Dear President Zuma, it's not too late to restore Parliament to its former

Tony Leon | 19 November 2014 | Original Publication:  Rand Daily Mail

When police stifle opinion in Parliament, the light of our hard-won freedom flickers

 

DEAR President Jacob Zuma, last Thursday night, riot police entered the National Assembly to eject a member of Parliament who had called you “the greatest thief in the world”.

At the time, you were on the other side of the world in Brisbane, Australia.

Doubtless this grave insult to your office and dignity was deeply offensive. But your absence from these shores was because you were attending the G20 summit, the gathering of the leaders of the world’s most significant economic countries.

We are the only African member of this global club of the good and the great. Nigeria now has double our GDP, so we are no longer the continent’s biggest economy.

But we are, certainly, the only African country that is both of economic significance and a full-blown democracy.

Jacob Zuma

This is not a matter of opinion. While our country has fallen, sometimes precipitously, down the global benchmarks that matter, from perceptions of corruption to the measurement of our economic competitiveness, we have maintained our democratic credentials.

 In January this year, Freedom House, the democracy rating agency which measures “Freedom in the World”, rated our country as “fully free”.

If you measure that against the 10 other emerging market economies who sat around the table last week with you, you will see what an achievement that is. Only Argentina, Brazil and India are in our company. Your colleagues leading China, Russia, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Turkey head countries which Freedom House rates as either “not free” or “partly free.”

But now that police enter the hallowed portals of Parliament to eject errant members and interfere with their rights, all bets are off, as they say in racing. It will be interesting, perhaps sobering, to see where Freedom House places us next year.

Your opposite number from Great Britain, David Cameron, might offer a sobering historical perspective. We derive many of our parliamentary conventions, not least the position and status of The Speaker, from Westminster, rightly called “The Mother of Parliaments”.

Scroll back around 370 years to January 1642 when the king of England, Charles 1, forced his way into parliament accompanied by 400 soldiers. They were attempting to arrest five members of the House on charges of treason. That invasion of the inner sanctum was resisted by the speaker of the day, William Lenthall. When the troops marched into parliament, and the king demanded to know where the famous five were, the speaker faced him down. He said to the all-powerful monarch: “May it please your majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here.”

What speaker Lenthall was saying was simple and brave: he was a servant and protector of parliament and he would take on the mightiest force in the land to defend the institution. Of course, the events of that day led to two civil wars in England and, seven years later, Charles was beheaded as a public enemy by the triumphalist forces of parliament.

The speaker of our Parliament does not see herself as a defender of its interests, to put matters at their mildest. She could hardly do so, given the massive conflict of interest that goes to the heart of the matter: She is both speaker of Parliament and the chairman of the ruling party.

Mr President, you and I began democratic life in 1994 in different places. We were both members of minority parties. You were the leader of the ANC in KwaZulu- Natal, and while a member of its cabinet, your presence and participation in legislative proceedings was adjudicated by a party member from your then mortal enemy, speaker Inkosi Bonga Mdletshe of the Inkatha Freedom Party. But he gave you all the democratic space you needed back then.

I had fierce differences at the time with your party in the National Assembly, but my rights were protected by an ANC speaker of commendable independence, Dr Frene Ginwala. She allowed me freedom to speak and act and to contest matters, even though I led a party with just seven members.

You do not need to be a Steve Hofmeyr to know that our history did not begin in 1994. In fact, in your 2010 state of the nation speech, you specifically drew attention to the role played by one MP during the apartheid years. You said: “Let me acknowledge the role played by the late Mrs Helen Suzman. She was for a long time a lone voice in Parliament, calling for change.”

Yet by her acknowledgement, her voice would never have been heard were it not for the protection she was given by her political polar opposite, National Party speaker Henning Klopper. She recorded with gratitude: “Without his help I could not have functioned.”

It says a great deal about where we are now that far from protecting the interests of minorities, speaker Baleka Mbete is seen as their persecutor.

Mr President, you have enormous power. It was suggested at the weekend that events in Parliament last week were triggered by your demand that ANC MPs “Use their numbers to crush opposition”.

I sincerely hope this is not the case. But either way, may I sincerely suggest that you pause, think about history, think about our place in the world and pull back from the brink.

Yours sincerely.

 

 

 

This sclerotic democracy in need of fresh blood

06 May 2014 | Tony Leon  | Original Publication:  BDlive

The contrast between the ‘ancient’ political leadership of young democratic South Africa and the younger leaders of the old world is revealing, writes Tony Leon

A BIG difference between our "negotiated revolution" that preceded the April 27 1994 elections and the "Velvet Revolution" that swept Eastern Europe five years before was the positioning of the communists. In the crumbling Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain satellites, they were the oppressors; here at home, they were a mainstay of liberation.

A chronicler of the Polish struggle for democracy from under the tyrant’s heel was historian and newspaper editor Adam Michnik. He observed of the struggle: "Most revolutions have two phases. First comes the struggle for freedom, then a struggle for power. The first makes the human spirit soar and brings out the best in people. The second unleashes the worst; envy, intrigue, greed, suspicion and the urge for revenge."

