The recent call by the Archbishop emeritus of the Anglican Church, Desmond Tutu, that if the current situation within the ruling party persists he won’t vote, might understandable but it is ill advised. An intelligent calculation would tell you boycotting the voting polls to register your dissatisfaction with the ANC will achieve very little except hand it victory still, albeit at a lower margin of voter turnout.
It is imperative that all of us who are eligible to vote do so, not only as a duty to our young democracy, but to categorically demonstrate that South African political life is not solely dependent on the ANC. Even when we decide to be sceptical about politics our basis should not be psychological but philosophical, i.e. based on our search for a better political concept. For those who fill let down by the ANC the search, even if its starts on the ideal, must come to reality and find out what approximate that ideal. Hence I’ve been doing a mental check, rather elimination to see about my alternatives. If I start from the basis that I’ll vote next year, the next question becomes for what.
The DA has its attraction to me, like liberal values (albiet not always practised to best ability) and principled organisational skills. But I’m wary of its history and past tendencies of grovelling politics coupled with distasteful opportunism. There are personal issues also. The DA for me is still too much of a white world (I say white world, not too white. I do not mind skin colour, just attitudes). My experience in studying in a liberal campus taught me that in a white world you are in the juggernaut path of subtle prejudice, perennial suspicion, soft exclusion and latent racism. I understand this might be unfair to the DA since I’ve never belonged to the party and so do not know its internal attitudes, but I can’t help my historical baggage, which I realise now I need to work on it too.
There’s been a lot of hype about the UDM (United Democratic Movement) in black areas lately. Everyone is talking about Injengele (General), referring to Bantu Holimisa’s past history as a General in the Transkian army where he staged a coup d’etat to get read of a corrupt regime. He became the beloved of denizens Transkie since then, but I’ve never been able to fully share the general love. Granted he conducted himself reasonably well as a ruler. I suppose we don’t have to judge him by that, but I find scarce material to judge his party policy and so forth. Also I’m not in a habit of following personality cults.
I think the Christian Democrats are fundamentalist howlers who are bent on capitalising on South African’s highly religious sentiment. As much as we need religion to base and develop our value system, with the fact that the virtue of religion is justice towards God and other people; it must keep out of active politics. I strongly support the separation of powers between State and Church, for the good of religion more than anything.
I think the Pan Africanist movements, like PAC (Pan Africanist Congress), have lost direction, or at least their élan by failing to keep up with social realities of the present age. To add insult to injury they are embroiled in serious internal turmoil that has just assailed the ANC. Fatalism is the best way I can define their wretched condition. It is not serviceable to our social needs. It is unfortunate that Black Consciousness has become so successful that it has become more of a cultural movement than a political entity. I find it offers me next to nothing in my search for a political concept. This leaves me with the ID (Independent Democrats).
I’ll probably vote for the new party being promoted by Lekota and Shilowa provided it avoids personality cults and its policies are not inchoate. The duo gives me hope of direction for what the politics of our country should be moving towards. They need to quickly find ideology. By ideology I don’t mean systematically distorting modes of communication, but functional suasive strategies directed towards achieving expressive effects of our lived experience and aspirations. Lekota has been able in the past, through the UDF (United Democratic Front) to service us with an idea that politics as a power process must be accountable to the polity. If he can sustain that and develop it into the realm of ideology, that is, the means by which power interests service social significance then they might have a winning ticket.
Naturally, Lekota, will garner a lot of support, especially from people like me who broke their political teeth on organizations of civil strife in the 80s, like UDF. The signs are there. Having spent most of the past decade in the wilderness, feeling a little jaded from the diet of honey and locust (Qhilika, ferment honey drink, sometimes having a bacchanal raving party while waiting for the country to come into its senses); we feel things have gone far enough. South Africa has now fully entered the arena of discursive struggle where it needs to dispel the power of common illusion, even illusions that express real needs. What the country needs is a consistent political party that must stand outside the lure of false consciousness in communicating a social reality that is recognizable to the polity without being cavalier. It needs leadership that takes seriously the message and practise of moral imperatives, social and economic justice.
South Africans are ripe for a party that shares their Weltanschauung (worldview), that’ll exhibit a certain style of perception which is not parochial or elitist. Who would promote a kind of symbolic self-expression without promoting certain group interest at the expense of the others, or readiness to sacrifice truth to less reputable goals of party interests. Lekota’s party seem to me to look more and more like what we’ve been looking for.
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