Quite understandably, amidst the present election season, South Africa is experiencing a significant surge of democratic excitement. This is reaching some kind of fever pitch thanks to expectations that the African National Congress (ANC) will lose its absolute majority in the National Assembly and will need to form a coalition government with another party or parties.
But how solid are the grounds for excitement about South Africa's democracy, often fondly referred to as "our" democracy? Recently, Professor Hussein Solomon of the University of the Free State unequivocally expressed his scepticism about the state of South Africa's democracy. (‘Vervang politici met kundiges wat moeilike besluite kan neem’ (Replace politicians with experts who can make difficult decisions) Netwerk24 https://www.netwerk24.com/netwerk24/stemme/aktueel/vervang-politici-met-kundiges-wat-moeilike-besluite-kan-neem-20240506.)
Nevertheless, probably almost everyone reading here, like ourselves, attaches great value to the things generally associated with democracy: free expression, including a free media; the right to vote; freedom to form political parties and institutions of civil society; regular “free and fair elections; other supporting freedoms such as the freedom of association; the duty of the government to be accountable to the public and such more.
From this, there appears to be convincing reason to celebrate “our democracy”. However, let us not jump to conclusions too quickly, as our democracy is fraught with flaws.
One-party domination
The first and material defect is one-party domination in that the ANC has overwhelmingly dominated the party-political scene in successive elections ever since the present constitutional dispensation took effect in 1994.
The effect of this is that election results are not unpredictable, as they should be in a genuine democracy. The uncertainty of the incumbent government about its own position and the fear of defeat in the next election spurs it on to govern well; not to be corrupt; not to embezzle public funds; to rule for the benefit of the whole citizenry, etc. However, if the outcome of the next election is a fait accompli and the incumbent government is assured of the support of the vast majority of the electorate, regardless of how poorly it governs or how corrupt it is, the incentive to govern effectively disappears.
Then you have a lame democracy of questionable quality. This is exactly what we been grappling with in South Africa for decades now where, as Jacob Zuma once said, the ANC is due to rule “till Jesus comes”. For as long as one-party domination remains in sway, any praise for “our democracy” will ring hollow.
This is further evidenced by the fact that one-party domination guarantees that the support base of the dominant party continues to enjoy the advantage of political power election after election, while minorities with distinctive identities and interests, who support minority parties, remain perpetually politically powerless. As a result, the principle of equal self-government, which is fundamental to democracy, is effectively nullified. In a healthy democracy, this principle is sustained by regular changes of government. Nearly thirty years ago, political scientists Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi explained in World Politics that for democracy to thrive, it is essential to have a regular change of government at every second or third general election.
Racial and cultural identity
One-party hegemony is closely linked to the propensity of vast parts of the electorate to vote in accordance with their racial or cultural identity - a mode of behaviour so pervasive that it can almost be viewed as a natural occurrence. Some of the earliest commentators of modern representative democracy such as John Stuart Mill have already highlighted this.
Of course, a multitude of consideration determine voters’ choices. (‘Toelaes nie bepalende faktor wat stemkeuse beïnvloed, toon studie’ Grants not determining factor influencing vote choice, study shows) Netwerk24 https://www.netwerk24.com/netwerk24/verkiesings/2024/toelaes-nie-bepalende-faktor -what-voting-choice-influences-shows-study-20240516). Yet in South Africa we have overwhelming evidence of racial and cultural identity inspired voting behaviour.
However, it is unquestionable that the ANC has an almost exclusive black support base. This is of course bolstered by its longstanding reputation as a "liberation movement" fighting for the interests of black people. Although the ANC (and the Constitution) profess non-racialism, and a small group of whites supported the ANC thirty years ago, this has since changed.
The other most important political parties are similarly distinguished by their distinctive racial and cultural identity. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) is essentially a Zulu party; so too the Umkonto we Sizwe (MK Party), formed around the person of former president Jacob Zuma. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is a distinctively black nationalist party. The Freedom Front Plus (FF+) is of course a culturally-based party defending the interests of (white) Afrikaners. The factor of identity has in fact strengthened in recent times, among other things, in the guise of Gayton McKenzie's Patriotic Alliance (PA), with its appeal to the coloured community.
