Category Archives: elections

Freedom not Yet

Click here to read this article in French.

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/64054

Freedom not Yet

Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of a party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all.
– Rosa Luxemburg, Berlin, 1920

As Freedom Day roles around each year it has become something of a cliché for pundits and politicians to observe that while we have political freedom the majority of our people have yet to attain economic freedom. This platitude masks an extraordinarily anaemic view of political freedom.

The assumption that political freedom begins and ends with the right to vote runs a real risk of overlooking escalating grassroots repression, the general conflation of the party and the state and the damage that is done to society by the wholly incorrect assumption that the economic realm is separate from the political realm and governed only by technical considerations.

Of course it is true that millions of people continue to have to make their lives in the most appalling material circumstances. And it is also true that, by some accounts, we are now the most unequal country in the world. It is outrageous that so many children are being put to bed on empty stomachs in leaking shacks at constant risk of fire and violent eviction. The excesses of private and state power compound that outrage. Gated communities for the rich continue to take the best land while the political elites find it impossible to provide toilets to the poor but can easily mobilise the political will to throw up new stadiums.

But the so obviously bitter realities of economic oppression should not blind us to the fact that political freedom was never completely realised in post-apartheid South Africa. The genuine flowering of political freedom enjoyed by the middle classes and elites after apartheid was never fully extended to the poor. Everyone has been free to vote but there are many communities across the country where there has never been freedom to organise independently of the ANC. There are communities where open opposition to the ANC puts one at the risk of expulsion from the community and there are communities were taking a position against the ANC puts one at real risk of violence.

This kind of aggressive political intolerance tends to be organised at the local level and in defence of local political interests. It is for this reason that local government elections are a far more dangerous time for grassroots critics of the ANC than national elections. The situation appears to be particularly bad in Durban and the 2006 local government elections were certainly not free and fair in that city.

There were two grassroots challenges to the ANC. In E-Section of Umlazi, a group of people with solid links to MK, the SACP and civic and trade union struggles decided to run an independent candidate against the incumbent ANC councillor. In the Northern suburbs on the other side of the city, the shack dweller’s movement Abahlali baseMjondolo decided to stage a boycott under the banner of “No Land! No House! No Vote!”

The local ANC described the people behind the independent candidature in Umlazi as “reactionaries hell bent on destabilising the ANC.” Over a period of three months, four people involved in the campaign for the independent candidate were assassinated and another was seriously wounded in an attempted assassination.

The Abahlali baseMjondolo election boycott resulted in the movement being declared a “third force hell bent on destabilising the country.” Their marches were unlawfully banned, an attempt to march in defiance of an unlawful ban was met with severe police violence resulting in serious injuries and the police were even used to physically prevent the movement from taking up an invitation to debate the eThekwini Mayor live on television.

For the last five years Abahlali baseMjondolo have organised an annual ‘UnFreedom Day’ on 27 April to mourn their lack of political freedom. But the situation in Durban has worsened since 2006. In March this year, Cope supporters were burnt out of the kwaShembe settlement in Claremont and in September last year Abahlali baseMjondolo was evicted from the Kennedy Road settlement in Clare Estate by an armed mob openly backed by the police and the ANC. The ANC has simply ignored calls for an independent and credible inquiry into the ongoing violence in the Kennedy Road settlement. The middle classes can look forward to free and fair local government elections next year but there are no grounds to assume that the same can be said for the poor.

The second problem with the cliché about economic freedom needing to catch up with political freedom is that political freedom is being steadily constrained across society as the ANC lumbers, step by step, towards an increasingly authoritarian conflation of the party and the state. The steady chipping away at the rule of law, the entrenchment of corruption as a key mechanism for patronage within the party, secretive party funding and the party’s brazen abuse of its position to advance its own business interests all add up to a steady diminishment of political freedom in general. Liberal democracy operates on the assumption that parties represent competing constituencies within the electorate, but the fact of the matter is that the ANC has become an organisation with its own interests.

And, of course, freedom is not only about the right to organise nor is it only at risk from political elites. The general turn towards social conservatism with its sexism, homophobia, ethnic chauvinism and xenophobia are a serious assault on hard won principles that affirm, at least in principle, the equality and sanctity of every person.

But the limits to political freedom are not merely the set of our failures to live up to the commitment to constitutional democracy. All of the constitutional protections for political freedom need to be defended but they are not, on their own, enough. Liberal democracies are unquestionably preferable to authoritarian states but they have a structural bias towards to the rich and the powerful. Party funding mechanisms, the ways in which elite interests are able to lobby policy makers, the substitution of professionalized civil society for popular organisation and the fact that the legal system is so profoundly commodified, are just some examples of the many ways in which liberal democracies have an entrenched bias towards the rich.

