The 2009 elections

Oupa Lehulere argues for a united front of social movements to campaign for a No vote in the 2009 elections to build political consciousness and strengthen the movements.

Strategic and tactical options facing the social movements

The crisis in the ruling party, especially when it intersects with the unfolding economic crisis, will open up new spaces for debate and for social and political mobilisation. For the first time since 1994 the ANC will be forced to engage in serious political contest. Its call for the Shikota party to engage in policy debate will come back to haunt it. Not only will it expose the ANC’s own policy weaknesses, not only will it expose both parties’ mutual commitment to neoliberalism, but it will open the space for new voices on key political and economic issues.

This new space that is emerging will be given an immediate and urgent character by the coming elections in 2009. In the light of the global and national economic crisis currently unfolding, and against the background of the crisis in the ruling party, the social movements face a number of key strategic challenges:

1. How do the social movements understand the current political situation, how does this situa- tion differ from the situation around the 2004 or even the 1999 elections?

2. Can the movements themselves, after years of weakness and divisions among themselves, build a united front that allows them to inter- vene in the political spaces now emerging?

3. What steps do we need to take bring such unity – within the movements and with those not cur- rently inside – effectively and quickly?

On what basis should the movements intervene in the current political spaces?

The coming six months will see a feeding frenzy as the established political parties go fishing for votes. Importantly, in the coming elections, the parties of the political establishment – including the ANC and Shikota – will take the key issues facing the working class off the table. Issues of abstract adherence to the ‘constitution’ will be heatedly debated, corruption will be a key issue, and to the extent that service delivery is debated it will be as a promissory note. In such a context, what will be the approach adopted by the movements?

There are four key issues that should guide the social movements in their approach to political work during the elections:

1. The elections provide the social movements with an opportunity to raise the levels of political consciousness among the people. The move- ments should take the opportunity to link the daily issue facing the working class to key political issues. Such issues include the social and economic policies that have been practiced by the ANC and the Shikota people over the last 14 years.

2. The movements need to use the elections to build the organisations of the working class involved in struggle. Over the last few years there has been a process of weakening of the movements and local organisations involved in struggle. In the past, the social movements’ organisation developed through engagement in local struggles and around local demands. The elections provide an opportunity for a different route to the development of organisation: or- ganisations will grow by responding to people’s needs for political clarification and for national political engagement. We have already noted the interest in national politics that has been generated by the crisis in the ruling party.

3. The electoral context of the next few months provides the movements with an opportunity to intensify the local struggles that have been underway over the last 10 years. For the parties of the establishment this will be time to ‘cool down’, to stop marches and occupations, and to  ‘listen to reasoned debate’. We should certainly engage in ‘reasoned debate’. But it must be honest and frank. More importantly, it must reinforce and be combined with active mass mobilisation around local issues and demands. It will however not be sufficient to take up local struggles. The elections necessarily introduce a national dimension to politics. It will therefore be necessary to explore opportunities to give campaigns around concrete demands a national character.

4. The elections provide the social movements with an opportunity to build unity within its ranks. We all know that over the last few years divi- sions have emerged within the social move- ments. While these divisions do not reflect policy or political differences that are substan- tial, they have prevented unity in action among the movements. Further, it will not be enough for the movements to forge unity only within the group of traditional movement organisa- tions – the movements have to forge unity with those outside its traditional ranks. The elections provide the space for the movements to reach out to groups, organisations and movements who have began to share the critique of the gov- ernment and the ANC’S neoliberal politics that the movements have developed over the last 10 years or so. Further, over the last few years there have been many communities who have taken to the streets to protest against various instances of injustice, around housing, water, electricity, and so on. An ‘elections’ campaign organised by a united front of social popular movements should reach out to these communi- ties, even in cases where they have not devel- oped an overall critique of neoliberal politics in South Africa.

These four key objectives should constitute the strategic orientation of the movement in our approach to the elections period. The underlying conception is that the movements are not only looking at the elections in the next six months, but that they are adopting a longer-term perspective of movement building.

Our ability to realise the strategic objectives outlined above depends on whether the movements can forge a united political and tactical platform for the coming elections. In 2004, although the various movements had very similar political and tactical platforms, they were not able to bring these together into some united front. As a result the movements were not able to make a national impact during the elections; they were not able to transform their demands and their critique of neoliberal into a national movement.

