Mosiuoa Lekota’s moves over the past week have been very interesting to follow, but his future remains very much a murky mist. While it would be fantastic for our longer-term democratic foundation, there are two key issues that dampen my optimism about Lekota’s new party.
The first is that this is a party very much formed out of anger. While many people are championing Lekota’s cause publicly, South African elections are not won in October, and there is a long way to go before Lekota can claim a true electoral following. Initially there will be much interest, but Lekota and his leadership will need to prove that they can present policies that reflect the needs and wants of his new voting constituency. There is not much time for him to present his case and he will have to work incredibly hard with his leadership to form this policy platform.
The second carries a more ominous short-term warning. What many people don’t extrapolate in their hope for Lekota’s party being a true opposition is that, if successful, it will remove a largely moderating force from within the ANC’s leadership in the labour-business battle for the party’s soul. If this split is as pronounced as the media is purporting it to be, then many of those on the right of the ANC, including many of the pro-business NEC members, will make moves across. While one would imagine that you will still have Ramaphosa and Sexwale in that upper echelon, the loss of many of these pro-business leaders may well leave a vacuum within the NEC that can very easily be exploited by the left.
It will take much longer for Lekota to build his constituency within the wider electorate than it will for him to gain disgruntled or pro-Mbeki leaders from the ANC. In this interim period, while much of the electorate will remain faithful to the ANC while it assesses Lekota’s party, we may see a gap exploited by the left. While Lekota’s party may well take away the two thirds majority for the ANC, the ruling party will remain in power in April and policy shifts may occur.
As I’ve said, any moves to reduce the single-party dominance of our democracy and to negate the current hubris of the party is a great thing for our democracy. It just seems to me that some people are getting ahead of themselves about the prospects. Time will tell, but anger alone doesn’t win elections. Just ask Thabo Mbeki …
Anger won elections for Zuma, so you are wrong. Lekota has stated the reason why they are splitting anger was not one of them, this is media creation trying to discredit the new party leaders. Two, Mbeki has been elected twice as an ANC leader with no opposition, 100% votes for him not once but twice, based on their opposition to third “terms” Zuma will never achieve that never (he got +60% at Polokwane). So, Mbeki 1 : Zuma 0
The party will win the 2012 election if not it will win them in coalition with other opposition parties.
A Thoughful article, thanks
When you and many people say this party is founded out of anger, who is angry and how do you measure this anger?
All political divorces, split, separation are a result of difference in this or that principle.
Be happy like all democracy loving, law-abiding citizens and rejoice in the possibility of having ordinary citizens shaping the Constitution of the Republic, unlike the current one, which was negotiated in Codesa on our behalf.
This so-called is nothing but motive political forces that are constituent ingredients of any political environment.
Stop this sycophantic South African journalism mad disease of misdiagnosing events or mislabeling them.
One journalist say something then all of them catch the disease like some kind of flu.
Lekota has never threatened to kill anyone, infact his bodyguard was recently abducted, so who is angry.
A lot bile and vomitus is spewed at him and Shilowa and yet they are supposed to be angry.
For the first time since 1994, people are talking of electing MPs from own constituency rather than have an MP imposed by the party and these MPs are party servants rather than serving the public.
For an example a lot of them defrauded the public money and yet are protected by their parties. If my MP had done this kind of fraud, I will have disowned him or her.
This is a potent article, thank you Jonty. One for me to mull over…
Hi Jonty, I agree that anger alone does not build a political party. Remember that the ANC has 600,000 members and yet the ANC had 10,5 million votes meaning that almost 10 million people are fans of the ANC. These are not members of the ANC, neither are they close to the complicated political climate within the party. If the new party were to appeal to these masses the ANC majority would be threatned.
Secondly, the irresponsible statements by Mbalula and later Malema (more especially the lack of respect for elders), Mr Vavi and Dr Nzimande did not sit well with the electorate that is not privy to the inner dealings of the ANC. This electorate is questioning the behaviour and projected arrogance of the new leadership. Lastly, the women (who are the majority voters in SA) have seen a huge political shift towards the support of women in government and private sector during the Mbeki adminstration. They are now concerned that a Zuma administration may reverse some of these gains. Based on these points I think that the ANC should be very concerned about the new party.
“Time will tell, but anger alone doesn’t win elections. Just ask Thabo Mbeki …”
* Ask Mugabe,
* Ask McCain**,
* Ask Hillary Clinton,
* Ask Kibaki,
* Ask Musharaf,
* Ask John Howard,
* Ask Holomisa,
* Ask Saki Mjongile ANCYL presidential contender (excuse my spelling)
* Ask the whole lot…
Lekota is just a dead snake
I have listened to Lekota every time I can. He is a great speaker – funny, clever and can ad lib. Party born out of anger? He says how come when he was angry against the Nats no-one complained? And he says he speaks like he has always spoken!
The present ANC is already a party of the left – it is actually now the SACP by a coup.
Can’t you listen? – what is all this “he” must do? He is doing one thing first – calling a convention of THE PEOPLE so that they can talk. A very pleasant change to ANC secrecy.
Let’s hope it isnt the crack of dawn.
