Text of lecture by Democratic Alliance leader, Helen Zille at the Wits graduate school of public and development management, Monday, July 20 2009
For many decades, during the era of apartheid, commentators around the world were predicting Armageddon in South Africa. Mounting repression and an escalating racial civil war seemed to be the unfolding logic of our history. When, instead, we made a peaceful transition to full democracy, the same commentators proclaimed that a "miracle" had happened.
It was not a miracle that delivered us from the evil of apartheid to universal franchise. It was something less spectacular but much more profound. It was combination of courage, common sense, and hard-work, displayed individually and collectively by great leaders and their followers.
These attributes rescued South Africa. After President de Klerk's heroic speech in February 1990 and Nelson Mandela's heroic magnanimity, representatives of the people of South Africa, all the people, sat down and negotiated the details of the constitutional democracy in which we now live. That was the moment that our leading political thinkers, from Colin Eglin to Cyril Ramaphosa and Pravin Gordhan, could come into their own. They proposed principled and practical solutions to our seemingly intractable problems -- and they reached agreement. The negotiations were tough and tiring but ultimately sensible. Of course there were compromises on all sides. How could it be otherwise? But in the end, everyone was reasonably satisfied with the outcomes - and, believe me, in politics you can never do better than that.
The outcome was a good constitution as the framework for our system of government; and even more crucial, was the commitment from all parties to honour and respect that constitution. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this. As history shows with tragic clarity, especially in the 20th Century, a determined dictator, ruling a fatalistic people with feeble or politically compliant state institutions, can overthrow any constitution without changing a word of it. Autocrats simply ignore constitutions, or turn independent institutions into extensions of their power, and their followers are often too unaware or lethargic to claim their rights. They let their freedoms die by default.
A key lesson the world has learnt in the past Century, is that liberation movements generally make bad democratic governments. The reason is that liberation movements aim to seize power and equate their victory with freedom. Their leaders conflate their own wealth and interests with the will of the people. Trapped in the culture of charismatic liberation leadership, many fail to recognise the truism that concentrated power leads to the abuse of power. It often takes great suffering for people to understand that Lord Acton's famous aphorism is true for all times and places: Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
South Africans had plenty of opportunity to learn this lesson under apartheid, when the sovereignty of Parliamentary enabled the ruling party to impose its will on everyone else, and often over-ride the minimal checks and balances that existed. The four provinces were mere administrative units of the central state, mechanisms of control -- rather than devolution of power.
During the negotiations of the early 1990s, it appeared that South Africans had experienced enough power abuse to prevent a recurrence. Our constitutional negotiators understood that the diffusion of power throughout the polity, the vital concept of the separation of powers between different branches of government, the devolution of powers to different spheres of government, and a free civil society, backed by a Bill of Rights guaranteeing individual freedom, were essential to provide the necessary checks and balances to prevent too much power being concentrated in too few hands. The diffusion of power between different centres, both geographic and institutional, is the concept that lies at the very heart of our constitution. In 1996, when the democratic Parliament adopted our new Constitution, it took the historic step of replacing its own sovereignty with the sovereignty of the constitution. That was the real moment of South Africa's liberation - not the accession to power of any single party.
I am going to speak about one aspect of power diffusion this evening -- the provincial sphere of government, which is crucial to our constitutional settlement, and appears to be under significant threat.
The constitution describes three "spheres" of government: central, provincial and municipal. The use of language is very particular here. It speaks about a "sphere" of government not a "tier" of government. "Tier" implies hierarchy and descending command. "Sphere' implies equality and co-operation. And the constitution spells out where power over various competencies is exercised and how the concept of co-operative governance and concurrency should work.
It is probably true to say that South Africa would not have had a negotiated settlement unless there was agreement on the provinces. They were probably the single most protracted point in all the deliberations. What made agreement more difficult were mutual suspicions from the past.
