E-toll uproar shows what is wanting in our democracy

Democracy is in surprisingly good shape in SA given how little the folk who shape the national debate know about it or value it.

A sign of how little a quarter century of democracy is understood or prized came last week when the Gauteng ANC marched to demand that e-tolls go. This prompted huge jollity in the media, regular and social, about the governing party “marching on itself”, a reaction that showed we have a working democracy, but not the democratic values in the mainstream that are meant to go with it.

First, it ignored the fact that, in SA’s constitution, national and provincial government have different responsibilities: e-tolls are a national government decision. A provincial governing party that marches to influence its national equivalent is not “marching on itself”. It is protesting against a decision that is not within its power. Marching to make its point may be more democratic than lobbying because it takes the issue out of the back rooms and into the open.

Second, in democracies there is a difference between party and state. Parties, including governing parties, represent some people, the state should serve everyone. A governing party does not always get its own way in the state and is as entitled as any other party to demonstrate peacefully when it does not.

It is common to complain that the ANC confuses party and state — witness the reaction when the public broadcaster allowed President Cyril Ramaphosa to announce decisions of the ANC rather than the government. When the governing party acknowledges that it is not the state, this is a win for democracy, not a reason for ridicule.

Third, we were told that the ANC’s march was wrong because its only aim was to persuade Gauteng voters to vote for it: parties are often scolded for doing or saying things only because they want people to vote for them. But this is how democracy works: parties are supposed to make themselves attractive to voters by doing and saying what voters want. If they do, democracy is working as it should.

So, in at least three ways the reaction dismissed signs that democracy is working as evidence that it is failing.

What the response did not say was also a problem. Not a single comment questioned whether most voters want etolls. All assumed that the voice of the people wanted them gone.

But there is no evidence that most people reject e-tolls and good reason to believe the contrary. It is trendy for those who claim to care about the poor to oppose e-tolls, but they are imposed only on vehicle owners, not the poor who travel by bus or minibus taxi. All the alternatives proposed by campaigners would force people who do not use Gauteng freeways to pay for building and maintaining them.

So it is easy to see why the middle class and well-off do not like e-tolls, which is a reason the ANC lost the province’s middle-class vote in 2016, but hard to see why the poor or motorists in other provinces would oppose them. The march expressed not the “voice of the people” but the concerns of vehicle owners. This is not the only time the middle class has passed off its concerns as those of everyone. It does this routinely: since the poor have no voice, it gets away with it.

Reaction to the march tells us much about democratic values almost 25 years into democracy. Signs of democratic health are ridiculed. Passing off the concerns of the better off as those of everyone is not.