Anti-Zuma campaign is not automatically democratic
Is SA’s democracy under greater threat from those who doubt it, or those who defend it? The campaign for the removal of President Jacob Zuma is, on the surface, about as democratic as you can imagine: in democracies, presidents are accountable to the people, and this one has much for which he should be forced to account.
But the way in which the campaign is pursued may hurt, not help, democracy.
A core feature of the campaign is uniform thinking that would make North Koreans feel at home. Not only are strategies accepted without debate, views on democratic politics that would puzzle democrats elsewhere are adopted without question. It is not antidemocratic for a political party to remove a committee chair the leadership don’t like — it may be foolish if the chair is popular and the move costs the parties votes, but that is a question of strategy, not principle. The same is true of parties that discipline their members because they don’t like their views. Anyone who does not like the decision is free to join or vote for another party; here and elsewhere.
And it is an indication of how skewed the groupthink is that far more time is spent denouncing the removal of a committee chair than the murder of ANC officials in KwaZulu-Natal who were campaigning against the Zuma faction.
Another is the assumption that the test of whether an action is democratic and justified is whether it removes Zuma. Besides enthusiasm for secret votes, a key example is the attempt to turn courts into shock troops for the campaign rather than interpreters of the Constitution. Attempts are constantly made to use the courts to fight political battles, and Constitutional Court judgments are treated like Holy Writ. The courts have never said whether Zuma should be president and they have never endorsed secret ballots, which does not stop campaigners from declaring that this is exactly what they did.
Third, the campaign imposes a conformity that would make Stalinist commissars blush. Saying the same thing over and again is sold as “speaking truth to power” and those who point out that we may pay a price for tearing up principle to remove a president whose tenure may have only four months to go are dismissed as Zuma loyalists in the pay of the Guptas.
Why does this threaten democracy? Because we will need the principles that are being torn up if we are to build a strong democracy. It is difficult to defend democratic institutions if we don’t know how they work. Or to support the independence of the courts if we think they are there purely to fight political battles. Or to support tolerance when it has been so little in evidence these past weeks. Democracy also needs a vigorous and diverse debate, not large numbers of people saying the same things because they know this will win them adoring cheers.
It will be argued that the cause is just and, as soon as its goals are achieved, we can begin building democratic principle again. It is hard to think of a fight more just than that against apartheid, but we continue to pay a price for the fact that some who fought the system assumed that only those who did this in a particular group were legitimate. Now, as then, the use of antidemocratic tactics and attitudes in a democratic cause will come back to bite our democracy.
Unless the campaign against Zuma becomes more diverse, tolerant and aware of how democracy is meant to work, the scars it leaves could damage democratic prospects for decades.