer”, may give the ANC the upper hand in a number of wards located in formerly Indian areas around the city, where Abahlali has a strong presence – including the Kennedy Road and Cato Crest areas, as well as Siyanda, north of the city. Continue reading

GroundUp: Don’t vote for these messiahs

http://www.groundup.org.za/content/dont-vote-these-messiahs

We have the vote but the political parties do not represent the aspirations of the people, writes Ayanda Kota, founder of the Unemployed People’s Movement.

Elections should be the season of hope. Steve Biko declared that our fight was for an open society, a society where the colour of a person's skin will not be a point of reference or departure, a society in which each person has one vote.

We have the vote but the political parties do not represent the aspirations of the people. Millions of black people remain poor and oppressed. When we organise outside of the ANC we are violently repressed.

Continue reading

The Times: Most feel let down by their municipality

http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article950807.ece/Most-feel-let-down-by-their-municipality

Most feel let down by their municipality
Mar 5, 2011 11:42 PM | By BRENDAN BOYLE

More than half of all urban South African’s are dissatisfied with the service they get from their local municipalities, and the level of unhappiness is greatest among the very poor.

Results of a survey released to the Sunday Times suggest that the ANC may have its work cut out in traditionally loyal townships and informal settlements in the municipal elections to be held on May 18.

“Service delivery, or the lack of it, will be the key election issue,” said TNS Research Surveys pollster Neil Higgs.

“Protests can be expected almost anywhere, feelings are so strong. That this will spill over into violence in many instances should not be a surprise,” he said.

The South African Institute of Race Relations reported last month that four people were killed, 94 were injured and 750 were arrested in community protests linked to service delivery last year.

Municipal IQ, which monitors South Africa’s local governments, reported recently that 40% of the country’s 283 local governments had been affected by service delivery protests, mostly in Gauteng and the Western Cape, with 111 major incidents in the year.

The most recent eruption was in Wesselton, near Ermelo, where a protester was killed when police opened fire two weeks ago before arresting about 100 people. However, some reports said the violence had more to do with competition for electable positions in the forthcoming elections than with service delivery.

The TNS survey of 2000 adults in the seven major metropolitan areas shows that satisfaction grows with wealth. While no one in the lowest of the 10 income categories used to delineate the population admitted to being happy with municipal service delivery, almost half of those in the top two categories were satisfied.

Confirming that trend, fewer than half of those living in houses and flats said they were unhappy, but more than three-quarters of those living in shacks said they were.

“It is the poorest of the poor who are the most unhappy – a powder keg indeed,” said Higgs.

In Port Elizabeth, dissatisfaction soared from 42% in February last year to 60% in November last year, and from 40% to 48% in Bloemfontein. It dropped significantly in East London and on the East Rand.

The survey confirmed other polls that show Cape Town to have the best service record and the happiest population. There, dissatisfaction dropped from 42% to 39%, the best score in any area.

Cape Town and the Western Cape are controlled by the Democratic Alliance.

“These figures confirm that the DA enters the local government elections in a very positive environment,” said DA strategist Ryan Coetzee.

He said the trend towards greatest dissatisfaction among the poorest people was partly inevitable. “People are, to an extent, just commenting on the circumstances of their lives.”

But he said the DA’s own research showed that Cape Town’s reputation for better service delivery had spread across the country and among all population groups, though it was highest among whites.

“What’s clear is that if you do the basics of local government consistently and right, you win the support of the people.”

Municipal IQ said last month that the elections were unlikely to spark new protests, but violence could flare several months after the poll “when electioneering promises are perceived to have been” reneged upon.

* In responses to a separate question, a third of residents in the seven biggest cities said the ANC, SACP and Cosatu should split and fight the next election separately.

Blacks and whites gave similar answers on whether the alliance should split, but whites were more decided, with 45% saying they should not.

With a higher proportion of undecideds, 36% of blacks opposed a split.

Daily News: Doubts over ANC’s housing promises

http://www.dailynews.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5663661

Doubts over ANC’s housing promises

September 27, 2010 Edition 3

NONDUMISO MBUYAZI

THE shack-dwellers’ movement, Abahlali BaseMjondolo, says it fears that government officials may be promising homes for the homeless to get them to vote for the ANC in next year’s elections.

The movement’s spokeswoman, Nomhle Mkhetho, said yesterday that they had been promised that houses would be built in Reservoir Hills.

“We welcome this promise; however, we do fear that all these promises could just be to try and trick us into voting in the next election and (then) the bulldozers will come to destroy the settlement. We cannot relax until the promises that have been made to us are kept.”

Lennox Mabaso, spokesman for the KZN Department of Co-operative Governance, which is responsible for disaster management in the province, said shack dwellers needed to understand the challenges within the context of historical facts.

He said the shacks were a consequence of years of people’s housing needs being neglected by the apartheid-era government. “However, the government is doing all it can within the available resources to attend to the housing needs, including doing away with informal settlements and providing people with shelter. This will not be an overnight process but it will be a steady progress. The government has already (provided) over 4 million houses.”

nondumiso.mbuyazi@inl.co.za