Why Corbyn got the African and youth vote
Britain’s Labour leader represents ‘a new kind of politics’ of the left that holds electoral appeal
Among the most enthusiastic supporters of the United Kingdom’s Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in the lead-up to last week’s British elections was a group called “Africans for Jeremy Corbyn for Prime Minister”.
Apart from their novelty value — Africans living in Britain number about one million, barely capable of constituting a swing vote — what was fascinating about them and others like Africans for Momentum (the grassroots Labour movement) was their reasons for backing Corbyn.
They cited his longtime support for African dissidents and his protests against apartheid. Facebook posts reminded supporters that, whereas Tory leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and a young David Cameron either called Nelson Mandela a terrorist or went on junkets to apartheid South Africa, Corbyn was “being roughed up and arrested for blockading the South African embassy in London”.
But even more than solidarity, these African groups cited Corbyn’s policy proposals: free education, public healthcare, taxing the rich and corporations, investing in public infrastructure such as the rail service, and solving the affordable housing crisis. They said these “issues that affect African people” had been abandoned by most political parties.
In the clearest articulation of this position, Ugandan economist Yash Tandon wrote: “Corbyn has introduced a new political vocabulary … which the people can now — finally — see. We must all vote for Corbyn.”
Tandon cited policy areas in which Africans held common cause with Corbyn: opposition to nuclear weapons (the African Union declared the continent a nuclear-free zone), renegotiating trade terms with the European Union and international financial institutions, questioning the role of Nato as a peacekeeping force (especially its role in Libya) and creating “a new kind of politics” with which “you do not bully your opponent [or] respond to personal attacks, and use the internet and social media to hold bottom-up policy consultations”.
In contrast to the excitement around Corbyn, politics on the continent is largely stale, dominated by national liberation movements or legacy political parties that rig elections, use violent tactics to silence critics and organise politics with patronage and influence trading. Some, like the ANC, take voters for granted by assuming past achievements make them immune to losing office.
Like the Conservatives in Britain or the Republicans in the United States, established political parties reckon they have a lock on who will make the effort to go out and vote. The common sense was that young people, although active on social media and in political campaigning, don’t bother to turn up on election day.
Yet Corbyn defied the expectations by directly appealing to young people’s social and economic experiences. These new voters “came of age during the financial crisis”, wrote the Guardian post-election. It said that, in Corbyn’s manifesto, “young people saw tuition fees, investment in social care, housing, education — a vision for society that they can believe in and they could benefit from”.
Some estimates suggest youth turnout in the British election was 72%, with most leaning towards Labour. Contrast this with Hillary Clinton’s failed United States presidential bid, when 49% of young people voted.
One recent African election in which the votes of young people played a decisive role was Senegal in 2012. Y’en a Marre, a youth social movement, helped to get Macky Sall elected president. Post-election Sall, however, proved to be a very conventional politician and Y’en a Marre is growing impatient with him.
In Burkina Faso, youth activists helped to force the longtime president to flee the country in 2014. In South Africa in 2015 and 2016, university students agitated for free higher education. Neither of these youth mobilisations had significant electoral effects, perhaps because there is no organised political force offering voters a clear political alternative.
Corbyn’s draw, as US writer Bhaskar Sunkara wrote in Jacobin magazine, was that he stood up for socialist ideas beyond simplistic populism, despite ridicule from media and political-economic elites.
Perhaps the lesson for Africans from Corbyn’s showing last week is that it’s possible to organise for left programmes in elections — something that a movement comprising #FeesMustFall, the Economic Freedom Fighters, trade unions that broke away from labour federation Cosatu, the planned Workers’ Party and Reclaim the City should explore.