The National Party had ruled apartheid South Africa in a rigidly centralised state for forty years. Everyone fell under Transvaal high command. As sea farers used to say: "Pretoria rules the waves." But during the negotiations, the Nationalists began to speak of "federalism", a concept they certainly had never supported or practised. In the minds of the ANC, this evoked the Bantustans. This stirred the suspicion that the Nationalists' purpose was to prevent the ANC having all the centralised power that they had had. And indeed the ANC did want centralised power. The IFP, considering its own position in KwaZulu-Natal, wanted federalism, with some autonomy for its own province. Mutual suspicion clouded the crucial concepts of decentralisation, devolution and subsidiarity, just at the very time that these concepts were emerging as benchmarks of international best practice in United Nations Charters and Guidelines seeking to deepen democracy among member states. The idea that public responsibilities should be exercised by those elected authorities which are closest to citizens has become the hallmark of international best practice. It requires devolution of power to the lowest effective level.
Despite the history of mutual distrust and suspicion, common sense triumphed on the matter of the provinces, and we ended up with a system of provincial rule, that could, at least in theory, check centralised power abuse, bring government closer to the people, and work co-operatively with the local and national spheres. If provinces have failed to fulfil the constitutional mandate, either by failing to use their substantial powers, or by abusing them -- we must diagnose the reasons very carefully. Otherwise we will be doomed to apply the wrong solutions.
Let me emphasise a vital point. Our provincial boundaries were not imposed upon us by any outside power or by any colonial ruler (as unfortunately the boundaries of our country were). We, all South Africans, agreed on them ourselves. It was a deeply democratic outcome. Our Commission for the Demarcation and Delimitation of Provinces consulted the public and did a good job in drawing up the provincial borders based on history, administration, finance, convenience, demographics, culture and language. South Africans, with very few exceptions, soon accepted the demarcation of the provinces. After 15 years of democracy, there is no public outcry for them to be redrawn. Indeed, the only major public outcry about provincial boundaries, is when they are centrally and unilaterally re-drawn, against the wishes of local people, as we saw with tragic consequences in Khutsong.
If you read the constitution, it is clear that the provinces should be the bulwark of our democracy. They have substantial powers that have never been used, and should be implemented to the advantage of development and local empowerment. But I regret to say, just as one province is preparing to do so, Provinces are now under threat. And, if this threat materialises, our democracy is at risk.
The ANC has for some years been making ominous noises against the provinces, falsely comparing them with the Bantustans. The document released after the ANC's National General Council in 2005, noted disingenuously and with sinister dishonesty that it wanted, "all South Africans to live in the same country and territory, not in a balkanised South Africa, not in a constellation of TBVC ‘states", not in a confederation of autonomous and independent provinces and not in Volkstate".
The next move came in January 2007 after a Cabinet Lekgotla mandated the Minister of Provincial and Local Government to initiate a review of Provincial government. But little happened and the issue languished on the backburner.
Suddenly, in May this year, after the ANC lost a province, the issue acquired renewed urgency.
Last month, Mr Sicelo Shiceka, the Co-operative Governance Minister, said that the ANC Government would decide on the future of the by March next year. At a media briefing he asked: "Do we need provinces?" That this was intended as a rhetorical question was immediately apparent by the Minister's response: South Africa is one country, he said...and "nobody is expected to be out of tune".
Since then, a parade of Cabinet Ministers has taken up the same theme, blaming the provincial sphere of government for everything from dysfunctional hospitals, to corrupt officials or the failure of the N2 Gateway Housing Project.
All indications are that the ANC has made up its mind about the future of the Provinces, and is now merely going through the motions to provide a façade of analysis and consultation. Just as was the case with the dissolution of the SABC and the demise of the Scorpions, Luthuli House appears to have determined the sentence, and is now arranging a hearing that will deliver a verdict that will justify the pre-determined outcome. This, of course, undermines the very essence of due process envisaged in the constitution.
It is true that Provinces and many local governments have not functioned optimally. The question to ask is WHY NOT. It will take serious research and analysis to come up with an accurate answer, which is the key to finding the right solution. If the government decides to scrap provinces, or merge them, or turn them into mere administrative units of central government, before proper and detailed research is done into the causes of existing problems, it will merely exacerbate the problems they are supposedly trying to solve.
Let me go through the reasons the ANC gives for wanting to scrap, or merge provinces, or turn them into the administrative arms of central government. Then I will give what I think are the real reasons. And then I will say why I think provinces with proper powers are essential.
First, the ANC suggests that the provinces are somehow a relic of apartheid. As I have shown, they are nothing of the kind. This argument is merely an ANC excuse to centralise power, and to prevent any other party winning power in another sphere of government -- as though it is illegitimate and retrogressive for the ANC to lose an election rather than the progressive outcome of a democratic process -- and a sign that our constitution is working.
