Raenette Taljaard, director of the Helen Suzman Foundation, interviews Mosiuoa Lekota, president of the Congress of the People

RAENETTE TALJAARD: What are your views on COPE's performance during the election campaign and what it may signal for the future?

MOSIUOA LEKOTA: There's a very big sense among South Africans that we need a viable nationwide opposition to counterbalance the ruling party. I think that arises from the fact that many of the promises of democracy that all of us, black and white, cherished when we came to democracy have eluded us.

I think people feel that insufficient focus has been placed on realising those objectives, and therefore you need an alternative formation that might present the capacity to deal with that challenge, and in the intervening period be able to apply sufficient pressure on the ruling party to compel it to focus on these issues.

During the election campaign that sense of need was very, very strong. Nevertheless, I think COPE took some steps that undermined the even bigger impact that we could have made. But given the fact that we formed the party very close to the elections, drawing so many disparate elements from various political formations already in existence, and from non-political backgrounds, mistakes and miscalculations were bound to happen.

Overall, though, to have been able to return 37 members to Parliament, and emerge as the second-strongest party in five provinces, is significant. So I'm very inspired by the realisation that we took this step at a time when the conditions were ripe.

It remains our challenge to continue to build the party so that it can systematically present alternatives that will persuade even those that have barely heard the name COPE to ask what it is and what it is capable of doing. So at present we are working hard to define COPE, as well as to educate our members and supporters, and potential supporters, about what COPE is, as opposed to the ruling party and other parties.

It is very important to underline that COPE is a post-liberation, modern political party, and to understand its historical foundations. Commentators said that COPE was formed as a matter of personal disgruntlement. I think there is a far more profound historical reason why COPE had to come to pass. Liberation organisations, on the day that democracy is achieved, have essentially achieved their historic mission. From that point onwards, the country needs an organisation geared towards governing. There's a world of difference between fighting for freedom and governing.

Even the human and other resources you need are different. And while the parties of liberation may be concerned with rewarding loyalties of the years of struggle for freedom, the expectations of the people on the day that freedom comes are that there will be better governance, collection of taxes, and systematic and frugal management of those resources, and their application to the needs and interests of the people.

People don't live in history. They live today and tomorrow. COPE is important because we now need an organisation that amasses capable and highly trained men and women, who will manage the resources of the nation in such a way that they don't go to waste - who understand the urgency of the task of eliminating homelessness, of productive investments that will bring returns - rather than locating people in positions of power purely because they want to be rewarded for their years in exile or prison or the underground. COPE must focus on showing itself to understand that the task now is to govern, and not to reward the loyalties of yesterday.

TALJAARD: How does one manage the birthing pains that building a new party is clearly entailing? How do you plan to address the perceptions that are emerging around the Grindrod memo, in particular, that there's a malaise in COPE, that it has somehow lost its momentum?

LEKOTA: This perception, first of all, is misplaced. When we formed COPE in December last year we had no time to set up party structures. Under normal circumstances a party would set up branches and structures, and then go into an election campaign with a well-oiled machinery of organisation. We had to set that aside, because the more urgent task was to focus on the elections. So we relied on structures that came up spontaneously, what was immediately available.

Our thinking was that after the elections, we would have sufficifent time to set up branches which would democratically elect their leaders, and we would then proceed to develop provincial structures. Those structures would then move towards a national conference, which for the first time would elect the nfational leadership. So we are still in our formative stages.

After the election the vibrancy dims somewhat, and the impression may well be that COPE has died. No. It's simply that the main actions have shifted from broad society back to the corridors of power, and people of course return to their regular work.

When I look at the volume of men and women who continue to volunteer, it is quite clear to me that people's enthusiasm for COPE is not artificial. The test is to manage COPE'S image in such a way that we direct it towards the positive building of the party, and at the same time we have to keep the organisation in the face of the nation, so that we don't entirely lose the attention of people who are reflecting on the problems the country is faced with.

TALJAARD: I think it was expected prior to the election that you would be publicly leading the party, and not only the face on the ballot paper. And subsequently there are concerns about whether COPE will avoid the kind of leadership contestations seen in the ANC succession struggle. These are two very different political parties, obviously, but politics is about individuals when it comes to leadership. So what questions are on the table for COPE with respect to leadership, beyond the democratic structures, which also play a part in the process?

LEKOTA: To set up an organisation is a full-time task. If you go into Parliament it's a full-time task. So if we didn't devote some portion of our leadership to the task of setting up the organisation I don't think we could make the kind of progress we need to make between now and 2011. So that was very important.