The only way to reduce this structural bias is via sustained popular organisation that can enable ordinary people to begin to subordinate the political class to the popular will. This kind of popular organisation may or may not take the form of contesting elections, but it certainly has to resist any attempt to limit it to electing representatives under top down party discipline. On the contrary, if popular organisation is to have any chance of creating a structural shift in power relations, it has to be an ongoing practice of freedom rooted in ordinary people’s ordinary lives. Once this has been achieved, even to some degree, it starts to become possible to drag the economic realm back into the social realm with the result that political freedom can begin to produce real economic freedom.

In recent years there have been important but highly contested experiments in popular democratic practices in places like Haiti and Bolivia. It is one of the great tragedies of our country that the ANC has chosen to respond to similar experiments on a much smaller scale in our society with repression rather than encouragement. Any political party or organisation that does not encourage oppressed people to organise themselves for themselves is an enemy of freedom

Sowetan: Anti-eviction group boycotts elections

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http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=985827

Anti-eviction group boycotts elections
23 April 2009
Anna Majavu

The elections went off without a hitch in Gugulethu and only time will tell if the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign’s boycott of the polls had made any impact on the political scene.

About 50 members of the group held an impromptu protest outside Gugulethu police station yesterday as part of an elections boycott also supported by Durban’s Abahlali base Mjondolo and Johannesburg’s Anti-Privatisation Forum.

In a statement released yesterday, the Anti-Eviction Campaign said real issues, like the lack of housing, had been swept under the carpet by politicians.

Parties spent too much time focusing on the personal lives of other party leaders and on promising “vague slogans” such as “hope” and “change”.

A protester, Margaret Sxubane, 42, said she was “very hungry”.

“I didn’t eat all day and I rarely have food in my backyard shack.

“I voted three times before but why should I vote now?”

Sxubane said if someone from the ANC came to give her a key to one of the empty houses in nearby Nyanga, she would vote immediately.

Violet Skosana, 70, said she had been living in a backyard shack for 30 years.

“How can I vote when I was born in Cape Town, have been on the waiting list for a house for 15 years and yet I still live in a backyard?” she asked.

David Boqwana, 57, said he was boycotting the elections because “we get fokol from voting.”

Meanwhile, a long queue at the Gugulethu Sports Complex voting station in the morning had cleared by lunch time.

There was no hint of animosity between Cope and ANC party agents outside the polling station, who set up tables close to each other.

ANC party agents said “there is no problem between us because we have known each other for a long time”.

Cope party agent Nozipho Moloto said “people are coping, not zooming, and we don’t have showers”.

“The youth especially have been coping today. They don’t want to hear about the arms deal anymore,” she said.

The recent defection of Dan Landingwe, brother of ANC Gugulethu ward councillor Belinda Landingwe, to Cope, could be seen as a sign that Gugulethu may not be the ANC stronghold it once was.

Although both sides claimed most people had voted for them, the voters were not willing to reveal which parties they had voted for.

Nombulelo Jaxa said she found voting “nice and wonderful”, adding, “I’m happy everything went well today”.

And Nokuzola Mpalala, said: “I’m very happy I voted because I want a brighter future for my children”.

She said she now understood why the Anti-Eviction Campaign had boycotted the election. “Government must speed up service delivery. We are not voting for fun. I’m afraid if things like building houses don’t happen, government will have to be careful.”

Thembile Twalo said though he supported the ANC, he would not vote for it.

“I’m not voting for anyone today. I voted in 2004 but none of the things Thabo Mbeki promised came true. Now I’m waiting for the 2014 election. Maybe if 2010 goes well, this will motivate me,” Twalo said.

He said he had come to the polling station just to see what was happening.

Sowetan: Record turnout expected at polls

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http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=985301

Record turnout expected at polls
22 April 2009
Anna Majavu

Results will show which party was successful in selling its message

Millions of people are holding their breath over what will happen after they have cast their votes today.

Twenty-three million voters go to almost 20000 polling stations to choose between the 40 parties contesting what analysts have described as the most competitive election in South Africa so far.

All, except business leaders, who hope for more of the same, are expecting a radical shake-up of the political scene in the months to come.

The political scene has been nothing less than crazy over the past six months – politicians from across the spectrum went all out to reinvent themselves, while others, such as Peter Marais, “rose from the dead” to join Cope only to quit almost as quickly as he had joined.

The split in the ruling party and the emergence of Cope, whose name rhymes nicely with hope, is said to be the reason why more than three million people rushed to register as voters. But does everyone in South Africa find these elections the most interesting since 1994?

The public has had brief glimpses into the lives of the majority – the poor –- courtesy of highly publicised “door-to- door” electioneering by political leaders who rarely set foot in the country’s ghettoes and informal settlements after they ascend to Parliament and cabinet.