Quote: “While one would imagine that you will still have Ramaphosa and Sexwale in that upper echelon, the loss of many of these pro-business leaders may well leave a vacuum within the NEC that can very easily be exploited by the left.”
Please note that Mbeki sabotaged Ramaphosa and Sexwale, as a result they left politics for business. Therefore, these guys are not pro-Mbeki. I’m sure you can see how much damage was done to ensure that the success of the splinter party is only a pipe dream. The truth is that the splinter party is formed by the people who are angry because Mbeki was sacked. Now, what does this has to do with democracy?
What is confusing is that these “dissidents” want to form a new party and suddenly give everybody the impression they will be succesful.
Under the previous management, crime was never addressed, corruption and financial management was rife (supported by all the Auditor-General reports), so why will these “new” guys suddenly change and actually serve the people? JZ knows far better what is going on at ground level than the previous mangement ever did, so give him a chance.
No one is certain if we are going to get a new party yet, perhaps not even Mosiuoa Lekota, the man presently making all the running for one. He seems to be conducting part toe-in-the-water, part recruitment drive, part rolling launch, part publicity campaign – so far pretty shrewd tactics from someone his thoroughly rattled ANC opponents are desperate to write off as ‘performing dismally’, ‘lacking in new ideas’, ‘hypocritical’ and worse.
Meanwhile he is put down from another angle. Before any real action has begun, commentary likes to suggest there is nothing to be gained from the ANC dividing. Both sides are as bad as each other and, by inference, the moral choice would be to follow Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s lead and not to vote for either set of scoundrels in 2009, a course that at once nullifies the vote generations struggled for and licences further predations.
But it is not only unworldly moralising that helps blind us to the country’s essential political problem and the means to solve it. Since 1994 we have been schooled to picture SA as a ‘democracy’ and can no longer see our reality clearly. It is not that SA’s new ‘democracy’ has somehow gone wrong, but that the republic has been from its inception a monocracy, and has inevitably developed all the faults of rule by one party. So along with the moral objection, logic is also enlisted to dish any hopes of a sound opposition emerging from an ANC split. Journalists and analysts circulate the view that to have any chance of success, a new party must have radically new ideas to offer, a different agenda entirely from what has gone before.
Few demands could be more intimidating and, not surprisingly, it will be a long wait before Lekota or any other halfway competent politician takes on such a task. Yet if we are bold enough to look, we will see that what is asked is not only too much, but also unnecessary. An effective new opposition will find abundant means to win voters across class and ethnicity in the long list of government’s failures over the past ten years. A well-planned, people-focused campaign will count far more than taking up some putative ‘new position’ few can relate to and none define.
It is not the wheel that we need to re-invent, but more ourselves.
We could start by clearing our minds of the deceit that some politicians are ‘right’ or ‘good’ and that others are ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’. This is extraordinarily difficult in SA because it was broadly true in the country’s tragic past. But it is plainly not the case today, and it cannot therefore be the only way to decide between politicians anymore.
We must put away too the ideal that ‘mature’ voters vote on the basis of policy. Some may choose to; the majority do not have time to consider every issue. Democracy accepts that some vote for reasons that others disapprove of. Freedom means the freedom to elect on any grounds we please.
Above all, we need to learn that whichever ’side’ we are on does not alter the fact that the SA’s core problem is that the majority of its citizens, the voters, do not have what they see as a choice: they pose no ‘threat’, not even a potential one, to remove a government that is largely self-appointed. In such circumstances, even loyal and committed supporters of the ANC can do no more than hope or, worse, plead for things to get better.
That is not democracy. That is only what politicians tell us ‘democracy’ is: that it is their party, or nothing.
Quite frankly the media along with the so called experts or political commentators have a knack of getting things horribly wrong. Remember “the generally corrupt relationship”? That aside; just what is this anger everyone is talking about? and what’s wrong with being angry? The people of this country got sufficiently angry at their own circumstances that they rose against the might of the apartheid government leading to the current democratic dispensation. So, never underestimate the power of anger. Admittedly the new party faces some hurdles; organizational; logistics & funds. The policy positions may not be markedly different from those of the ANC since they will have to appeal to a broad spectrum of constituencies; but the emphasis and application will have to be deferent; notably they will be without the influence of the Communist Party and COSATU. So, you are unlikely to get a call for the nationalization of Sasol, the creation of a State mining company or pharmaceutical plant for instance. Emphasis on social spending will be crucial, to ease the pressure on the poor, in the form of grants, feeding schemes etc…The devil will be in the detail though.
This is definitely a new dawn for South Africans, for the first time they are provided with a valid choice for their votes. I also think they are a lot of people wo are eligible to vote and who are traditionally ANC supporters who will not vote. On top of that, there are people who qualify to vote for the first time who would have been ANC supporters who have now lost interest in voting. At the end that all eats out on the lectorate that would have voted for the ANC making the ANC the loser at the end. And please let’s stop spreading this propaganda that a new party needs 500 000 votes for 1 seat, let’s visit the past elections and count how many votes each party received to get 1 seat in parliament, because the number of voters have been decreasing, it is estimated that with the last election, parties received 1 seat in parliament with a mere 39 000 votes. Just do your arithmetics, you don’t even need mathematics for this calculation.