President Jacob Zuma, right, shares a platform with US President Barack Obama at a press briefing at the Union Buildings, Pretoria, in June last year. Picture: GCIS

He could have been describing, with great accuracy, our country’s uneven trajectory over the past 20 years. And on Wednesday, when South Africans vote, the African National Congress (ANC) will hope to be rewarded again for its leading role in the first phase, while the opposition will hope that voters will hold the government to account for the second phase. Not least of the multiple paradoxes of South Africa and the dominance of the ANC is its responsibility for both of them.

But there is another echo between the undemocratic and anciens régimes of Eastern Europe and the democratic leaders at home whose smiling faces will greet voters on the ballot papers on Wednesday. A striking feature of both leaderships is their relative elderliness. One of many reasons for the fall of the Soviet satellites was the out-of-touch decrepitude of their rulers, who could not fathom the yearning for freedom of the restless young demonstrators who confronted them. When Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union in 1985, he was the last in his line, but also the youngest (at 54). He intuited better than any predecessor that the old way of doing business was unsustainable and needed reform.

In South Africa, a youthful democracy and a country with a famous "youth bulge", the present political leadership is pretty ancient: the Inkatha Freedom Party’s Mangosuthu Buthelezi tops the age scales at 85 years old, followed by the ANC’s Jacob Zuma (72), Agang SA’s Mamphela Ramphele (66), the Congress of the People’s Mosiuoa Lekota (65), and the Democratic Alliance’s (DA’s) Helen Zille (63).

For a ruling party that obsessively practises the policy of reflecting national demographics in all areas, it is just as well it has not used age as a yardstick for leadership, given this near monopoly of sexagenarians and septuagenarians at the top of the leadership pile. Strikingly, only 8% of the electorate is more than 60 years old.

The exception in this group is the enfant terrible of our politics, Julius Malema, who is destined to become the third man of our politics when the votes are counted on Wednesday night. At just 33 years old, he bucks this trend, but then again, his ideas are so old and discredited and borrowed from Venezuela’s late Hugo Chávez that he compensates for his youthful vigour with the dead hand of failed policies lifted from a failed state.

The contrast between young democratic South Africa and the old world is again revealing: US President Barack Obama is just 52 years old, British Prime Minister David Cameron is 47 and even German Chancellor Angela Merkel is younger than 60. In the nondemocratic world, both China’s Xi Jinping (60) and Russia’s Vladimir Putin (61) are younger than all our leaders, bar Malema.

This election, then, will be the last fought by the present leaders, and their replacements, over the next few years, will tell us a great deal about the future politics of South Africa. But that is the concern for the days after Wednesday, although the staleness of the present political debate indicates that some leadership refreshment would move things along.

What about Wednesday? The ANC goes to the polls in its most defensive position in 20 years. The decades in power and the compromises and corruption of high office weigh upon it, although these will only dent its huge support base somewhat.

Only the DA, which, despite uneven messaging and the early Agang SA debacle, has managed to project both strength and diversity in its campaign, can mount any form of credible challenge against the ruling Goliath. The ANC has pumped its "good news to tell" story, although as Wits University vice-chancellor Adam Habib pointed out last week, this is pushing against an open door. Noting the inarguable improvements in life here since 1994, he said waspishly: "But that’s a comparison with a system which was declared a ‘crime against humanity’."

If you set the bar at ankle level, it’s easy to jump over it.

While we know the overall, and even all the provincial results, in advance of the ballots being counted, exact percentages could still surprise us and might breathe some fresh life into our somewhat sclerotic democracy.

• Follow Tony Leon on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

 

The prospect of a weakened ANC is intriguing

28 Jan 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

Tony Leon: Will a panicked and diminished ANC government then decide to veer sharply leftward economically?

ONLY in South Africa, and a clutch of other one-party-dominant democracies, would the possibility that a government in power for 20 years and facing multiple crises of misgovernance might slip below 60% of the vote in the next election cause much interest.

But a conflicting emotion might apply to the 60% conundrum.

Whether you are an opposition stalwart or even a disinterested believer in the constitutional virtues, it’s a no-brainer that "cutting the African National Congress (ANC) down to size" would be an unalloyed good.

It would make politics more competitive and hold out hope for more answerable government; who knows, it might even help arrest the decline of the battered rand.

The continuance of President Jacob Zuma in high office might be in jeopardy as an anxious party, at its next elective conference, decides to commit regicide again.

But what of the other side of your brain, the economic one, if the ANC dips below 60%? Will a panicked and diminished ANC government then decide to veer sharply leftward economically?

Enthralled by the rise of Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) — which will have to win more than 10% of the vote for the ANC-below-60% scenario to be realised — the ANC decides that it’s in a race to the bottom with its defecting left flank and lets go of the brakes. Of course, the government is hardly in danger of being accused of being business-friendly or pro-market.

But South Africa still has a long way to go until it falls off the cliff of populism a la Argentina or Venezuela, or even Zimbabwe.

Macroeconomic, if not microeconomic, policy here is still grounded in the world of reality and does not try to defy the laws of economic gravity, as is the case with certifiable failed states.

But what if the election results remove the restraints that have bound South Africa to the laws of investor attraction, give or take the tearing up of bilateral investment treaties, et al?

Then you are looking down the barrel of a spiralling current-account deficit, rampant inflation and the evils associated with fiscal and monetary incontinence. R11 to the dollar will seem like a happy memory.

