BLOEMFONTEIN - The Congress of the People (COPE) began its inaugural congress on Sunday, which will culminate in the formal launch of the new party on Tuesday. The key question looking for an answer over the three days of the conference is whether COPE is going to be a serious political contender.
It is not quite clear, from the events so far, whether the glass is half full or half empty in this regard. It is no mean feat to put in place a party infrastructure of this size little over two months after Terror Lekota's issuing of ‘divorce papers' against the ANC. For the COPE leadership and Lekota in particular - booed and rejected at the ANC's national conference in Polokwane a year ago - there must have been some satisfaction in being able to bask again in the warm applause of a party faithful a few thousand strong.
Lekota's effective co-leader, Mbhazima Shilowa, is an impressive politician, and one less weighed down by the baggage of the Mbeki-era and the humiliations of Polokwane. Both men seem to have a grasp of the importance and historical significance of what they are doing.
But the success of their party, intertwined as it is with South Africa's fragile democratic prospects, rests on some dubious lower level leaders. COPE has drawn in provincial ANC politicians with questionable track records. From outside the ANC it has proven particularly attractive to some very opportunistic types.
The situation reminds one of the Duke of Wellington's remarks in 1810 on being told of two new unsuitable appointments to his army, during his campaign against Napoleon in Portugal. "Really when I reflect upon the characters and attainments of some of the General officers of this army," he wrote, "and consider that these are the persons on whom I am to rely to lead columns against the French Generals, and who are to carry my instructions into execution, I tremble; and, as Lord Chesterfield said of the Generals of his day, ‘I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names he trembles as I do'."
However great the fervour of the conference delegates - and their relief at being back in a party that they can call home - COPE seems to be a party without a developed ideology, or coherent critique of the ANC. Two obvious issues for an opposition to bang on about at the moment would be the current government's inaction on Zimbabwe, and President Motlanthe's re-firing of Vusi Pikoli on clearly spurious grounds. On these issues the COPE leadership remained completely silent on the first day, for obvious reasons.
This reflects a deeper contradiction underlying the whole breakaway project. The theme of the conference is "a NEW AGENDA for HOPE and CHANGE." If the membership figures for the new organisation are correct, and any indication of broad popular sentiment, the party is riding a wave of enthusiasm for change and renewal.
Yet in Lekota's opening address to the congress (see here) he emphasised, if anything, the continuity with the Mbeki-era. He stated at one point, "That, we owe it to our forebears in Presidents, Mandela and Mbeki to build on the foundations put in place, under their leadership, in order to avert the dangers now looming on our young democracy." As if to emphasise that COPE carried a torch for the recalled president Lekota used signature Mbeki phrases such as "I make to bold say" and "some among..." He even included a quote from W.B. Yeats.
If certain influential COPE supporters hope for anything, it is a change back to the pre-Polokwane status quo. From a certain point of view then COPE should be in difficulty. It has no real ideology (so far) to sustain it, its leadership is only good in parts, and, given in its provenance, it cannot criticise with much authority much of what is wrong with the country today.
Ironically, what is doing more than anything to breathe life into the breakaway is the reaction of the ANC itself. Every time the ANC alliance demonises COPE they are pushing that organisation onto the front pages of the newspapers, and into the forefront of the public mind. The intolerant and thuggish image projected by the ANC, in turn, warns far more eloquently of a democracy under threat, than any speech given by a COPE leader.
The court case brought by the ANC in an effort to stop the breakaway using the name "Congress of the People" encapsulates the problem with their approach. The ANC was clearly indulging in spoiling tactics, given that they must have known (or been told) that they did not have much of a case. When they lost they catapulted COPE back onto the front pages of the press. If that was not enough ANC Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe, proceeded to accuse the two black judges who ruled against the ANC, along with Judge Ben du Plessis, of being "apartheid apologists." Thus, within a few days the ANC had provided COPE with much positive publicity, while presenting themselves as incompetent bullies with no respect for the rule of law.
Howard Barrell has noted that there is a familiar South African pattern of our rulers bringing into existence "the nightmares they most fear."
The National Party's "horror at the ANC and those it called communists caused it to treat the ANC as a more significant threat than the liberation movement ever actually was. In the process, many of us were persuaded finally that the ANC might be worth joining." Mbeki's intolerant reaction turned the Democratic Party from a marginal party into the official opposition and, Barrell observed, eventually roused the "agent of his own destruction" within the ANC itself.
If COPE does realise its potential in the 2009 elections, and seriously cut into the ruling party's support, the ANC will only have itself to blame.
