Sophisticated politics (for a time)

WHEN ruling parties are defending their electoral position, they generally do their utmost to look their best in the eyes of the electorate.

So when our own ruling party dishes out instructions to its MPs to make sure that the legislative agenda makes the party look good (or at least not bad), this may reflect, simply, the normalisation of our politics. Not that the African National Congress (ANC) has any reason to fear losing its majority. But a confidential ANC document, which was leaked to the Sunday Times, instructing MPs on which bills to ignore and which to rush through between now and next year’s election, comes in an environment that has become a lot more contested and in which the ANC may not be able to rely on holding on to 60% or more of the vote.

In previous elections, we saw no such attempts by the ANC to marshal its parliamentary troops in this way. So what is important about the document, as Business Day’s columnist Steven Friedman has argued, is that it reflects the fact that the party is worried for the first time about how it might do in next year’s election.

So it has ordered MPs to put at the bottom of their list of priorities the six private member’s bills before parliamentary committees. And it has earmarked seven draft laws as “necessary for election”. These include legislation meant to fasttrack infrastructure development, and so the job creation which goes with it, as well as four bills related to land ownership. These seem to be obvious candidates in the effort to deliver to the unemployed and the landless.

Interestingly, though, corruption among public servants is also a big focus, with ANC MPs asked to prioritise the Public Service and Administration Amendment Bill, which will prevent public servants from doing business with the government. That is not uncontroversial, and it will not necessarily win the party too many friends among public servants and their friends. But it would provide an important signal to the electorate that the ANC is serious about combating corruption in its own ranks.

Also on the priority list is potentially controversial legislation to ensure that women get half of all senior management posts — again, a clear attempt to buy the loyalty of a big part of the electorate.

Broadly, the mandate to ANC MPs is to give priority to legislation that significantly bears on the lives of the working class and poor — and, at the same time, to defer legislation that could be used against the ANC.

And what is important about this is not just that the ANC is worried about its own position but that it actually shows signs of caring what voters think — and instead of seeking votes by badmouthing the opposition, is putting some effort into trying to please people who want it, for example, to fight corruption, or deliver infrastructure and jobs. As Prof Friedman says, this is an important advance for democracy.

The approach will not necessarily be comfortable for business, given that it is likely to involve some populist measures, such as the proposed credit amnesty. In a sense, though, to the extent that this kind of contested environment is more sophisticated politically, business should be thinking about how to operate politically and lobby in a way that is more likely to gain it influence where it matters.

One risk is that going into the election, and for some months after, we will have a kind of paralysis in which very few decisions are made, especially if they are of the sort that require the ruling party to talk tough to important constituencies.

But this is hardly new and is more about politicians being preoccupied with elections than it is about electoral strategy. And a few months, sadly, is not going to make a difference either way to whether we are able to tackle the issues that really matter.