Forging a common political and tactical platform

As in 2004, the social movements have many demands in common. These demands have emerged from a process of struggle over the last 10 years, and they share a critique of the government and the ANC’s neolberalism. Many of the movements have identified neoliberal capitalism as a key source of the impoverishment of the masses over the last 15 years. As such, very little separates the political positions of the various social movements, even though on this or that issue there may be differences of analysis, of how neoliberalism and its sources are understood, and so on.

Of course, this does not mean that there will be no debate and no differences when a common political platform has to be forged. But given the common positions from which the movement proceeds, once the need for a national impact is understood it should not be difficult to forge a common political platform.

The more difficult challenge therefore lies in forging a common tactical platform. In other words, the movements have to agree on whether they are putting up candidates for the elections, or whether they will boycott the elections, or on whether they will call for a spoilt vote, or what in other countries is called a ‘No Vote’. In 2004, the movements were not able to bring these three positions together and to forge a common position. The divisions along these lines were not only restricted to differences between formations. They also played themselves out within formations. For example, as a result of these divisions the APF in Gauteng was not able to agree on a common approach to the elections, and it decided, “it was up to individual affiliates to decide what to do on the day of the elections”.

In 2009, the movements are again divided along these three basic positions. Firstly, there are those who want to put up candidates in the elections. The Operation Khanyisa Movement and the Ecopeace led initiative fall into this category. Although related in some way to the social movements, the Workers International Vanguard League is constituted as a political party, and its organisational base does not rest on formations that are part of the social movements. Secondly, there are formations that promote a boycott of the elections. Among these are formations like the AEC, LPM and Abahlali. The third option is the ‘spoilt ballot option’ or ‘No Vote’. This position enjoys support in some sections of the APF (Gauteng), and some activists in Jubilee SA.

The boycott and ‘No Vote’ position share strong commonalities in that they both do not think there exist political parties – at this stage – who represent the interests of the poor and the working class. Given that the formations that want to put up candidates, in particular OKM and the Ecopeace- led initiative, have programmes that are similar to those of the broad social movements, and that represents the interests of the working class and the poor, why should the movements not support these two formations, or why should the movements themselves not constitute an electoral front as called for by these formations?

There are several reasons why an electoral front forged by the movements, and that seeks to put up candidates in the coming elections, will not be able to make the national political impact that the movements need to make at this moment of South Africa’s post-apartheid history.

The absence of a national political presence and infrastructure Both the groups that are initiating the electoral fronts do not have a national presence. They are localised in character and therefore do not have a national political infrastructure that can be utilised to mount an effective national campaign. A national political infrastructure has two key elements to

1. On the one hand it is made up of a network of activists across the country who share a common political outlook, common methods of organising, and a common political language. Further, this network of activists must not only understand itself as sharing these common features – it must be seen by the working class as sharing these common political and organisational features. When a front wants to put up candidates whose mandate is of a long-term character , such as sending someone to parliament, it is not enough to have a ‘local representative’ of a front in a particular community. The community has to develop a political relationship not just with the local representative, who may well come from that particular community, but with all the other representatives or candidates of the electoral front. This kind of relationship with communities nationally, and a common national identity among the militants, cannot be created in a few months and in the heat of an election battle. Given the localised character of all the groups who may form the front, and given its formation on the eve of the elections, it is impossible to create a national political movement that is capable of making a national impact.

It may well be argued that the United Democratic Front, for example, was able to make a national impact in the 1980s, although it was a front of organisations. The UDF, however, was formed a year in advance of the Tricameral elections in

1984. More importantly, the UDF did not create from scratch a national political presence and a national political infrastructure. Already, among the organisations that came together to form the UDF there were a couple of them which had a national presence, like the various student formations – COSAS, AZASO and NUSAS. Moreover, a certain language of politics had already developed, and a network of activists on a national level had already been formed between 1979 and 1983. In addition, they saw themselves as belonging to a ‘Congress movement’.

The other side of a national political infrastructure is the existence of a national organisational structure that the front can lean on as it undertakes its campaign. Unless fronts become organisations in themselves, they will need pre-existing national organisational infrastructure to conduct national campaigns. Most localised organisations are not geared to national work and, for example, are not able to conduct ongoing communications at a national level. During the UDF days, the various student organisations, some unions who were within the UDF, as well as unions outside the UDF, all these provided a national organisational infrastructure that was able to anchor the UDF, as least in its early days.

