Don’t count on polls to let in real change
WHEN elections come, and election campaigns start hotting up, some politicians will suspend thought in the hope that the rest of us will follow suit and vote for their political parties. Election time also causes politicians to be seized by the delusion that voters have short memories and will, therefore, vote for them because the promises of past elections have been deleted from their consciousness.
The reverse side of this delusion is the belief by opposition parties that the failures of the party in power constitute the only condition for the alternation of power between political parties.
Allied to this is the condition that tends to afflict those who, because of their station in life and society, believe change will be driven almost exclusively by their world view. This blinds them to the possibility that views that are dominant on Facebook, Twitter, and in the mainstream media are not always a reflection of popular sentiment. In other words, they fail to see that English is not an objective reality.
On the other hand, there are too many in the African National Congress (ANC) who seem to think the dominance of their party is not only a permanent feature of our politics, but is also a measure of how happy the majority of citizens is with the per- formance of the postapartheid government. What they ignore is the possibility that those who vote for them simply clamp their nostrils to shut out the stench of corruption and underperformance.
They also ignore the possibility that their supporters vote for them not as an expression of confidence in their party, but as an indication of insignificant levels of confidence in the ability of the Democratic Alliance (DA) to deliver a better life to those who are not white and those who are not on the wrong side of the inequality equation.
All of this notwithstanding, the main question for me is whether the spasms of pessimism that have become an important part of our politics will, on August 3, produce an election result that will defy my scepticism about opposition parties such as the DA. Will voters defy the contention that the main problem for the DA and the ANC is the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)?
Having listened to the promises of the DA and the ANC, and the EFF’s “commitments”, I wonder, not for the first time, whether elections and political parties can beget fundamental change in society.
Someone once said elections would have been declared illegal long ago if there were even the slightest of chances they would bring about meaningful change in society. But, as you know, cynicism is not one of my strengths. My view is that elections, on their own, are not going to deliver a society that is qualitatively better than the antithesis of apartheid colonialism.
In this regard, the 2016 local government elections are no exception.
The same applies to the idea of removing the current head of state. The convulsions our country is going through as a result of the spasms of pessimism that are caused by growing levels of antipathy towards the presidency of Jacob Zuma may cause members of the ANC to defend their personal interests to the detriment of Zuma’s selfinterest. Even if this comes to pass, it will, on its own, not improve the quality of our democratic experience. This applies generally to our reliance on politicians for our salvation.
What we need is a fundamental change in the content of our political culture. This must start with us acknowledging that important agreements about what constitutes a substantively democratic order are not yet in place. We remain divided over what constitutes a civilised society, as well as a just and equitable order. No election outcome, including the results of the August 3 poll, will change that on its own. This includes accepting that social media and news conferences, as sites of “revolutionary struggles”, will on their own, not deliver The Promised Land of election manifestos.
It is only a multiplicity of political instruments and actors that can take us there. In part, we must rely on understanding the difference between instruments of democracy and institutions of democracy.
Political parties can be, but are not always, instruments for the enhancement of democracy, especially in political systems that privilege the interests of party bosses over those of the citizen. This is more so when they become coalitions in support of the politics of personality.