Secondly, because we are a political party in a society that has a political culture, it is impossible that we should not be impacted upon by that culture. If you take into account the large numbers of people that have come to COPE from the realms of the ruling party, the union movement, the civics and so on, these kinds of things will happen.

I'm not alarmed by that. What is important is the extent to which we will be able to manage it. Sometimes contradiction, properly managed, is actually very helpful to give importance to advancing issues.

Undoubtedly we will stumble along the way, but I work inside the party all the time now, and I'm convinced that we are doing very, very well. I'm very happy doing what I'm doing now because it's much more relaxed and I can take time to reflect. I don't think I would have been more useful to the party if I had chosen to go to Parliament.

I think it would be good if we attracted bigger numbers of very capable men and women into the ranks of COPE - positive competition to produce the best of leaders. If you don't lead with your best you can only be mediocre, and you can only fail yourself.

I hope that COPE can attract many people from the whole spectrum of life. But it's very important to attract men and women who bring forward talent and capacity, whether it's in public service - people who will be excellent, highly trained public servants, or in politics - thinkers of outstanding ability. This is the kind of thing I hope COPE might deliver to the people of our country.

TALJAARD: In the State of the Nation debate it was interesting to observe the ANC paying a lot more attention to COPE than to the DA and other opposition parties. How do you see the relationships in Parliament panning out between COPE and the ANC, and COPE and the opposition parties, largely the DA?

LEKOTA: I think that COPE is the party of the future. It can only grow. My sense is that many of the opposition parties are either very regionally based, or maybe one can say racially based.

They've got a major limitation of not being able to become nationally based parties, as a consequence of which I think that we will probably see more and more people drift, maybe slowly at the beginning but in bigger numbers later, towards COPE. They will see the potential of an effective opposition.

For that to happen, I think it will be to the extent to which the policy positions COPE takes are sufficiently wide to attract as many people as possible and make them feel comfortable.

We have to keep in mind that very many people in the ruling party vote out of loyalty to history, and it's very difficult to break away from the bonds of history. I had to grapple with that quite a lot. But increasingly the challenge of today and tomorrow weighed heavily on me, and compelled me to think, not of how good the old days were, but how terrible it would be if we didn't begin to work in such a way as to build the potential for a better future. I felt that as the ruling party we were not prioritising that sufficiently.

I think that will happen to more and more people as we move into the future, because those with the bonds of the past are becoming less and less every day. But those who arise today, for whom the future is more important than yesterday, are increasing every day.

TALJAARD: Does COPE have a policy platform that has grappled adequately with the relationship between market and state in this new, complex global environment of the financial crisis?

LEKOTA: I don't think that we have as yet sufficiently done that. At the moment we are setting up and attracting lots of people - academics, people in the business world, in agriculture, in all of these areas - and I keep saying that we need all of these people to support COPE.

When you talk about support, people think about money. But we need human resources that will be helpful in shaping and refining policy first and foremost, to understand the dynamics of a society such as this, and the place of South Africa in the international economy. To be able to make interventions at home, in the region, in the continent and beyond, we require the best minds to fashion such policies.

In the course of that, we should be able to identify men and women who, having been participants in shaping these policies, would be willing to make themselves available to serve under COPE's flag as implementers of such policies.

Candidates must not go on to the list on the basis of popularity, because they spent so many years in jail. They must be there on the basis of the capacity and know-how they can bring to bear in the best interests of the country, and therefore make it possible for us to impact on the lives of citizens of this country in a manner that will fulfil those hopes that, through the years of struggle, we dreamt and spoke about. We've got to turn them into reality, and how? What better tools than the best-trained minds and skills among your people?

TALJAARD: When do you anticipate having your first formal congress?

LEKOTA: At the beginning we felt we could do it just as soon as the elections were over. But the hard reality is different. You need to set up branches democratically. You have to elect from the ground, systematically, until you get to the provincial level. Simultaneously you must work on refining the policy positions.

This week we adopted what we consider to be the most advanced draft constitution for the organisation, which, in itself, can ultimately only be adopted by the conference. But we have a working document now that we think can guide our comrades in the provinces and branches.

How long this process will take is not quite clear. Because the country holds an election once every five years, it is very important that we should try to locate our national conference to co-ordinate with those elections. If we were to hold a conference this year, we would elect the leadership, but when we get to the elections it will be left with a few months before it completes its term of office. We have to reflect on that as well.

So we will give an indication at some future point. I don't think any of us at present can say with certainty when we will hold the conference.

This interview appears in the latest edition of the magazine Focus- a quarterly publication of the Helen Suzman Foundation.

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