But how likely is the ANC to fall below 60% of the vote?

For this to happen, obviously, the opposition in its various formations will have to get more than 40%.

The only significant double-digit contender at the moment is the Democratic Alliance (DA), which achieved 16.7% last time out, top performer in a combined opposition total of just less than 34%.

On paper, it is easy to see the EFF winning more than 7%, which means you arrive at a below-60% ANC.

But that presupposes that all previous opposition voters stay in the fold, which is unlikely, given the implosion in the Congress of the People and the continuing puncture of the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Between them, they received 12% of the total in 2009, and recent by-elections suggest that many of their voters have migrated back to the ANC.

Therefore, if the DA does not get much beyond 25%, there is a real prospect that the ANC returns at about 60%.

Of course a lot can happen over the next four months.

And the variable here, and the real focus of the campaign, is voter turnout.

If many ANC supporters stay away from the polls, then these percentages can dramatically shift.

And there could still be some blockbuster candidates to be announced in the DA’s "confidential" candidates’ slots, which could move more voters.

But assume that the ANC returns in significantly reduced form to Parliament.

This happened before to a ruling party, the National Party (NP), in September 1989. Its 49% of the total vote (its worst result in a generation) could have obliged it to take heed of the big gainers in that election, the ultra-right Conservative Party (30%).

Instead, in his revolutionary speech at the opening of Parliament, FW de Klerk, who was president at the time, looked straight past the Conservatives, and announced (by mentally tallying up the NP and Democratic Party vote of 20%) that "South Africans have voted irreversibly for change".

So will a diminished but re-elected Zuma announce in his post-election speech that 85% of South Africans (the combined total of all ANC and DA votes) have voted in favour of centrist economics in the form of the National Development Plan and that the government is now proceeding, full speed ahead, to implement it?

This could be as interesting as the election. Or perhaps a case of wishful thinking.

• Leon is the author of The Accidental Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

 

 

 

ANC playing politics at expense of racial unity

11 Jun 2013 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

 

The ANC is happy to ditch the nonracial consensus of two decades ago as there are few votes in it for the party, writes Tony Leon

THE fading health of Nelson Mandela, the fraying of our constitutional settlement and the severe contraction of the economy, bathe the country in sombre light.

Last weekend I was interviewed for a documentary about Mandela’s meaning for the world. His close confidant, Mac Maharaj, had wisely cautioned the director to "remember that Madiba is human, not a saint". So advised, I reminisced that among the former president’s stellar achievements was his unerring ability to combine the advancement of principle with shrewd political calculation.

The much contested "rainbow nation", which Mandela’s presidency emblazoned on the country and the world, was on one level putting into presidential practice his historic speech from the criminal dock in 1964, to wit: "I have fought against white domination; I have fought against black domination…." This impulse was not admired in all quarters, but it certainly helped bind the wounds of a fractured nation.

But it was also shrewd in creating a sense of unity on a shaky foundation. Mandela hardly needed, and did not receive, many votes from minority communities, but he needed their buy-in to get the new South Africa on the road as a going economic concern and to settle the nerves of international investors, who played a big role in buying our bonds and equities.

But you could also joke with Mandela about the limitations of his mega-star appeal. In 1995, shortly before the municipal elections in Johannesburg, I visited the him in his Houghton home on some political business. He boasted that he had been canvassing for the African National Congress (ANC) in the area that morning. "I signed up over 120 members for the ANC in Houghton," he enthused. "Well, they will probably still vote for us in a few weeks’ time," I responded.

He laughed heartily and the subsequent result proved me, in this small predication, correct. But that time of national reconciliation and the easy banter that accompanied it has faded. This is reflected across the political and racial divides by the new generation of political leadership.

When Jacob Zuma was the provincial boss in KwaZulu-Natal he had his hands full in dousing the violent flames of the incipient civil war, which had nearly immolated the province. He was largely successful in that project and certainly there was no rancour displayed by him or colleagues of that time to Indians and whites. They were free to make their political choices, which they did by overwhelmingly not supporting his party.

But a different note was recently sounded by his recent successor there, ANC provincial chairman Senzo Mchunu. He recently issued a warning to the whites and Indians in his province: "(I) generally get the sense that minorities have generally abdicated their responsibility towards South Africa, being South African, towards the government and the ANC."

In a similar vein, Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane warned about the return of "pale male government". Doubtless, both will double down on racial targeting and simultaneously proclaim fealty to the constitutional principle of nonracialism.

They bring to mind the 16th century heretics, the Antinomians, of whom Geoffrey Wheatcroft wrote: "They believed that to the pure, all things are pure. If you were of the elect, the saved, you could do no wrong; you could merrily eat, drink and fornicate in the certainty of salvation." Or in our context, you can make racial threats and still proclaim nonracialism.

So the ANC is happy to ditch the nonracial consensus of two decades ago. There are few votes in it for it, and if it scares investors and job creators, well that’s politics.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has the opposite problem: it has maxed out on minority votes and is now in anxious search of a base among the majority. I have considerable sympathy for this dilemma having had to walk the path of keeping an existing constituency and securing a new one. This probably explains why it was the DA Youth, and not the ANC Youth League, who were toyi-toying outside the Afrikaans-Protestants-only Kleinfontein community the other day. But the repudiation of this move by DA Gauteng leader John Moodey proves just how divisive this can be within the party itself. Similarly, on the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Bill, the party has taken a "support with reservations" approach.

