Don’t delay the elections — vote first, talk later

If it was up to Pali Lehohla, the respected academic who made a name for himself as statistician-general from 2000 to 2017, we would not be going to the polls this year.

Certainly not in the first half of 2024.

Instead, Lehohla recently argued in an interview with Durban-based Daily Maverick journalist Chris Makhaye, the country should be preparing for another round of what he terms Codesa-like discussions on its future.

His concern, it would seem, is that the muchanticipated 2024 elections will be no solution to the socioeconomic and political crises in which South Africa finds itself.

They may even worsen the situation, he said, as politicians would use the outcome — widely expected to deliver a hung National Assembly — to negotiate deals for themselves that have nothing to do with taking the country forward.

We have seen that happening in Johannesburg and other municipalities where the absence of clear winners has forced parties to enter into coalition talks to form governments. In some of those negotiations, private and individual interests were pursued to the detriment of governance. Such a scenario could be devastating at national level.

Referencing Zhang Weiwei, a Chinese international relations expert and a critic of liberal democracy, Lehohla warned that forging ahead with voting would result in the “elect and regret” phenomenon, where the electorate is disappointed by the leadership produced and has to wait another five years to go through the same emotions again.

So instead of abiding by the terms of the constitution and heading for the polls at the end of the current administration’s five-year term, South Africa should be planning a conference similar to the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa).

“Perhaps it is time we consider a similar intervention. We have to consider whether it would not be worthwhile to hold wide-ranging talks involving all stakeholders, including communities, civic groups, politicians, business and religious organisations to determine the future of the country we all love. The leaders of the ’90s did this and it produced the South Africa and the constitution under which we live today,” Lehohla said.

Hence the polls should be postponed to allow for “frank conversations” and an opportunity “to reset the horse so that it will be able to carry on its back the double load brought about and precipitated by accelerated failure in the latter half of our [30-year] democracy”.

While it is true that the upcoming elections on their own are no panacea for most of South Africa’s problems, Lehohla is mistaken in thinking their postponement would produce lasting solutions to many of them.

Instead, pushing the elections back may deepen the crises.

South Africa is clearly at the crossroads, with no single party enjoying the confidence of an overwhelming majority to take us in one direction or another.

And there are sharp, and even irreconcilable, differences over the direction and approach the country should take to return to the path it began charting in 1994.

These, unfortunately, cannot be resolved by way of a polite conversation around the negotiating table at a forum where all pretend to wield the same kind of power and influence.

Even in the Codesa process it was accepted that some of the key questions would be resolved only by a democratically elected constitutional assembly.

And so while Codesa may have paved the way towards the constitutional dispensation we live under today, it was the democratically elected body that delivered the final constitution in 1996.

Lehohla may very well be on the money about a need for dialogue, but his approach is akin to putting the cart before the horse and then expecting it to gallop to the summit of the Maluti mountains.

As things stand, much of government is in a state of semi-paralysis in anticipation of a coalition arrangement many opinion polls and predictions suggest will be the end result of elections. The sooner they take place, therefore, the better for the country and its ability to move forward.

Only after the elections, hopefully with a stable government in place, can the country begin the allencompassing conversation Lehohla is calling for on its future.