When the electioneering began about three months ago, it was common cause to catch sight of cabinet ministers on foot in the townships dressed up as if they were going on safari, complete with hiking boots, walking stick, khaki pants and hiking jackets.

They soon dropped this get-up in the race to hold rallies blaming each other for the lack of service delivery. The ANC, which disconnects water in Gauteng, held rallies against water cut-offs in DA-ruled Cape Town, while the DA, which disconnects water in Cape Town, bemoaned the lack of water in other provinces.

Former ANC long-timers such as Mosiuoa Lekota could be found stepping over sewer-clogged drains in Du Noon informal settlement, urging people, without a trace of irony, not to vote ANC because it had failed to deliver.

Several social movements have decided to boycott the vote altogether. These include the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement in Durban – which claims about 40000 members in the informal settlements – several organised farmworker groups in the Western Cape and Johannesburg’s popular Anti-Privatisation Forum, which won a court case against pre-paid water metres in Soweto in the high court.

The APF released a statement on Monday saying “none of the political parties contesting these elections are worth voting for”.

The ANC has a history of making false promises over the past 15 years and doesn’t have the political will to implement its latest manifesto, says the APF.

But despite this, there is likely to be the largest turnout of voters in South Africa’s history today. In fact, the IEC is expecting that 80 percent of the estimated 23 million registered voters will vote today.

But not everyone who wants to vote will be able to. For example, residents of Igoli informal settlement might end up not voting because they do no have transport to the nearest polling station, which is in Grassy Park, outside Cape Town.

In the past, political parties have ferried residents. However, this year only the PAC has made the promise. Given the party’s dire financial situation, it apparently can only provide one rickety van.

We will soon know if voters were won over by Patricia de Lille’s plan to turn South Africa into the world leader in renewable energy, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, or if they preferred to believe Jacob Zuma’s promises that the ruling party would be more pro-them .

The acrimony between the DA, Cope and ID will be a thing of the past next week as the parties scramble to form a coalition government in the Western Cape, stopping briefly only to fight over whether Allan Boesak, Helen Zille or De Lille gets to be premier.

Scepticism aside, the ray of hope this election has offered is what the Catholic, Anglican and Methodist churches described this week as the “significant easing of tensions in KwaZulu-Natal”.

Last weekend, IFP and ANC members in rural KwaZulu-Natal, returning from different rallies on different buses, started hugging one another at a petrol station. This was unheard of in 1994.

M&G: Mzansi Voters: Mnikelo Ndabankulu

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http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-04-16-mzansi-voters-mnikelo-ndabankulu

Mzansi Voters: Mnikelo Ndabankulu
NIREN TOLSI | DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA – Apr 16 2009 14:42

The one thing shack dwellers like Mnikelo Ndabankulu are guaranteed of after every election, is more building material for their mjondolos.

Once the ballots have been cast, election posters make their way into informal settlements like Foreman Road, a sprawl of rusted metal, wood and cardboard shacks arranged on a precipitous slope overlooking the middle-class suburb of Clare Estate in Durban.

Ndabankulu has been living here in a one room shack since 2001. The youngest of six children, he dropped out of school after Grade 11 and moved to Durban from Flagstaff in the Eastern Cape because “there were more jobs and better incentives in the city”.

Yet aside from helping out in his brother’s spaza shop in Foreman Road, he has not worked much in the past eight years. His involvement with Abahlali baseMjondolo — the shack dwellers’ movement that started in Durban in 2005 and spread through KZN and the Western and Eastern Cape — has kept him busy. “I’m single and I don’t have children,” he says, “so it’s been easier for me to get by with just helping out at the shop.”

Born on June 16, the 25-year-old can trace his lineage through the mounted warriors who defied the implementation of the Bantu Authority system during the 1959 Pondoland Uprising. Rebellion is in Mnikelo Ndabankulu’s blood.

I was born into the ANC and I have voted for the party in every election except for the last one when Abahlali decided on the ‘No Land. No House. No Vote.’ campaign. When we formed Abahlali many of us were doing so as unsatisfied members of the ANC… it was about fighting for the practicalities of the theory in the Freedom Charter and the Constitution.

I am not sure which party I will vote for in this election. The DA or Cope knows that it will have to prioritise development in poor black areas – to build houses for shack dwellers — if they want to market their party among the poor and stay in power.

The ANC as an opposition party will definitely worry those parties, now in opposition, to deliver. The ANC will have to, at some point, learn to move away from the “when Jesus comes home” mentality and realize that if they get people’s votes they need to remain in contact with them.

I like the kind of leadership that will not compromise on its principles and its promises… The ANC has lobbied support for elections and when we remind them of the promises they made, when we quote them, they get angry with us.

What happened to the Cornubia development? [which would have included 15 000 low cost houses] [eThekwini mayor Obed] Mlaba made a promise before the last election. Then nothing. He mentioned it again before this election, why? Is it just an empty promise? Or, if they are sincere, why has building not started? And where has the money gone, if it has not been built?