I have raised this issue directly in discussion with President Zuma. I have asked him to see the DA's victory in the Western Cape as an opportunity for South Africa rather than a threat. I have assured him of the provincial government's complete commitment and loyalty to the constitution and its objectives.
It is essential for President Zuma's government to accept that the peaceful transfer of power through the ballot box, albeit it in one province, has sent the best possible signal to the world that our democracy can work. No individual or party can claim the monopoly on policy solutions for South Africa's pressing problems. It would be in the interests of every South African to let the new DA government of Western Cape use our provincial powers to pioneer alternatives that can be tested and if successful, applied to the benefit of all South Africans. The Provinces can help make democratic choice a reality, as our constitution envisages, because choice is the life-blood of democracy.
But, I believe, viable political choice is precisely what the ANC wishes to avoid.
Instead, the ANC now argues that the three sphere system of government is complicated and often leads to over-lapping roles, long-winded decision taking and inefficiency. There is some latent sympathy for this argument among the general public. There are people who believe that removing the provincial sphere, would streamline government, reduce costs and improve efficiency. This belief is unfounded. There are Ministries, departments, projects and parastatals under central government control that are more corrupt and inefficient than almost anything governed under concurrent provincial powers. Just think of the Department of Home Affairs or Correctional Services, Robben Island, the SABC. And, conversely, there are excellent examples where co-operative governance has worked very well between all three spheres. Managing preparations for the 2010 World Cup is, by and large, a case in point. The key reason for this is that there was sufficient political will to achieve results, sufficient competence through the appointment of personnel who are "fit-for-purpose" to undertake the jobs they are required to do, and accountability to independent structures.
Where there is a lack of political will, co-operative governance is doomed to failure. The refusal of the provincial and national governments to grant housing accreditation to the City of Cape Town, or the cynical transfer of provincial land from the Western Cape to the National Government on the day before the April election is the kind of political sabotage that prevents co-operative governance from working. It is absolutely deliberate. It has nothing to do with inefficiency or lack of capacity. It undermines the letter and spirit of the constitution. And then with cynical irony, Ministers blame our three-sphere constitutional system for the problem their power abuse has created. If anything, their actions only serve to illustrate yet again, how vulnerable democratic systems are to power abuse. Democracy requires good faith and respect for the rule of law in order to work.
There are also arguments that there would be less corruption if there were fewer spheres of government. This is untrue.
Corruption is not bounded by borders or size. It can be rife in a tiny rural municipality or in a centralised government department, or across several departments as exemplified by the Arms Deal. Corruption proliferates when there is a lack of accountability and transparency, and insufficient checks and balances. Highly centralised systems tend more towards corruption than those that diffuse power throughout the polity and build in effective oversight. And of course, the greatest check on corruption is the willingness of voters to hold their representatives to account by voting them out of office. Only when politicians are really frightened of voters who are prepared to use the power of the ballot to change their government is it really possible to hold corrupt politicians accountable. Experience world wide has shown that voters are far more inclined to use their power boldly, when various centres of power are dispersed through the polity. We have already begun to see this at work in South Africa, through our experiences both in Cape Town and the Western Cape. Clearly the national government does not particularly like this tendency and wishes to stop it from spreading.
As for the argument that costs would be saved by scrapping or merging provinces, this would be insubstantial, if indeed there would be any at all. The services provided by the provinces would have to be continued through decentralised arms of the central state, so there would be no savings in administration and infrastructure. Probably the only savings would be in the legislatures themselves, about 2% of total provincial costs, but even here it is likely that most of the legislators (whose support would have to be bought if the ANC were to prevent an internal revolt) would be re-deployed to other positions, taking their perks and fancy cars with them, saving little.
If the ANC is arguing that scrapping the provinces would save money on salaries, then why has it just supported a huge 62 member cabinet for central government? The reported R1-billion price tag attached to the extended Cabinet is more than double the cost of the 9 provincial legislatures combined.
Another reason the ANC uses against the provinces is the large differences in income and economic opportunities in the different regions, which is true; and that there is lack of efficiency in most rural provinces, which is also true; and that these problems would be better addressed by central government, which is quite untrue.