Back in the old South Africa, the United Party tried to appeal to two constituencies simultaneously, having a conservative voice for the platteland and liberal approach in urban areas, perhaps summed up by its slogan of "White rule with Justice".

An unrelenting focus on the economy and giving a substantive answer to Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus’s extraordinary cry for help the other day, rather than racial threats or equivocations, is what’s most needed now. It will also reconcile the nation today with the legacy bequeathed by Nelson Mandela.

• Leon is the author of The Accidental Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

Century-old movement gets unsettled too easily

29 Jan 2013 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: Bdlive

An FNB ad campaign criticising the government seemed enough to unsettle a 100-year-old liberation movement that is soon to celebrate two decades in power, writes Tony Leon

IN THE 11th century, Ibn Hazm, regarded as the leading thinker of his day in the Arab world, advised: "He who would treat friend and foe alike will only arouse distaste for his friendship and contempt from his enemy."

Okay, that was about 1,000 years ago and he was writing from Cordoba in Spain. Still, as SA watched the spectacular somersault by FNB last week, this thought had some contemporary and local resonance.

At the beginning of last week, FNB was the perhaps unlikely promoter of an edgy, online campaign giving voice to the next "born free" generation, which seemed an innocuous, commercially savvy exercise in free expression. By Friday, FNB appeared to have buckled to the local equivalent of a mafia shakedown, administered with brutal efficiency and typical bombast by African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Gwede Mantashe.

For those who admire naked displays of power politics, the denouement of the FNB saga will provide an object lesson. But for those measuring SA’s democratic health and maturity, the outcome is less reassuring.

The inflammation of rhetoric — with the ANC Youth League calling FNB "treasonous" and the egregious and voluble Mantashe accusing Anglo American Platinum of "theft" — provides one such negative measure.

FNB’s quick surrender perhaps provides another, although, in future, maybe business schools will use the bank’s confusing and changing message during the week as a master-class example of how not to handle a communications crisis. Anyway, the online reaction to Friday’s capitulation, with expletives substituting for the "F" and the "B" of FNB, will rank the "You Can Help" campaign as a contemporary public-relations (PR) disaster, validating Hazm’s warning.

But this campaign was launched online via YouTube and the adverse reaction to it, and then the denunciation of the visit by the bank to ANC headquarters, turned it into a "cyberwar" on Facebook and Twitter — which points us in another direction.

Perhaps President Jacob Zuma and his supersized Davos delegation were too busy dealing with the contradictions between his "we’re open for business" message in the Swiss Alps and the war against business being waged by his apparatchiks at home to take notice of a survey released on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, published its findings (based on annual interviews in 26 countries) on trust in public institutions. As Gillian Tett writes in the Financial Times, it revealed that on a five-year view, or since the financial crisis of 2008, "there has been a sharp downturn of credibility commanded by business, government and the media". Tett observes that while "faith in leaders" (such as bank CEOs and government officials) has ebbed to a record low, there is a "sky high" public faith in technology: "People might not trust banks or bureaucrats, but they do trust their BlackBerrys, iPhones and Facebook friends."

"Trust," Tett concludes," is being expressed in horizontal ways, rather than on a vertical axis."

Friday’s display of power politics at Luthuli House was a classic example of the old vertical pressure (the chastened CEO is reprimanded by the political boss and an apology follows). The online response, in a country with more cellphones than people, was beyond the control of any of the parties and proves the volatility of what Tett calls "the wisdom of cyber-crowd rules". It provides a democratic antidote to the old politics.

On the subject of old politics, last week Tim Cohen provided an interesting take on the eerie similarities between the ANC attack on FNB and the 1987 assault on its predecessor Barclays Bank by PW Botha. Of course, in the democracy of today, compared with the authoritarian structure then, the negative response is easier, provided it is exercised.

However, another parallel struck me. When Botha launched a root-and-branch assault in Parliament on Barclays CEO Chris Ball, he went on to use the fig leaf of a show trial, in the form of a judicial commission, to secure a conviction. In a spectacular use of parliamentary privilege, Progressive Federal Party MP Dave Dalling revealed that the instrument chosen by Botha to exact his revenge, Cape judge president George Munnik, had previously had his bank account closed by Barclays because he had defaulted on his debts.

These days, compliant judges might be used elsewhere, but they do not seem necessary to bring business critics to heel.

The objection to the FNB campaign was apparently based on a couple of (admittedly, script-perfect) girls and boys criticising the government. Is this enough to unsettle a 100-year-old liberation movement that is soon to celebrate two decades in power? It is time, perhaps, to reread the old fairy tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and remember who unmasked the naked emperor.

• Follow Tony Leon on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA

The key dilemma facing the DA

23 Jan 2013 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: BDlive

Former party leader says challenge is to grow into new markets while retaining faith with core values and old voters

Remarks of Tony Leon to the Democratic Alliance Sandton, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Rosebank, Johannesburg, January 23 2013

"Opposition Then and Now"

I have not sought specifically in interviews, writings or speeches since my return to this country last October to assess the general prospects and future of opposition in this country, and specifically the role and outlook for the Democratic Alliance (DA), which party I led for seven of its twelve year existence.

