ANC must guard against becoming plaything of EFF with land debate

ANEW and crucially important political question has arisen following the departure of former president Jacob Zuma and the emergence of the land question on centre stage: how does the ANC keep itself from becoming the plaything of the EFF?

In this particular battle, the truth is that the EFF holds all the trump cards; because it has no immediate prospect of actually having to put its policies into practice, it has the freedom to make any claim, however outrageous and outlandish, without the danger that it will have to keep its promises. It will never be tested in the fire of actual outcomes.

The larger problem is constitutional. The makers of the South African constitution wrote the rules guided largely by the political dynamics of the day. Of course, they included general notions of democratic best practice, such as one person, one vote, and so on.

But in several crucial respects, the Constitution was drawn up with the dynamics of that particular political moment in 1993 in mind.

This is why, for example, we have such an unwieldy system of provincial government.

One of the extraordinary facts about the listeriosis crisis is that, apparently, SA has been losing about 60 people every year for the past five years to this disease. The national government wasn’t aware of this because health is largely a provincial matter, and until recently, listeriosis deaths were not notifiable. In other words, regional health bodies were not required to notify the central authorities of listeriosis deaths.

The voting system that SA chose, was a proportional representation system, mainly because the small parties, of which there were many at the World Trade Centre talks, were totally opposed to a first-past-thepost system for the obvious reason that if it were implemented, they would disappear.

The high ethical principle that was agreed was that SA was a divided country and consequently the voting system should be designed to be as inclusive as possible. Great then. Not so good now.

From the ANC’s point of view, it didn’t make much difference because the party was bound to win, so at the time it made sense to compromise on this point. But now we are farther down the track . . . boy, is it going to make a difference.

The problem is that in a proportional representation system, the power often lies with the smaller parties that can make the difference between a party governing or not governing.

For the dominant party, it often makes sense to concede one or two issues to the smaller party in order to get overall power. The problem is that they are forever beholden to a party that has much less support than them.

I learnt this very graphically years ago on a trip to Germany. Long before environmental issues were as pertinent as they are today, if you went into a German hotel, there was typically a long instruction on the bathroom wall informing you that your towels would not be replaced with fresh towels unless you threw them in the bath.

The given reason was that Germany was trying to reduce the amount of detergent it was using, and the policy came from the fact that the German Greens party was part of the governing coalition.

The Greens were also responsible for Germany turning away from coal and nuclear power and becoming Europe’s most solar- and windpowered nation – at great cost, as it happens.

The general rule is that in proportional representation systems, at particular moments, small parties can have outsized influence. SA’s land debate falls into this mould.

The EFF intends rewarding the ANC with control of the Nelson Mandela Bay region because of the ANC’s shift in land policy. It’s a completely new dilemma for the ANC because they would obviously love to take back control of the municipal government named after the party’s most revered leader.

The problem is that by doing so, the ANC will effectively be endorsing the EFF’s racism. The EFF is not targeting either Tshwane or Johannesburg because both have black mayors, never mind that Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba is distinctly more right of centre than Athol Trollip. The DA will lose the council but it will make hay with the aftermath, claiming with justification that the EFF is the rider and the ANC merely the horse. You can see the posters now: “A vote for the ANC is a vote for the EFF”.

To avoid the trap, the ANC needs to understand with great insight who it represents.

If the party focuses on the end point and not its support base, which includes everyone from taxi drivers and small shop owners to industrial workers and farmers, it will do great harm to itself — and the country.