Any party that wants to be taken seriously by an enlightened political electorate of this country must come up with a way of reducing to elimination the disabling gap between political rhetoric and practice. Of eliminating performative contradictions from our politicians of prophesying to be for the people while being ruled by personal greed and the habit of wearing ignorance arrogance with pride.
South Africans are tired of political rhetoric, lack of accountability and integrity from their public representatives. They're no longer impressed with politics of myth making. Those stubbornly paying too much credence in their own slogans are, as the saying goes, political dead men walking. The era of self-appointed messianic custodians for our freedom is coming to end. The real question is what'll replace it.
On the one hand are South African liberal politics that are flirting with an overwhelming influence of unsustainable conservative politics of the laager. This too will soon reach its ceiling. Which leave us with a question of what will take over as future politics of this country, the future that is already here in more ways than one?
Put in another way the question will be, why is the majority of South Africans not demanding means of holding their political parties accountable. What must be done to create a majority of enlightened political electorate that is aware of its needs and is prudent enough to elect politicians that are in reality competent to look after the interests of the majority? By doing so our national politics would move to the next political level. What is an enlightened political electorate?
In the meaning I adopt, these are voters with idealistic political views that are not necessary informed by utopian illusions. Who have unsentimental passion for justice and earnestness. Who demands certain degree of integrity and accountability from politicians. These are voters who'll be looking elect a progressive, pluralistic, consultative, participatory, and ethical democratic political. They would be looking to move away from exhortatory politics of race, nostalgia and passé myth making, etc.
The truth of the matter is that the present political parties in South Africa do not offer these people what they need. Cope's conspicuous beginnings last year held a promise, hence it captured their attention; but something somewhere went wrong. The next question then would be why did Cope then fail to gain the confidence of the majority of South Africans?
Opinion has grown in the South African public that Cope turned up to be nothing more than taxonomical adjustment of the ANC with same old failing politics. Indeed Cope in its haste formation took a lot of debris dumped overboard by other political parties; rebooting moribund political careers, some of whom were more on the opportunistic side. But is this enough to explain Cope's present phenomena?
The political analyst have been at pains to diagnose Cope, like Zamikhaya Maseti, who thinks Cope, besides its obvious teething problems, didn't do as expected because it did not clarify what class and political interests it represents. This statement seems to support the need for clarification on Cope's ideological stand. Will Cope, which is planning to go its first policy conference, be able to achieve this demanded clarification without getting bogged down on dogmatism, isms and the rest of obsolete ideologies?
The last election results show that quite a number of South African enlightened political electorate looked up to Cope to bring something fresh and more appealing to the spirit of our times. Something that would be more expressive of our social aspirations. This means COPE was not wrong by choosing to follow progressive politics (where political leaders acquaint themselves with sentiments and derivations of the masses and the narrative order of the day). When properly practised, progressive politics can sublimate even social /racial tensions by adopting development social spirit for common good.
Most people are of the opinion that Cope's failure was in betraying its own message, which is the practice of progressive politics with structural integrity. The process of nominating its leadership list is frequently put forward as an example of this. This, we are told, is why Cope failed to break the stultifying power of passé politics, and keep the attraction of the kindred spirit that were impressed by its founding principles. It'd then seem that in addition to clearly defined politics, Cope needs to first redeem itself by internal politics of democracy, integrity and real inclusiveness. Its democratic practise too will have to go beyond rhetoric.
Whether Cope can measure up to the challenge is something only its leadership can direct, and will be determined by the process towards its elective process. But how will Cope define itself, ideologically?
Cope will have to be something in the centre of radical collectivism of the ANC and radical individualism of liberal politics to cope (pardon the pun). Cope's ideology has no option but to be socially liberal, with clear bias for the protection of the poor. To create an egalitarian society that does not hinder individual freedom. How this is to be put in clear practical detail is something South Africans are demanding from Cope.
Social is used to connote some form of communitarian egalitarianism based on state power intervention. How can this then exist on the same sentence with liberalism, which, in classical definition, implies greater limitation of state power over an individual? We could sight Sweden, probably the closest social liberal democracy of our era, but this too many variables exist between that country South Africa to cancel the obvious advantages.
At the centre of liberal argument, authentic liberal argument, is that social tyranny over individuals could be worse than political oppression. The rules and norms of social life can penetrate more deeply into the details of life than laws, enslaving the soul itself, as would be the case in political oppression.
Socialist fear, rather, abhors political oppression more than social tyranny. They see in social hegemony (if they are nationalist), or social solidarity (if they are democrats), means to tame alienating individualism and selfish tendencies. They tend to respect the demands of traditions where liberals see despotism in custom. How then do you mix the two come up with something that'll look more like a monster of conflicted tendencies. Let's try.
A social liberal, in this case, would respect good custom without necessary conforming due to custom or tradition, but by choice of reason. And would disregard bad out dated customs based on similar reasons. A black man, for instance, who follows his authentic tradition, but thinks polygamous laws are outdated, oppressive and hypocritically, would be a great example of a social liberal. He's more driven by a progressive spirit than stagnating, even repressive tendencies. His would be a typical life of someone who does not uncritically imitate others, or follow obsolete laws (or even fads for that matter just because they happen to be novel) just because they happen to be traditional. He'll be a person who has developed critical qualities of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling and even moral preference. He'll be a typical example of an enlightened electorate this country needs.
Progressive people sieve what is best out of everything; hence they tend to be cosmopolitan. Typical of progressive people is aversion to coercion of any kind. What is imperative to them is freedom to choose, even choosing against the lights of the so called progressive spirit when the need arises. Their bête noir is violation of liberty. They're pluralistic in sense that they believe and tolerate diverse ways of living.
The major task of social liberals is balancing individual rights /freedoms against broader common (social) good. As it is now in our country our political parties caters too much for one or the other at the expense of the rest. It be wonderful if a new party like Cope were to seek to find this balance, promote moral and political ethics in the process. Maybe then our politicians would learn to be less proud of lies, performance contradictions and the rest of cloying carnivalesque that has become the nature of our politics.
What is imperative is that we should not be afraid to take what we can use from whatever source of historical thinking, whether be Liberal, Socialist, Marxist, or Religious. We must be open to innovative thinking, what JS Mill called 'experiment in living' if we've enough reason to believe it will work for our situation to achieve our goals.
What we need is a party that'll stand for real constituent democracy, the separation of powers, habeas corpus (aggressive respect for the constitution of the country), and transparent governance. We need a vision of governance that seek to extend personal autonomy to as many people as possible without neglecting the need for an egalitarian society. And we are growing in numbers by the day. To those who think otherwise we can only say the future is not on your side.
Mphuthumi Ntabeni is editor of http://copetown.org/ and COPE's head of research in the Western Cape legislature.
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