However, since this is the first DA platform I am speaking on since arriving back from Argentina last year, it seems appropriate to offer some observations and even pre-empt some of the questions which will arise in a forum such as the one you have convened for me to address this evening.

The other day that enfant terrible of our politics, Julius Malema bewailed his current isolation in the political wilderness, noting that ‘his friends had deserted him in droves.' I was tempted to suggest that he remember the wise words of President Harry Truman, "If you want a friend in politics, get a dog." But then fairly recently our President apparently suggested that dog-loving is UnAfrican, so perhaps that is not such a good idea.

I am always wary when people use ‘culture' as either a club or a shield- whether to justify rent-seeking riches or to denigrate minorities - since part of the founding settlement of our democracy was specifically to champion and celebrate and protect multi-culturalism and the individual choice to adopt as many cultural identities and practices as consistent with the injunction of ‘do no harm to others.'

On the subject of friendship, I am pleased to recognize old political comrades here this evening and to have retained many old associations in this Party, and perhaps more significantly to note how many more people and new leaders have emerged in it since I left active party politics on stepping down from Parliament in 2009.

Someone defined ‘'leadership success" as the "success of the leader's successors". On that definition, and looking at the current track record and trajectory, I suppose that my many years leading this party and its predecessor could be termed "successful."

I am also mindful of Queen Elizabeth's injunction that "distance lends enchantment." Four years outside the clashing conflicts of party and parliamentary combat and three years away from South Africa does lend both physical distance and subjective perspective which can be refreshing and clarifying.

With this as background, allow me to make the following brief observations of the political and opposition terrain I had to navigate during my time at the helm and the opportunities and dilemmas I think you confront tonight and in the years ahead:

On Saturday week, 2 February, we will note the twenty third anniversary of the famous speech of FW De Klerk in Parliament, which was in political terms of such thermo-nuclear intensity, that we are still living with its after effects today.

One of the lesser consequences of that event was that it blind-sided the liberal opposition Democratic Party, among whose new members of parliament I was at the time, the freshly elected MP for Houghton. In essence, the conservative president of the country and leader of its National Party, in one swoop, appropriated most of the platform and manifesto of our party.

Although the DP during the negotiations' process inaugurated by that speech played a significant, at times, disproportionate role, in truth when the ANC and the NP commenced negotiations, we had a bad seat at the table and a difficult set of cards to play.

This positioning was well summed up by the then ANC chief constitutional negotiator, Cyril Ramaphosa, who defined the "sufficient consensus" - which Codesa required to reach its decisions - with breathtaking candour: "Sufficient consensus means that when the ANC and NP have agreed to something, the rest of the parties can get stuffed."

Outside the negotiations' process the DP had a torrid time of it. The party couldn't decide whether it should accommodate itself in the slipstream of the ANC (as some of its defecting members decided to do); seek common cause with, and the protection of, the NP (as most of its voters decided to do in the 1994 election); or soldier on alone.

The majority of the party and its leadership decided to hew an independent liberal course, more out of duty to its principles than out of any expectation of electoral reward. In the event, the results of the election -a triumph for the country and a disaster for the party - were pretty well pre-ordained before the first ballot was cast on 27 April 1994.

Although I was not the party leader at the time, I was pretty much its chief campaigner around the country. And when we could get a hearing at all (most of our meetings in townships and on university campuses were either broken up by ANC rowdies or ignored, although we had more success in the suburbs), few voters believed in the message that, in an election based on proportional representation, the quality of the parliamentary representative and the purity of the party cause trumped considerations of size and history.

In the aftermath of being sent to the new national assembly and constituent assembly with just 7 (out of 400) MPs, a major rethink was required. It was clear that if the party continued along the road it had trod for the previous thirty five years of existence it was headed for the scree slope of oblivion.

I was elected leader of this unhappy and uncertain band. I subsequently wrote that being leader back then was like being given a poisoned chalice. I ruefully noted (in a borrowed phrase) that "at times it tasted like something rustled up by Lucrezia Borgia on one of her more vengeful days." But the one advantage of having few expectations to meet (in truth, most of the media, many of our historic backers and the majority of our  traditional -read English speaking, white and suburban -  voters had written us off) is that you can define your own agenda and determine your tactics after fashioning a strategy without the burden of expectation.

The downside is, of course, relevance: projecting yourself onto a political radar already crowded by the height and glory of the presidency of Nelson Mandela and the weight of the National Party opposition (then consisting of 82 MPs in the National Assembly, more members incidentally than the DP has today) and its dual role alongside Mangosuthu Buthelezi's IFP of power sharing in central government, while each of those parties controlled one province as well, was a difficult task.

This seemed very unpromising terrain on which to rebuild a small party and make it fit for purpose for the newly democratic South Africa. However, amid obvious and objective weaknesses, we had certain strengths which we maximized with vigour and determination: since 94% of parliamentarians were in parties serving in the government of national unity, the opposition terrain was more or less open to us.

Thus our small band, of mostly experienced parliamentarians used the platform of parliament, and the crisis of legitimacy affecting the National Party, to broadcast our message of good governance and answerability, adherence to rule of law principles and the advancement of market-friendly, growth-promoting economics.