The existence of the equitable share formula which enables the national government to distribute resources according to developmental priorities is a device to deal with these disparities. The formula significantly advantages the rural provinces, even when population migration is drawing more and more people towards the urbanised provinces, where people receive services for which the state makes payment elsewhere.
As for inefficiency, Clause 100 of the constitution sets out detailed remedies the national executive can use to intervene in any province that is not fulfilling its obligations or maintaining essential standards. This includes a complete central take-over of provincial functions, where it can be demonstrated that provincial governments have failed. But it also obliges national government to assist in building the capacity of the provincial and local spheres to function optimally.
Building the capacity of local and provincial government and enabling co-operative governance to work would require the ANC to abandon the central pillar of its policy: cadre deployment. This is often dressed up as affirmative action or BEE, but in reality it is a system of dispensing political patronage to a circle of political loyalists who can be relied upon to keep the dominant party faction in power nationally, for the reward of being protected locally. It is a network designed not only to entrench control, but for the purpose of mutual enrichment. It has nothing to do with ability or capacity to do the job or fitness-for-purpose. Cadre deployment (or political patronage) is the root cause of inefficiency, incompetence and corruption. It lies at the heart of the "big man" syndrome that has resulted in the tragic phenomenon of the failed states on our continent. The ANC's proposed solution to the challenges of governance is not to abandon cadre deployment, but to control cadres more closely. This will simply exacerbate the root problem.
In the months ahead it is crucial that citizens and commentators alike should not simply swallow the ANC's reasoning for disempowering the provinces by changing their functions, their boundaries or their powers: the most rudimentary research will demonstrate that the reasons currently being advanced are spurious; there are undoubtedly a range of other agendas at play here.
What are the real reasons the ANC would like to scrap the provinces? There are at least three.
The first is power and control. The ANC, just like almost all other liberation movements, confuses its own power with democracy. It does not understand that limits to government power are the fundamental requirement for a successful, dynamic economy. Government's key role is to protect people's rights and extend their opportunities, so that they can use their freedom to realise their own potential and energy, helping themselves, building the economy, and progressively lifting more and more people out of poverty. But the ANC always wants to tighten the power of its inner circle through increased state control, thereby throttling opportunity, enterprise and invention. An incompetent state of deployed cadres is a one way ticket to failure.
The second reason is even simpler. The ANC does not want other parties to rule anywhere in South Africa. When President Barack Obama made his famous speech in Ghana recently, he said one thing that sets Ghana apart in this continent is that it can change parties peacefully through the ballot box. All South Africans should delight in the fact that we are beginning to do the same.
But the majority party is determined to halt this trend. Let me use just two examples. The first is the relentless onslaught, waged since 2006, to unseat the multi-party governing coalition in the City of Cape Town. During my tenure as mayor, we survived at least ten attempts to unseat us, most of which were unconstitutional and unlawful. These included moves to place us under provincial administration, to change the system of local government to an executive committee system (which would have placed an ANC/ID coalition in control); It included nefarious attempts to depose leaders of our coalition partners, direct physical attacks, an attempt to buy-floor crossers; and an unconstitutional political hit squad, in the guise of a commission of inquiry, designed to launch an unfounded smear campaign specifically designed to discredit me and the DA in the run-up to the election.
We only survived because we fought back, and because we had the resources to do so.
The United Democratic Movement was unfortunately not in a similar position when they won the election Mthatha in 2000 and the ANC managed to sabotage service delivery by removing the municipality's powers and its revenue generation capacity. The result was the complete collapse of service delivery which enabled the ANC to blame the UDM and recapture control of the municipality by 2004. Mthatha never recovered from this power abuse. As a recent Sunday Times investigation put it: Mthata is now as "a maze of rotting sewerage and water pipes". The ANC was prepared to punish a municipality because an electoral majority had exercised their democratic right to vote for an opposition party. This kind of power abuse is entirely unconstitutional and inevitably leads to a failed state -- a phenomenon manifest in local government in several provinces. Cape Town could have gone the same way had we not fought back, and won.