As a liberal party emphasizing individual rights, the Democratic Alliance (DA) is of course an exception to this, yet not completely either, because the DA takes the factor of especially cultural and linguistic identity quite carefully into account as its approach in favour of Afrikaans in education clearly shows.
The factor of identity is of course intimately intertwined with one-party dominance. Voting according to racial identity propelled the ANC into its dominant position in 1994 and has been one of the major forces keeping it there ever since.
Two additional factors eroding the quality of South Africa's democracy must be accounted for: irrational voter behaviour; and the bribocracy that the ANC created and desperately tries to maintain.
"Irrational" voter behaviour
The longer the ANC remains in office, the worse it governs—one of the consequences of cadre deployment. There is almost general agreement on this. Finding a government under which basic infrastructure like power generation, railways, ports, roads, and water supply have deteriorated as much as under the ANC is a daunting task. Moreover, health services, crime prevention, education, municipal services, and others have suffered greatly under their administration.
Everyone knows this, of course including those who almost daily participate in the thousands of so-called "service delivery protests", which have become part of South African public life over the past decades.
The ANC even achieved the extraordinary feat of executing a coup d'état of a special kind against itself through corruption and incompetent governance, which is described by the telling South Africanism, state capture about which the Zondo Commission of inquiry heard evidence ad nauseum and reported on extensively.
The bottom line is that almost the totality of the public is keenly conscious of how this incompetent and corrupt government rules to its – the public’s disadvantage.
Under such circumstances, one might reasonably anticipate that the electorate would decisively remove them at the polling booth. Isn't that precisely what one would expect from reasonable people?
On close analysis, modern democratic dispensations are premised on the belief that voters essentially share and act by virtue of the same universal human rationality. Hence, they will use their voting power to eject an underperforming government that acts to their disadvantage, especially when this government is the kind of kakistocracy the ANC government has so overwhelmingly proven to be. (Kakistocracy is an ancient Greek term describing a government by the worst and most incompetent.)
It is doubtful whether South African voters generally share this supposed universal rationality for upholding a democracy in an essentially unitary state. If they did, the ANC would likely have been defeated at the polls long ago.
Yet, over and above this, we must account for another factor, namely that of
Bribocracy
The ANC government runs a system of buying off the public with a comprehensive package of dubious benefits – all under seemingly justifiable banners.
This includes the following:
Social grants. Between 25 and 27 million people, far more than people who are formally employed, receive social grants with which state dependence is cultivated and through which the ANC parades as a benign benefactor. Furthermore, dependency exacerbates as the economy flounders under bad policies of the incompetent government. Meanwhile, a diminishing pool of roughly 3 million taxpayers shoulders the burden of funding the ANC government's system of fostering public reliance on government handouts.
Through affirmative action, the ANC government buys the support of the beneficiaries of this policy, and thereby maintain their grip on power. Affirmative action significantly provides the framework of cadre deployment, a key factor that contributed to the decline of the public sector.
Black economic empowerment (BEE) also benefits a politically connected elite through procurement contracts and similar favouritism, thus bolstering the dispensation of bribocracy.
The bottom line is that the ANC is operating a multifaceted socialist system, using people's tax money to buy off support and win at the ballot box. Cyril Ramaphosa has just done it again by signing the National Health Insurance (NHI) into law.
Big test
The election of 29 May is a test for the strength of each political party. At the same time, and as important, it is also a major test for the quality of "our democracy" - our democracy with all its maladies, rendering it by far not so dearly to be cherished as one might believe it to be.
Will the election result worsen these flaws, or will there be improvement? Will the racial factor continue to be so decisive; will our democracy continue to suffer from the absence of some kind of universal rationality in voting behaviour, and will it continue to suffer from the temptations of bribocracy? And despite the offer of a variety of parties and prominent leaders, will our democracy continue to suffer from the disease of one-party domination?
The turnout of the registered 27.79 million voters at the ballot box and the results of the election at national and provincial level will help furnishing answers to these questions. Whatever the details of the result, evidently after 29 May we must take a hard look at the quality of our democracy and decide what needs to be done to improve it.
Koos Malan and Ilze Grobbelaar-du Plessis are constitutional jurists from Pretoria.