With a great deal of hard work and not without controversy (the attraction of some leading and defecting NP members and the "fight back" campaign among others) we were well positioned for the next election. It is also true, that notwithstanding some blind spots of his own, Nelson Mandela's personality and presidency encouraged and gave recognition to the opposition role played by the Democratic Party.

Shortly after our relatively stunning success in the 1999 election (we increased our voting share by over seven fold and added 31 new MPs to our team and went from being the seventh largest party to becoming the second largest and with it the title of "official opposition") we soon faced an important fork in the road. In the Western Cape, where the ANC had achieved the largest share of the vote, slightly ahead of the NP, we held the balance of power in that province, the only one where the NP, due its retention of Coloured support, beat us.

Notwithstanding our explicit pre-election commitment to forming opposition alliances to hold down the power of the ANC, I was placed under enormous pressure by some of our donors, many independent commentators, and most of the media (who in turn were under pressure from a victorious and very assertive ANC) to do a deal with the ANC and deliver the province to their control, with our party as junior governing partner.

Having two years before, resisted the tempting offer of Nelson Mandela to enter his government, I found the pressure significant, but the suggestion easy to rebut: we had promised the voters strong opposition and we could hardly deliver on this claim by essentially closing down, or significantly compromising, the independent opposition role the voters had entrusted us with.

Thus the deal was made with the NP. Under it, Helen Zille and others achieved provincial ministries and we found ourselves sharing power with a party we disliked, but with our strategic project intact (consolidating the highly fragmented opposition and establishing a governing bulwark against the increasingly hegemonic ANC, then rapidly consolidating its power over the rest of society).

We were able within a year of that coalition to formalize our arrangement - under our leadership and based on our core principles - by forming the Democratic Alliance. By December 2000, the party achieved over 23% of the vote in the national local government elections -a result which took a further eleven years to replicate in the 2011 local government elections.

Of course, what followed was a very rough ride and I will spare you the agonizing details of the immediate period which followed the formation of this party - a history of splits and schisms, bad faith and floor crossing. However, the party that stands today is the inheritor of those early and difficult decisions.

It was in the period of the NNP desertion to the ANC (2001-2004) that the DA faced its most fraught challenges. We were the largest opposition party, but the very space which opposition claimed for itself and which the constitution demarcated was under enormous challenge.

I dubbed this phase "the closing of the open society". Although we identified the "open and opportunity society" as the summary of our policy and positioning, in truth at the height of the Mbeki presidency there were few takers for this position in wider society.

The press, with a few honourable exceptions, had been suborned by the government agenda, and with the exception of the government policy on HIV-AIDS, few leaders and organisations in civil society wished to pick a fight with the ruling party.

Within the opposition itself, parties outside the DA such as the NNP, ID, IFP found it easier to accommodate themselves within the paradigm, if not the formal membership, of the governing ideology. We had a bigger reach than ever before, but getting our message across - and even the concept of robust opposition recognized -had a hard swim in such murky waters.

The winning of the Cape Town municipality and the installation of Helen Zille as its mayor (in the teeth of a virulent campaign against us by the ANC with a co-opted ID at its side), once again as a result of intricate coalition building, turned the tide.

But by then the tide was turning against President Mbeki himself - and the once unified and mighty ANC was starting to divide, a process which reached its culmination in Polokwane in 2007, when Jacob Zuma ousted him as party president.

The very disunity which had so characterized the opposition had now swept right past it into the chambers of the ruling party itself. The elemental forces which toppled Mbeki, like the proverbial genie which could never be put back in the bottle, also released into society and the media a renewed vitality and vigour.

The "trust in government and respect the president "approach, on the back of this event and the multiplying corruption and misgovernance scandals, was fast disappearing from the public space. Against this background, the DA, with refreshed and credible new leadership, performed admirably in the 2009 election and probably might have done even better were it not for the emergence of COPE from the factionalised ANC.

Opposition Today

I have summarized this immediate past history, not to take you on a retro-tour through the DA museum, but to point out that the concept and even he continuance of real opposition in the past twenty years of South African history was by no means a sure thing. There were challenges and obstacles strewn in our path (and doubtless we placed some there ourselves). And the success of the opposition project was the result, at strategic and difficult moments, of making some hard choices and explicit decisions.

Of course the platform you bestride tonight is bigger than the one I and my colleagues stood on. It is also true that, three presidents later and after nearly two decades in power, the ANC has shed  a great deal of the moral armour which Nelson Mandela clothed around his organization back in 1994.

And although the overall opposition strength today is slightly less than it was back then (when two provinces were outside ANC control), the opposition terrain today incontestably belongs to the DA and the wind seems set fair for a resounding electoral performance next year.  

Perhaps because I am no longer directly involved in the affairs of the DA, and with the benefit of some distance from the demands of party and leadership offices, I can signpost some of the challenges which you face today.

I do so in the certain knowledge that meeting these opportunities (and some of the risks implicit in them) which you confront will be quite as decisive for the future of the country as the ones which I had to deal with were determinative for the opposition. Here is my selection of some key areas:

The core constituency (minorities) of the party is diminishing. The last election revealed that the DA has unchallenged support among minority voters; the last census showed that this is a reducing bloc of supporters.