The third reason the ANC would like to scrap the provinces is factionalism within its own ranks. The ANC is riven with internal conflict as can be seen in the furious struggles for control of various ANC-run provinces, and the purge of vanquished factions after Polokwane. In the past week we have seen provincial executives fired, and the ANC seems to believe it can deal with these decentralised feuds by scrapping provinces altogether. But factionalism is never resolved by restructuring. The battles are merely transferred to other levels in the organisation. The only solution is to allow contestation to take place in open and democratic systems, and to respect the outcome. And the victors must make space for the vanquished.
Lastly, let me return to the importance and advantages of the provinces, not only for strengthening democracy but for improving our economy.
Moeletsi Mbeki, in his recent book, "Architects of Poverty", identifies a key reason for the failures of South Africa after 1994 as the "crisis of accountability". The ruling party, he says, fails to deliver decent services because they see their duty as to serve the party not the people. Mbeki says "This will only change when state managers are made personally accountable for their actions to the electorate rather than to other politicians." And, may I add, when the electorate realises it has a duty to hold governments accountable.
Our proportional electoral system isolates the MP from the voters, and so it is especially important in South Africa for people to have local points of access to politicians and for the politicians to have incentives to pay attention to them. This is why local government is particularly necessary in South Africa. In the highly centralised state the ANC seems to favour, and Minister Shiceka's announcement seems to portend, the ruling politicians will have no incentive whatsoever to pay attention to the people. They will seek re-election again and again through the well-worn tool of race mobilisation and the abuse of state resources for political gain.
One of the main reasons that the USA became the biggest economy on Earth was the relative autonomy granted to its composite states. The states competed with each other to attract investment and skills. A successful new idea in one state would be noticed and copied by others. A better system of administration, a scientific discovery, a more productive agriculture, warmer housing and an advance in medicine - there was space for them all to develop and compete with each other. Individually and collectively, the states advanced the USA as a whole. A recent edition of the Economist magazine speaks about the healthy competition between California and Texas, competition that will bring benefits to the whole country.
In 1500 AD, China was in almost every way superior to Europe. Yet by 1900 AD, Europe was far more advanced economically and technically. One of the most plausible explanations (but not the only one) is geography. China is one unbroken land mass, and so one ruler could exert complete control over it all. Since those with absolute power are instinctively hostile to opposition and to new ideas, the central ruler of China crushed invention and variety, and condemned China to conformity and stagnation. In Europe, because of the wildly convoluted coastlines, the peninsulas and islands, and the criss-crossing mountain ranges, it was not possible for one ruler to grab everything. So there were innumerable smaller states, all competing with each other, and this made them productive and inventive, and despite severe setbacks from time to time, ultimately more progressive.
South Africa's provinces have nothing like the independence of the American states. South Africa is more like federal Germany. Nonetheless, individual provinces here do have real powers if they choose to use them. They can make policy and legislate on a range of issues including education, housing and health; they can be inventive, dynamic and more responsive to the needs of people. Their variety can encourage creative thought and policies, and drive choice based on comparative results.
No province in South Africa has ever tested the boundaries of its powers, so they are not defined by case law. This is disappointing but it is not the fault of the institution of the provinces; it is the fault of the people who run them. The national government has the power to set norms and standards for the provinces, but hasn't done so either. Instead it has usurped their legislative powers. In other words, while we have established the provinces, we have not so far begun to explore their creative opportunities, and their potential to bring dynamism, progress and prosperity to South Africa.
Ultimately, democracy depends upon the chance to change governments. If, in South Africa, there is no opportunity for parties other than the ANC to rule anywhere, then our democracy is doomed.
Moreover, we will be doomed to the politics of racial nationalism, not the contestation of contending ideas and policy solutions. As ANC policies fail, so we can expect the ruling party increasingly to use the politics of race mobilisation. If we are to succeed as a democracy, we have to become a country where people are measured by their contribution, their character, their effort and ability, not by their colour. Our role as an opposition party is to help demonstrate that politics is about a choice between competing political philosophies, not competing races. Being able to win elections, at least in some centres of power, is crucial to that quest.
The rotation of power at local and provincial government levels gives us the opportunity of maturing our democracy. If the ruling party nationally, for its own cynical purposes, prevents this development, South Africa will be doomed to repeat the tragic history that our constitution's founding fathers worked so hard to avoid.
We have learnt that we can shape our destiny by courage and common sense. We will need to draw deeply on these reserves in the years ahead.
Issued by the Democratic Alliance, July 20 2009
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