When we say we want houses, we are not saying we want houses in general. We need government to talk to us about how removals may affect our access to our jobs and transport and about the possibility of uplifting informal settlements that already exist.

People in the mjondolos are expecting more from Zuma because he is a Zulu. I don’t see why that should make a difference. Zuma is a Zulu, but he tells people what they want to hear. You are never sure of what he actually believes in. He is like an unwabu [a colour shifting snake] who tells the workers what they want to hear, the investors what they want to hear and the Shembes what they want to hear.

I find the dishonesty in politics frustrating.

SACSIS: Elections – A Dangerous Time for Poor People’s Movements in South Africa

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http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/245.1

Elections – A Dangerous Time for Poor People’s Movements in South Africa

Date posted: 12 March 2009

History groans with the suffering caused by authoritarian individuals and regimes that were elected to power. For this reason the only useful measure of the commitment of any political project to democracy is to see how it responds to challenges to its own position and ideas.

Although certain state institutions, including universities, have become highly authoritarian, middle class South Africa generally enjoys the right to dissent that is the centre of the democratic ideal. One can write what one likes or stand and campaign for the party of one’s choice without fear of an ominous late night knock on the door.

But the poor and poor people’s movements and organisations in particular, face a very different reality.

In many communities oppositional politics is not tolerated at all and communities are run as ‘vote banks’. It is not unusual for this intolerance to be backed up with armed force on the part of local party leaders or for them to receive the active support of the police. The chronic nature of political authoritarianism at the base of our society invariably becomes acute around elections.

Consider, for instance, what happened in Durban during the 2006 local government elections.

The local ANC described the people behind the independent candidature in Umlazi as “reactionaries hell bent on destabilising the ANC”. Over a period of three months, four people involved in the campaign for the independent candidate were assassinated and another was seriously wounded in an attempted assassination.

In each case, the friends and families of the victims believed that the gunmen were working for the incumbent councillor. Furthermore, peaceful protesters were subject to arrest and gratuitous assault at the hands of the police who also shot dead Monica Ngcobo, a young women passing a protest on her way to work. A few minutes later the brother of the independent candidate was shot multiple times by the police in his home.

On the day Monica Ngcobo was shot, police spokesperson Bala Naidoo said that she had been shot in the stomach with a rubber bullet because she was throwing stones. The autopsy later found that she was shot in the back with live ammunition.

The Abahlali baseMjondolo election boycott resulted in the movement being declared a “third force hell bent on destabalizing the country”. Their marches were unlawfully banned, an attempt to march in defiance of an unlawful ban was met with severe police violence resulting in serious injuries and the police were even used to physically prevent the movement from taking up an invitation to debate the eThekwini Mayor live on television.

We’re now just over a month from the April elections and poor people’s movements, especially those advocating an election boycott, are under attack again.

On the 8th of February the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) reported that the SAPS burst into one of their meetings in Gugulethu – attacked, tear gassed and robbed their members and arrested two of their leaders. According to the AEC, the police were ordered to attack their meeting by ANC officials including the local councillor.

Three weeks later, eight members of the Landless People’s Movement were arrested on the patently spurious charge of ‘public violence’ in Protea South, Soweto, while walking home after presenting a petition to their ward councillor. They claimed that the councillor ordered the arrests.

The fact that these sorts of things happen in a country that claims to be a democracy is outrageous. But the fact that it is not widely seen as outrageous in the higher levels of society is equal cause for serious alarm.

Thabo Mbeki liked to speak of a second economy inhabited by the poor. No doubt he liked this idea because it was usually accompanied by the proposal to create ‘ladders’ by which poor people could step up into the first economy via their own entrepreneurship. This kind of fantasy has been roundly criticised with good reason. It is a way of avoiding any confrontation with the burdens of our history that has created poverty for some and wealth for others. It assumes that the faults with our society are not systemic but are rather with the individuals who have failed to succeed in the system.

But perhaps it would be useful to rework Mbeki’s phrase and to speak of a second democracy for the poor. This would enable us to confront the reality that in our society many people are routinely prevented from exercising the right to dissent with threats of violence and with actual violence – often at the hands of the state.

Although there are important exceptions it is generally true that in South Africa neither civil society nor party politics have shown much concern with the widespread intolerance to independent political activity by poor people’s organisations. Many implicitly accept the assumption that the poor are second-class citizens.

But those who are not moved by the idea that everyone’s rights and lives carry the same weight, should ponder the fact that when elites are able to get away with oppressing the vulnerable they inevitably turn their sights on other less vulnerable people. If councillors are able to set the police or even assassins on their poor or working class political opponents it is just a matter of time before the middle class will, again, have to wonder if dissent will be met with an ominous late night knock on the door.