The key dilemma (and it is not new, incidentally, only more urgent) is how to grow the party in a new market (where the majority lives and votes) while retaining faith with core values and old voters.

The latter is less of an issue than the former, since the opposition space is overwhelmingly occupied by this party and there are no identifiable and credible challengers for it. And the argument that liberal ideas and policies are somehow a "whites' only" proposition is nonsense.

But in order to attract more votes from black South Africans the party has to close the distance between itself and the majority, something which has far more to do with tone, familiarity, identity and other intangibles and less to do with objective policy propositions. But there will be a temptation to soft-pedal certain propositions in order not to scare off new potential voters.

"Culture" incidentally is political quicksand. I remember how when the NNP leadership could find no other issue to divide the early and fragile DA, they always hoisted up the fig leaf of "cultural differences and insensitivity" to sow dissension and distrust.

If I were the current DA leadership, for example, I would not get into a bargain of "Africaness" et al. Make your point and move on.

This leads ineluctably to the second challenge: can the DA retain its traditional identity with core values -from market economic sensibility to non-racial preferment to mention two obvious ones - and attract new supporters?

In other words, as the number of supporters and voters increase is there an automatic blurring of vision and values? Can you have both or do you have to make a choice.

I would hazard a view that two things are profoundly important for this country's democratic health going forward:

The first is more competitive politics which means, simply, a larger opposition and a smaller governing party. The second, which is more complicated, is to provide not just another version of the ruling party, but a clear alternative. This entails putting forward a distinct vision, other and better policies, and offering something beyond just "the ANC minus corruption and with good delivery."

The DA cannot be just a patronage machine providing a "catch all" message, and scooping up every shade of disaffected government supporter-from alienated Marxists to losers in the government procurement stakes.

Obviously politics is crucially about numbers. But as the party grows and as some outsize personalities, some carrying a great deal of baggage around with them indeed, are attracted to its ranks, just be sure that the welcome mat is also marked with some clear red lines which new and old recruits only cross at their peril.

I am sure that in facing and responding to these challenges, and the many others which will face you on the road going forward, you will understand quite how important it is for our country, and the wider world which still holds faith in our cause, for the future mission of the opposition to be crowned with success.

 

Meaning of the f-word to be a battle zone over the next year

IN A recent interview, Co-operative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka raised the question: “Do we need provinces?” and suggested that a definitive answer would be given by the government next March. I thought it significant that his ministry had once enjoyed the title of “constitutional and provincial affairs”. Perhaps its renaming is a harbinger of things to come.
The minister’s speculation, coupled with his demand that “nobody is expected to be out of tune” with the country and its president, brought to mind how central the provinces were to the Kempton Park negotiations, which led to the inauguration of democracy in SA, and how comprehensively the African National Congress (ANC) out-negotiated its opponents on this issue. This was due to both the balance of forces and the burden of our history.
The f-word during the negotiations was not a vulgar expletive, but the politically loaded idea of federalism. Democratic Party (DP) negotiator Colin Eglin — whose party’s central plank was the promotion of a federal dispersal of authority as an alternative to untrammelled majoritarianism — recalled how the Bantustan policy of the National Party (NP) “had given federalism a bad name”. He therefore, during negotiations, tiptoed around the topic by using code: “I tried to avoid using the word federalism in advancing my arguments, preferring to use the cumbersome but less repellent phrase, ‘constitutional decentralisation’” to advance the case for provincial powers in the new constitutional set-up .
Inkatha’s position at the negotiations was the opposite of the prevailing political wind: it wanted a federal SA to give it more power, given its lock on support in Natal. The ANC wanted a unitary state precisely to prevent that eventuality. The case, however, was never properly prosecuted since Inkatha was boycotting the negotiations in pursuance of an issue — the role and place of the k ing — which today, seems remote and obscure.
The NP, which during the negotiations still held the formal reins of power, made a confused and enfeebled fight for federalism. It understood it was likely to be knocked off its national perch of power in the elections, and reduced to a regional redoubt in the Western Cape. But its strategy was far more focused on dividing the spoils of office at a national level through power-sharing than in according the provinces significant, and original, powers. As the most reliable chronicler of the negotiations’ process, Patti Waldmeir described it: “After 45 years of ruling a highly centralised old South African state, the NP seemed to have little idea of what federalism meant, and only a weak inclination to fight for it.”
With the NP confused, Inkatha absent and the DP speaking in code, it was little wonder that the ANC prevailed. Indeed Waldmeir obtained an accurate assessment of the location of power in the new SA from a key negotiator: “Joe Slovo, speaking freely out of exhaustion and drink on the eve of the deal, insisted that the new state would be ‘not remotely a federation ... we’ve managed to give them devolution, without losing control’, he told me with considerable satisfaction.”
Slovo was to die within a year of the establishment of the new order; the NP received in Hermann Giliomee’s apt phrase a “prostitute’s funeral” after the 2004 elections; the Inkatha Freedom Party has been ousted from power in KwaZulu-Natal and the DP has morphed into the Democratic Alliance, but won control of the Western Cape .
But just how accurate and prescient Slovo’s boast has proven to be was on display in Cape Town this week. Provincial Premier Helen Zille — political boss of the only province in the hands of the opposition — was reduced to taking legal advice and writing a letter to the newspaper to explain that the Provincial Commissioner of the SAPS, Mzwandile Petros, refuses to meet with her and the provincial MEC for policing, Lennit Max. Given the agenda Zille had in mind for the meeting, including the allegation that the police had sexed-up the crime statistics in this crime-ravaged province, the commissioner’s coyness was understandable. But, of course, he is answerable and accountable to Pretoria, not Cape Town.
A glance at the exclusive powers which the constitution grants to the provinces yields a decidedly threadbare list. Schedule 5 grants it sole jurisdiction over such matters as abattoirs, ambulances, and culture and veterinary services. But in the areas of delivery, the provinces currently are the public’s interface with both hospitals and schools. Little wonder, then, that when he was minister of national education, Kader Asmal once remarked to me that, in comparison with his provincial counterparts, he felt “like a eunuch in a harem. I have the desire to act, but not the power.”
Interestingly, as the ANC moves to further centralise power, the DA is moving in the opposite direction. Its key parliamentary staff, including national strategist and MP Ryan Coetzee have taken leave of Parliament and relocated to the provincial government and the Office of the Premier.
The battle of the provinces — and the meaning and extent of the “f” word in our constitutional arrangements — is likely to be a key battleground arena over the next year. It remains to be seen whether the federalists are more successful in the next, perhaps final, round than they were at Kempton Park.

