COPE(ing) after the 2009 elections: challenges and opportunities for the party

1. Introduction

Recent media articles speculating on the state of the Congress of the People have been a source of much interest to the public and members of the party. Most of these have exaggerated the challenges the party faces, particularly the internal issues that have been highlighted by so-called unnamed sources, such as alleged leadership battles, the supposed demoralization of membership and perceived factionalism. These views are obviously leaked to the press by people with an agenda to hurt or damage COPE. Nevertheless, others are on the record comments about real challenges that warrant consideration by the leadership of the party.

The recent resignations of 2 senior leaders of the party have added fuel to this situation. At the very least the party must respond to these issues, even those that are simply perceptions. In so doing, we must be open about the challenges without exaggerating these, but also not simply complain or throw our hands in the air, lamenting and painting doomsday scenarios. We must offer a way forward on how to address the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities, because despite what our critics and detractors may say, COPE is here to stay.

The Convention of November 2008 and the launch of Cope on December 16^th thereafter altered the political landscape of South Africa. COPE answered a very real need in our society for a political party that will be able to rise to the challenges of our post-colonial, post-apartheid reality. COPE's challenge is to define a political program and agenda that will secure the success of the national democratic project in our country.

This project faces a very real threat from forces that are either too focused on personal material gain to be loyal to that project, or have gotten lost in the mire of residual ideological positions that may seem at face value to represent a radical project for transformation, but in the end serve only to justify the very same accumulation regime they claim to want to transform.

2. The performance and state of the party since launching on 16 December 2008

At the Special Congress National Committee of 6-8 June 2009, the President of COPE, Mr. M.G.P Lekota, presented a frank critique of the party, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses and its performance. He pointed out that much had been achieved in the past 9 months and certainly in the 6 months since COPE's launch:

• The national convention was held and a successful campaign to defend the constitution was launched
• The party was named, launched, branded and its presence established on the political landscape
• By-elections at local government were contested and won
• National elections were contested and seats have been won in all Provincial Legislatures and in the Parliament giving COPE elected representatives across the nation. In 5 provinces COPE is the official opposition

All of these achievements, in just 6 months, have reshaped the political landscape of the country. The ANC, to defend its share of the vote, launched an expensive campaign of unprecedented proportions to ensure it retained its level of electoral support.  Estimates of what it spent range from anywhere between R250m to almost R1bn. The ruling party clearly panicked and went in to overdrive and even excessive demonstrations of its popularity and support. It also resorted to intimidation, violence, bribery and trickery to try to maintain its hegemony. The national official opposition to the ANC, the DA, similarly pulled out all the stops to ensure it retained its status. If nothing else, COPE made elected politicians reconnect with their constituencies.

The President also highlighted areas where COPE could have performed better. Among these were:

• Fundraising from members of the party and supporters
• Campaigns around problems the people of our country face, such as poor service, political intimidation, crime and other important issues
• Policy coherence on certain policy issues, such as BEE and Affirmative Action
• The timing of choosing our presidential candidate-it was left very late
• The resultant vote of 7,4%-all feel we could have done better

The recent airing of views on issues such as the profile of the leadership of the party, alleged leadership battles within the party, the list process that has been challenged by some COPE members as having irregularities, the state of morale of the party and other similar issues, has been approached mostly from a negative standpoint. While there have been teething problems in establishing the party, these issues were all aired and addressed by the CNC strategic meeting of June this year.

For anyone to suggest post this meeting that these challenges will sink the party, is simply defeatist. This will only happen if we surrender and do not ensure a vibrant, democratic political life and culture in the party. This means that all members should be critical, debate issues and suggest solutions to challenges, but those that continually paint COPE as teetering on the brink of the abyss are not doing the organisation any good. Such talk demoralises the membership and distracts the organisation from its more important tasks.

3. The historical circumstances COPE was born under

In his analysis, the President highlighted the material conditions that had led to the formation of COPE. Among these, the most significant were:

• The surprisingly quick deterioration of the national liberation movement after winning political power into a vehicle for personal accumulation, patronage and corruption that is even capable of deploying violence to ensure its grip on power is not loosened
• The turn towards the manipulation of branches and conferences to elect leaders in the liberation movement, denuding it of a once strong democratic culture and making it an organisation controlled by a small, powerful but shadowy elite, who caucus in the kitchens of mansions to decide who will rule our country and pay for it with money donated by corporate South Africa
• The failure of the liberation movement to transform itself into a modern. political party, making it an anachronistic organisation that seeks to apply outdated ideas and policies to a complex, challenging reality
• The failure of the liberation movement to adequately address the basic problems the people face, whether in terms of poverty, unemployment, housing, basic services, and especially in terms of complex issues such as industrial strategy, trade policy and the like
• The failure of opposition parties to fundamentally challenge the ANC and offer an alternative vision to the people of South Africa

Some of these factors played a part in creating a circumstance in which the then President of the Republic, Thabo Mbeki was removed in a putsch. The prelude to this was the rigged conference of the liberation movement that brought about a wholesale change in leadership, delivering the final death blows to a tradition and a culture of unifying the people of the country and promoting a new, foreign one of dividing them instead.

