This what South Africa’s democracy should look like on election day: thousands of people queueing from sunrise to sunset, seeking to take control of a political system from unaccountable and uncaring political parties that treat voters like an afterthought.
In the May 29 national and provincial elections, a remarkable democratic experiment will reach its first conclusion through the election of independent candidates for the first time since the dawn of democracy in 1994.
A process of entrenching human rights that began 30 years ago with the operation of the Interim Constitution in 1994, the Final Constitution in 1996, and electoral laws over many years proceeded with successful high level litigation over opening the space for independents and electoral law reforms are now spreading to make human rights real by allowing voters to reclaim political power from centralised and self-interested political parties – originally meant to be vehicles to facilitate citizens’ enjoyment of franchise rights.
The process directly confronts political party abuse of our proportional representation electoral system, which they selfishly interpreted to refer to a narrow representation of political parties instead of political causes.
This selfish interpretation has always been at odds with the right of every adult citizen to make political choices, which includes campaigning for a political party or cause.
This right is rooted in citizenship and underlines how elections are indeed about establishing popular sovereignty in a manner that emphasises the direct link between eligible voters and candidates standing for office and democratically elected legislatures.
After the first 20 years of our democracy that marked the laying down of the policy, legislative, and institutional frameworks, our democracy became one of many in the world known as “progressive tragedies”: places in which most people vote for a promise of a responsive and accountable government but which, thanks to our political party-dominated electoral system, end up with inaccessible and unaccountable representatives beholden to party leaders enforcing narrow party interests over public good. Political parties have ruled here since 1994, often with diminishing electoral support that recently resulted in the proliferation of inefficient local coalition governments.
Unlike in the credible Government of National Unity that existed in the first 10 years of our democracy, most factions-ridden political parties in legislative bodies, including those participating in recently-formed coalition local governments, conspire to sustain this political party-only system in the hope of wrestling power from rivals and controlling a portion of public funds for personal gain.
As someone well-placed in the parliamentarian circles told me, our party-dominated system, and the prospect it offers of gaining access to public funds for personal gain, “is like the ring in Lord of the Rings. You know it harms you, but you cannot let go once it is within your grasp.”
Throughout the past decades, it worked, like other such truncations of democracy (think of our transparency-deficient political funding arrangements), much better for the political parties than it did for the people.
Fortunately, independent candidates will reinvigorate the desire to change the balance of power in favour of the people. Will they?
On March 27, the Electoral Commission published a list of 10 independent candidates including the names of an activist who is also the co-founder of the Treatment Action Campaign Zackie Achmat, former Congress of the People MP Anele Mda, former boxing champion Lovemore Ndou, the president of the Mining Forum of SA Lehlohonolo Blessings Ramoba, and Ntakadzeni Phathela.
Since before 2014, I have argued in favour of independent candidates, and I look forward to seeing independent parliamentarians shape legislation and hold the executive accountable.
Their election campaign questions and offerings are uniquely searching and pertinent.
Whatever the election results, this is already a victory: bringing more people back into the political process, showing how our democracy could consolidate as a living proposition rather than a dry and curling parchment locked behind a portcullis with chains.
Most of the major political parties hate these independents. Their response is understandable: they know they cannot survive a fair democratic process in a progressive constituency that endorsed an independent candidate.
Most shocking and self-destructive has been the reaction of some party branches in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng to public notices of election manifesto debates involving independents.
After the election manifesto debates had begun, various parties sent informal WhatsApp messages to their members, discouraging their participation. The messages revealed an almost comical misunderstanding of what a manifesto debate is and how it is conducted. It claimed that the debate involving individuals who recently left a party to join another or stand as an independent could confuse voters and legitimise political opponents.
In reality, a manifesto debate is about spreading knowledge on election promises, influencing public opinion, promoting voter participation in elections and accountability.
Accountability is crucial in these elections as it is the obligation of elected political leaders to answer for their policy choices and political decisions when asked by citizen-electors or other constitutional bodies by providing accurate information and sound justification so that they can be compensated with votes or punished with rejection on election day.
Perhaps we should not be surprised by such reactions: any process involving a transfer of control, however beneficial to the nation, will be fiercely opposed by those who are losing it.
The main parties, particularly the governing ANC, do not like the idea of standing up to scrutiny.
I can also empathise with inexperienced candidates having to convey their election promises in contrast to the party they were once a member of, especially when one misconstrued statement could make them more well-known on social media than they may ever have expected!
Out of adversity comes better tactics. The initial years of implementing electoral laws allowing for independents will not deliver a perfect electoral system. We will still be stuck with centralised and elitist politics, mismatched party and electorate priorities in the complex system we call society, based on the illegitimate concepts of presumed citizen consent and top-down decision-making.
We will adequately reclaim that power only when visionary and accountable leaders accompany our representative politics committed to participatory and deliberative decision-making.
But the participation of independents is a start: a small, slow revolution in a country whose people have an erosion of their citizen rights by overbearing political parties.
Enough of command and control. Enough of tricks and truncations.
Enough of lies and evasions. While they funnel us into narrow political agendas, we spread our freedom to make political choices by voting for political causes that unite and advance us.
* Nyembezi is a researcher, policy analyst and human rights activist
Cape Times