If, on the other hand, these groups like OKM are looking at purely localised or at best provincial campaigns, they will be taking the movements back and not forward. For although the social movements are not a single political formation on a national level, they have the experience of national political actions, and of projecting a common set of overall perspectives. Over the last 10 years we have the experience of the mobilisations against the WSSD, as well as the mobilisations against the war on Iraq. More importantly, however, is that the coming elections are national elections, and the broad mass of the people will be engaged in a national debate, and not localised or provincial debates.

The experience of local elections cannot be transferred to a national level

Both the formations that are sponsoring electoral fronts have experience of putting up candidates at a local level. Both have succeeded in getting their candidates elected to a local municipality. While one can debate the way the groups have used their positions in local government, the key issue is whether the experience of putting up candidates at a local level transfer to a national level.

At a municipal level, a localised group is able to fulfil the political and historical conditions for taking up the option of putting up candidates. At this level the groups are able to build up a network of activists who share a vision and methods of organising, who have a self-conscious identity, and are seen by the local community as representing a common political identity. More importantly, if these groups have been active over a period of time in the community, and had been tested in a range of struggles, the community is able to build up a shared political understanding and a relationship of political trust with them. It is this political trust and shared political understanding that makes it possible for the community to take a long-term position in its political support for the group.

The community, and the working class in general, has no real basis for transferring its political trust in the local group to other groups that it does not know, to other groups that it only hears about in the context of the elections. Not even the fact that the group it has trust in vouches for the other groups will convince the local community to transfer its support to these groups. For us as a left we should celebrate this ‘suspicion’ or this reluctance to transfer political trust to unknown people, even at the behest of those the community has political trust in. We must support the right of the community to test whatever national formation independently, that is, to test it in actual practice, rather than based on (political) guarantees from a local group.

The weaknesses of the social movements

There has been much debate within the social movements as to whether the movements are weak or they are strong. For some the argument that raises the weakness of the social movements is seen as an excuse not to engage in struggle. On the other hand, even if we were to grant the strength of one or two groups from the social movements in the specific localities in which they work, what is beyond dispute is that:

1. the majority of groups within the social move- ments, including the SMI itself, have struggled to maintain the political profile they had a few years ago.

2. The social movements have not mounted a national political campaign since the days of the invasion of Iraq.

3. No group within the movements can be said to be active in struggles at a national level.

If these weaknesses are taken into account, and the difficulties of transferring political trust from a local group to a national group in a short space of time are factored in, we can see why even the strength of a single localise group cannot act as an anchor for a national campaign.

The political strengths of a ‘no vote’ platform under current conditions

As I have already argued, the boycott and the ‘No Vote’ positions are very close to each other. They share a broadly similar political platform – a critique of the government and the ANC’s neoliberalism. Both positions share an approach that does not put up candidates in the elections. Further, if both positions take an active position towards campaigning in the context of the elections – both raise political consciousness, build organisations, build alliances – then both of them can achieve the political objectives set out earlier on in this article. In a number of debates people usually argue that a boycott position is a passive position, and does not encourage active political engagement. This is not necessarily the case, as can be seen in the campaign to boycott the Tricameral parliament in the 1984 elections. Under the present political conditions, however, the ‘No Vote’ position, the so-called ‘spoilt ballot’ position, is a stronger and more appropriate tactical position for the social movements, as well as those opposed and alienated by the neoliberal politics of the ANC and the government.

There are three basic reasons why this is the case:

Firstly, unlike the boycott position, the ‘No Vote’ gives the movements the opportunity to test their political strength through numbers. Since the ‘spoilt ballots’ have to be counted by the electoral commission, it is possible to see what percentage of the voting population did the message of the movements reach. As opposed to this, over the last few years there has been a steady decline in the number of eligible voters who have not gone to register or to vote. This growing group of disenchanted people may make it difficult to gauge the strength of those who have heeded the call of the movements.

Secondly, and more importantly, a boycott tactic functions well in conditions where the institutions of the state are facing a crisis of legitimacy. This was the case in the Tricameral elections, and in many other cases where the boycott tactic was used successfully. In South Africa today this is clearly not the case. Many working class South Africans, and those from other social classes, still see the state – in particular parliament at its various levels – as an institution that can still be influenced in a positive manner. The importance of this point must be seen against the background of the fact that political tasks of the movement is to speak to the South African population at large, and not just to the members of the social movement, or even to those directly affected by specific instances of injustice.