*Published Business Day 4 July 2009

Zuma will have to disappoint allies to create prosperous SA

After all, it was as recently as January that then president Kgalema Motlanthe told the World Economic Forum SA would be able to grow at 4% on the back of strong infrastructure spend.
The expenditure remains — it was front and centre of Zuma’s maiden state of the nation address. But since then SA entered a deep recession — the first an African National Congress (ANC) government has had to confront. Now we will do well, even heroically, if we achieve zero growth by year end.
As I pondered the import of Zuma’s prescriptions for our economic ills — which seemed to be drawn largely from the casebook of John Maynard Keynes, now enjoying a global surge in popularity — I thought of previous presidential debuts I had witnessed.
In February 1990, FW de Klerk made a speech of thermonuclear intensity — the effects of which are still with us today. He overturned the 350-year-old racial order of SA. In May 1994, Nelson Mandela set the tone for his inclusive rainbow presidency — although in his case “the medium” (or his persona) was the message. In June 1999, Thabo Mbeki also set the seal of his presidency with a root-and- branch attack on his opponents, describing the official opposition Democratic Party as no less than the “pedlars of a soulless theology ... who define some races as subhuman”.
Zuma’s speech detonated no bombs of change, but equally his constant referrals to the frail Mandela, seated and smiling above him in the gallery, perhaps signalled a decisive break from the isolationism which characterised the Mbeki era. Zuma explicitly reached out to the broad spectrum of SA — from rural dwellers, to Afrikaners and explicitly to the opposition, “in the spirit of putting SA first”, he explained.
Zuma’s promise remains hugely ambitious given the cramped fiscal space in which his presidency commences: an expansive developmental state, without rollovers, purged of corruption and premised on performance targets centred on the creation of 4-million “job opportunities” within five years, over 10% of which will be rolled out by year end.
While the president took a swipe at under- performing teachers and honestly faced glaring deficiencies in the culture, management and performance of public services, he offered little of comfort to the private sector, or the hard-pressed tax-payer. Obviously, Zuma’s core constituency is the 11-million, largely poor, South Africans who gave him his mandate. But as Anthony Altbeker reminded an Institute of Race Relations conference only last week, just 400000 South Africans, most of them far from rich, provide half the personal taxes in the country. And the taxpayers, overall, fund the 13-million South Africans who receive government welfare grants.
The only sustainable path is obviously to increase the number of taxpayers, not widen the pool of beneficiaries.
In the 10 priority areas touched on in the speech there was scant recognition for the role of enterprise as the driver of growth. In New York recently, Prof Niall Ferguson sounded an important warning: “It is very easy to forget, in your iron indignation at the failure of the market, where the true mainsprings of economic growth lie. The lesson of economic history is very clear. Economic growth does not come from state-led infrastructure investment. It comes from technological innovation, and gains in productivity and these come from the private sector, not the state.”
Indeed SA’s private sector remains, in key areas, globally competitive. Our much-admired banking sector, for example, ranked 15th in the latest World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Survey. In studied contrast has been our slide down the Human Development Index, on the measurement of “living a long and healthy life”. We have dropped a vertiginous 36 places in just 10 years. It remains a moot point whether improvements in life chances can be delivered on the back of a state machine which, in key areas, is broken. Perhaps this means that private sector solutions are required for public sector problems, not the reverse.
Zuma did not enter the snakebite territory of demanding restraint from the public sector unions — either in terms of lowering the inflationary wage demands, or in the arena of relaxing the rigidities of the labour law, especially for first-time job seekers. The government is sitting on a welter of reports which all point precisely in this direction.
At the conclusion of the speech, Congress of South African Trade Unions chief Zwelinzima Vavi took time off from threatening a season of strikes to describe Zuma’s effort as “bold and brilliant”. Yet if Zuma is to create “the prosperous nation” he promised he will need to disappoint, not enthrall, some of his key allies.

*published in the Business Day 5 June 2009