These objective conditions were also influenced by the fact that the mood in the country was one where a change was being looked forward to by many of its citizens. Before COPE, there has been a complete failure of any opposition party to offer a viable alternative to the ruling party. This meant that many South Africans felt it was time for a real change and a new, radical agenda to inspire our people to seek to change their own lives and not live waiting for the state to do it for them.

COPE was then formed in these circumstances and in record time was able to fight a general election. This start up period for COPE has been and still is a challenging one. Apart from the fact that all our structures have been interim, we have also had to defend the party against destructive forces intent on destroying our young party. For this reason we have to maintain maximum unity and ensure we mobilise our members and supporters behind our plan of action.

We have also worked within severe resource constraints, exacerbated by pressure from the ruling party discouraging people from supporting COPE through the threat of loss of business, jobs, livelihood and even social ostracisation. If there is one factor that has characterized COPE members and structures post the 2009 general election, it has been fatigue. Many of our members are physically, emotionally and financially exhausted.

Despite this, COPE continues to grow. How we address this fatigue, by acting in solidarity with one another, rather than competing for positions, in focusing on what we can do for the organisation, rather than what it can do for us, for example, is critical. It will determine the chances of, and degrees of, success or failure.

4. Vision and leadership are required

What we have to frank about is that, while in establishing COPE we have created a platform for hope and for change to inspire South Africans to demand better for and to do better themselves, there a number of critical challenges COPE must address. Among these are;

4.1 Consolidating the party organisationally and financially.

This is the primary task that the CNC identified, but we are currently being distracted from it by forces who are attempting to get COPE members to focus on mistakes and failures of the past that arose primarily from the circumstances within which COPE was formed. There is no doubt that some individuals have behaved opportunistically and badly during the formation period of COPE and this must be dealt with. But if the party focuses primarily on settling these grievances at the expense of moving forward, it will limit the potential of the organisation.

Already, a more coherent leadership has begun to emerge at national level and in the provinces, with a few exceptions. The challenge is to ensure this from branches upwards.

4.2 Consolidating the party ideologically.

This issue is important because there are important debates about whether COPE is a left, centre-left or centrist party. If COPE is to offer a clear alternative to the electorate, it must clarify this stance and clearly spell out the policies it proposes and popularise these. It must also ensure that it leads campaigns on these issues. For instance, there have been no campaigns around the issue of the independence of the SABC, the judiciary and similar issues. Now that Eskom has been given the green light to fleece consumers, what is COPE's response, other than objecting to it? Will COPE allow the collapse of the health services nationally and local government in many areas to go unchallenged? These are critical issues that members must address. Clarifying this ideological position will go a long way towards ensuring the messages COPE communicates are coherent. This does not mean adopting a socialist or a capitalist ideology, but is more about orientating the party clearly towards the weak, the poor, the vulnerable and the marginalized in our society.

4.3 Attracting all like-minded people to its ranks.

Many of these currently sit in the ruling party, the official opposition and in a range of smaller political parties. The reality is that COPE did not attract all of it's natural base from these parties when it was formed. Many of them are trapped by the politics of the past; race-based constituencies, patronage and even fear and cannot leave the parties they are currently members of because of the electoral system. Many cannot leave because they will lose seats or jobs and incomes that go with these. They have been reduced to being people who whisper to us in corridors and say things like, ‘we are with you comrades', but they do not join. We have to create an environment in which these people can freely join COPE.

4.4 Break the dominance of the ruling party over the state and sections of civil society.

This is important because the base of the ruling party, the hegemonic bloc that it leads, is fractured and very fragile. But COPE has not yet created a movement to take advantage of this. The ruling party is trapped in the logic of its own tangled, ideological incoherence. On the one hand it poses as a national liberation movement, claiming to represent the aspirations of the formerly oppressed and currently exploited Black majority, regardless of their class stratification. It simultaneously claims to privilege the interests of the poor, the working class, women, youth and people living with disabilities within this general orientation, but proposes both a racial or narrow nationalist perspective to resolve this, while allowing a stunted and even fake socialist perspective to exist alongside this. This dual strategy allows self-proclaimed socialist bloc and a trade union organisation to exist in a privileged relationship within the national liberation movement, despite it not implementing any socialist policies or programs. Indeed, its policies and its practice have resulted in the continued and even increased profit of monopoly and finance capital, much of which is now located off-shore. These policies have also resulted in widening inequality, continued high levels of structural unemployment, inflation that continually pressures households, along with high interest rates. The manufacturing base of the economy and its agricultural capacity have been systematically eroded, making the economy import dependent for both manufactured goods and food.

