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.

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Magical realism lives on in tales of the election

22 Apr 2014 | Tony Leon  | Original Publication:  BDlive

Shrugging off Nkandla and … often indifferent delivery … the voters apparently intend to keep faith with the ANC, writes Tony Leon

APPROPRIATELY in the week when both the Jewish Passover and Easter have been celebrated, we have been much preoccupied with miracles and wonder.

Passover concerns the miracle of the Jewish exodus from bondage in Egypt and, aside from inflicting 10 plagues on their oppressors, the Lord miraculously parted the Red Sea to make good their escape. In the New Testament, we have the record of the agony of the crucifixion on Good Friday and then the miracle of the resurrection on Easter Sunday. These beliefs have sustained the Judeo-Christian faiths for thousands of years. Looking at the hundreds of thousands who gathered in Moria, alongside a gaggle of politicians, on Sunday, they remain alive for millions of South Africans today.

Appropriately, perhaps, between these two festivals came the announcement of the death of Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Regarded as one of the giants of 20th-century literature, he popularised, in his exquisite writings, the genre of "magical realism". As critic Jonathan Kandell notes, this was the form in which the miraculous and the real converge. Garcia Marquez’s cast list ranged from vicious dictators to revolutionary romantics and, of course, star-crossed lovers.

Less miraculous than any of the above is the latest opinion poll from global market researcher Ipsos, published in the Sunday Times at the weekend. Or perhaps, in its detail that the African National Congress (ANC) is on course to another overwhelming victory in a fortnight. There is a touch of wonder in those numbers. Shrugging off Nkandla and the mushroom clouds of corruption and often indifferent delivery engulfing the state and its officials, the voters apparently intend to keep faith with the ANC.

Garcia Marquez does provide some clues for this political levitation. This dialogue in his novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, has some local application: "You can’t eat hope," the woman said. "You can’t eat it, but it sustains you," the colonel replied.

And although his first major novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, established Garcia Marquez’s reputation, he said that his best work was The Autumn of the Patriarch. There is, in its story line, something of local resonance as well. Set in a mythical Latin American state, it describes a dictator who has ruled for so long that no-one can remember what life was like before him. In between failed attempts to block Democratic Alliance advertisements, the state broadcaster provides a vivid celluloid reminder every night now of just what life was like during the long oppression of apartheid. Doubtless the celebrations on April 27 will be a further warning of what ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa cautioned last November: "If you don’t vote, the Boers will come back."

Cut from the cloth of one of Garcia Marquez’s romantic revolutionaries, Ronnie Kasrils also re-entered the lists, stage left as it were, last week. He managed to extend his cabinet shelf-life a decade ago by playing the safe role of the ANC’s in-house Jewish anti-Zionist. Now, in what the decrepit, indeed ageing, ANC Youth League (its interim president is apparently north of 40) has declared a "blasphemy", Kasrils has become, in the holy week, an apostate. He called for either an anti-ANC vote or a spoilt paper to register dissatisfaction with the party to which he has dedicated most of his adult life.

Will it make any significant difference? There will be some vote loss and some opposition gain in the next poll but, despite the tectonic plates that might be shifting below the feet of the ANC, on the surface it would appear as though there is a remarkable continuity in the ecology of the electorate and the fortunes of the ruling party.

Why? Back to Garcia Marquez: he was also a soccer fanatic and even wrote a short story about the beautiful game, The Sworn In. While South Africans might be unfamiliar with the Latin American teams, over here Manchester United has, as befits its global following, a huge local following. It also happens that this year, under the more pedestrian management of David Moyes, it is enduring one of its worst seasons. Of course, the fans would rather the winning Alex Ferguson was still at the helm, but when the Red Devils play at Old Trafford and elsewhere, the supporters still root for Manchester United and do not don Liverpool jerseys. Some might be disaffected and apathetic, but the power is with the team and the brand. Not forever, perhaps, but for a while to come. Our political results also follow the team, rather than its leadership, apparently.

Throw in the fact that one-third of all South Africans in work are employed by the government at various levels and the further statistic provided by the South African Institute of Race Relations that the state is the biggest single source of income for almost a third of all households in South Africa. Prosaic explanations, not magical realism, could just explain the next election result.

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