Thirdly, a boycott tactic is effective where alternatives institutions of popular power have began to take shape, such as we see in situations of revolutionary upheaval. Again, this was the case in the 1980s, when boycott of the Black Local Authorities was accompanied by the rise of street committees in the townships. The establishment of such alternative institutions, even in cases where they do not (as yet) command majority support, may make a boycott of the old institutions of state an effective tactic. The effectiveness of this tactic under such conditions is predicated on the fact that political developments, and with them the transformation of social and political consciousness, are proceeding at a very rapid pace.

Under the present political conditions, therefore, the boycott would not be an effective political weapon. On the other hand, the ‘No Vote’ proceeds on the understanding that the present political institutions do not face a crisis of legitimacy, and that we are not in a revolutionary situation that is producing parallel organs of people’s power.

The ‘no vote’ tactic and the question of a national political infrastructure

One of the arguments I raised against the viability of movements putting up candidates in the present political conjuncture was that none of the movements have a national political infrastructure. Does this argument not apply to a ‘No Vote’ campaign that is national in character? Does the ‘No Vote’ campaign not need a network of activists who share a common political vision, that has common methods of organising, and that is seen by the working class and the public to share these features? Importantly, can the ‘No Vote’ national campaign avoid the problems associate with communities’ reluctance to transfer the political trust they had developed with activists and formations at a local level to other formations and activists with which they have had no contact?

There are two key factors that allow the ‘No Vote’ (or indeed a boycott) campaign to navigate these obstacles.

Firstly, unlike putting up candidates for an election, the No Vote campaign does not put in place a long-term relationship between a particular party or candidate and a community. While those organising a No Vote campaign will advance how they see the future, in typical circumstance they tend to put up “demands” as opposed to a “programme”. Indeed, in many cases (and this includes the case of WIVL) what is presented as a programme are in fact ‘demands’. In other words, in the context of a No Vote campaign the unifying factor between different communities is the failure of the political establishment, of the state, to deliver on the expectations of the working class and the poor. In such a context the historical requirements of a ‘common political vision’ are different to cases where a movement puts up candidates for parliament.

Secondly, given that the unifying factor is the failure of the political establishment, and that the unifying factor is established by the common experience of this failure, a No Vote campaign is able to anchor itself on a community-by-community basis, and becomes national in this sense. The requirements of its national organisational infrastructure are therefore different. From a different angle, we can say that campaigns like these are able to operate on a national level while keeping the local identities of the constituent formations of the front. A national electoral front, on the other hand, needs to subsume the local identities of its member formations and replace them with a national identity, since the prospective members of parliament have to behave as a single bloc – both in front of the public and in parliament as well. [I am of course not referring to electoral coalitions, whose members campaign separately and following the elections they come together to form a bloc.]

While the No Vote campaign will also need to forge a national political identity, its strength lies in the fact that it bases itself on the localised nature of sentiments and political attitudes against a neoliberal state that has failed to meet basic needs.

Lastly, the fact that the No Vote campaign is based on ‘demands’ and not ‘programmes’ may lead some to argue that it is a ‘negative’ campaign. For those who argue like this we need to remind them that the greatest political shifts in history,

and indeed in the history of this country, came from just such ‘negative’ campaigns. Apartheid was not defeated by the ‘positive’ people like the Progressive Federal Party, or Inkatha. It was defeated by the ‘negative’ people organised in the UDF, in COSATU, and in other mass formations of the working class.

Concluding Remarks

The new political situation in South Africa has opened up opportunities for movement building, and if properly used the movements may emerge out of an election campaign stronger then when they went in. In order to realise this possibility, the movements need to develop a common tactical platform, and avoid the 2004 situation.

A carefully thought-out tactical approach is a key requirement if the movements are to make an effective intervention in this crucial political period. Underlying this tactical approach must be an understanding that the intervention of the movements in the electoral terrain of 2009 is not an end in itself, it is not fixed on getting representatives in parliament, but rather on changing political consciousness and building social movements.

An important task facing the movements is to forge unity within the movements. This task will be most difficult when we attempt to forge unity with those who want to put up candidates. The challenge of these groups will be to what extent they place going to parliament above the needs of movement building. This test will be particularly sharp when we consider the fact that most of these groups are unlikely to make it to parliament.

the political die has been cast. Will the movements rise to the occasion?