In short, the political economy of the apartheid era remains intact, save for three groups of beneficiaries of 15 years of ANC rule. One is a small, privileged group of Black business people, some of whom function as oligarchs in a comprador relationship between the ruling party and the state on the one hand and White controlled capital on the other. Ironically these White owned businesses, such as asset managers, control the pensions and savings of millions of Black workers. Despite this, the trade union movement does nothing about transforming this reality. The other is the Black managerial and professional class of people who have benefitted from employment opportunities in government and the private sector that has allowed them to enter the middle class strata of our society.  The third group is the former ruling elite, partly the bourgeoisie and partly those who preserved its position, who continue to benefit alongside the new, emerging elite. This situation, exacerbated by the conditions of capitalist globalization, and now the current recession, is a toxic mix the ruling party has not even begun to offer a way out of. The challenge COPE has is to think out of the box and propose radical policies that will ensure a historical break with the current development trajectory of our country that perpetuates systematic underdevelopment and endemic poverty to finance a life of privilege for the few and super-profits for corporations.

4.5 Re-aligning the opposition.

This debate has started but has been couched in terms of a competition between the DA and COPE. Such a race would be disastrous for the opposition. In any case, it is clear that there are some ideological differences between these two parties. The DA, like the ANC, is very much a creation of the pre-apartheid era. It is a mixture of liberals, conservatives, modernist and even some right-wing social democrats. As such, its challenge to the ruling party is defensive. While it has fared well in elections and has increased its vote in every election, it has not yet offered a credible vision to the broader South African population and so cannot transcend the racial support base it has of mainly White voters, with some limited Coloured and Indian support.

Similarly, the UDM and the ID have successfully challenged the ANC and won seats in councils and parliament, these have remained regional parties, as have the IFP, the UCDP and others. The remnants of other liberation movements; the PAC and Azapo have continued to limp along without making any serious dent in the ANC support base, despite its manifest failures. This is a fertile ground for re-alignment, but it requires leadership and vision. Most importantly, the debate should be about values and outcomes to avoid returning to sterile debates on race and privatization, for example.

5. What is to be done?

The CNC of June adopted a plan of action that gives hope for the future to all South Africans and the possibility of change for the better. It entails, among other things;

• Giving a full report on the electoral list candidate selection process to put this matter to bed once and for all
• Launching our branches by the end of 2009, regions by mid 2010 and provinces by the end of 2010
• Preparing for a policy conference in early 2010 and a national elective congress early in 2011. The focus on launching Voting District Branches cannot be over-emphasised, as this will be the basic unit that secures COPE a future electoral victory
• Taking up issues where the ruling party is abusing its power and undermining the constitution and our laws-examples include the mismanagement of the SABC, Eskom and attempts to end its independence and the attempts to interfere with the judiciary, among others
• Focusing on the areas where policy failures of the ruling party have exacerbated the problems South Africans face-the economic crisis, health services, education, the public service and local government, electricity pricing, the price of food and crime, among others
• Further developing our policies in all these priority areas to ensure our interventions are problem solving ones. This requires quality research and analysis as well as sophisticated communications
• Not allowing the party and its membership to be distracted from its program by those critics of the party,, or by those who seek to associate COPE with members of the ruling party
• Using the platform in parliament and the provincial legislatures to define our role as a patriotic but vibrant opposition
• Beginning contesting the 2011 and 2014 elections now

In other words, COPE needs to build a movement around itself. This movement must have the rural and urban poor, workers, youth women, people living with disabilities at its core, but also ensure that it is a party that attracts patriotic professionals and entrepreneurs to its ranks. COPE must build on its current non-racial profile and ensure racial minority groups are accommodated within the party in an organic manner.

These objectives will be achieved, not by whining about the election result, the challenges in the party or the difficult road ahead. They will also not be resolved by removing individual leaders from positions, as some commentators would have us believe. They will be the result of loyalty to the party and ensuring a culture of debate, discipline and democracy, as well as one of a collective leadership. Most importantly, COPE must clearly project the social democratic alternative to the current ruling party program. This consists of;

• A partnership between the people and government for transformation
• Placing an emphasis on poverty eradication through employment creation
• Focusing on enterprise development in the manufacturing, agricultural and services sector of the economy
• Bringing governance back in to the hands of the people, particularly at local level
• Consistently fight cronyism, corruption and patronage

COPE has at least a year till the next elections for local government, where it must register a growth in support and 5 years till the next general election, where it must be able to convincingly contest for power. Whether it can or not depends on the membership of the party who must remain loyal to it and the leadership they choose to guide the organisation at branch, regional, provincial and ultimately national level. This leadership must remain rooted in the people, all the people of our nation.

Phillip Dexter is the Congress of the People's national spokesperson

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