Service delivery has been lifted from a level of expected government performance to a level where it has become the be all and end all of South African politics. Services required by the previously disadvantaged communities are good roads, clinics, houses, toilets and proper sanitation, schools, protection against criminals, clean drinking water and electricity.
Communities that clamour for the delivery of services are overwhelmingly black. They are the ones who burn tyres, toyi-toyi and threaten not to vote if the services they need are not delivered.
Service delivery is a ‘black issue', not a white issue. Why? This is because the apartheid government did not consider it necessary to give these services to its black citizens. These services which black communities clamour for are, in fact, very basic necessities of life. Every citizen should have access to electricity, clean drinking water, toilets, good schools and live in a crime-free society.
Yet the apartheid government saw it fit to give such services only to white citizens of South Africa. Only those blacks who lived in townships got houses built for them, schools, running water and sanitation; the rest of the black citizens went without. This is why no whites are seen jumping around demanding services; they have them.
This makes the delivery of services an issue that is racial in its anatomy, in that the lack of services among the blacks was caused by a bigoted racial grouping which ruled the country. If the apartheid government had seen the delivery of the above-mentioned services as a fundamental right for ALL its citizens, we would be talking to-day about proper socio-economic problems.
We would be talking about skills and job creation, wealth distribution, ownership of national resources and land distribution. We would be arguing about which political party is coming up with a credible plan for the eradication of poverty or the narrowing of the gap between the ‘haves' and the ‘have-nots'....serious politics.
We would be debating about which socio-economic system, socialism or capitalism, holds out a better solution for us in South Africa. As it is, various political parties are falling over each other to paint themselves as those that will deliver basic services better, to a larger group of its citizenry.
The African National Congress took power in 1994, and because of the backlog in service delivery among the black communities, inherited the task of service delivery. Yet I maintain that service delivery, had all things been equal, should not have become a political issue.
If in 1994 all the communities, black and white, had the same level of basic services, the politics of our country would have been about economic issues and ideological debates.
Thabo Mbeki's government failed to correct the backlog, adopted economic policies that further exacerbated poverty among the blacks. The ANC government of 1994 to 2008 could have gone a long way, with the money at it disposal, to right these past wrongs, not completely, but very significantly.
The apartheid government never attempted to deal with the HIV/Aids problem because that government saw it as a problem affecting only black people and homosexuals. The Mbeki government did not deal with the problem because to the president it was nothing more than a scientific debate.
A proper government would have seen it as a grave health challenge and girded its loins to tackle it head on. Promises were made, year after year, to the black communities that the government would deliver basic services, but very little was done in practice. It is no longer possible to lay the blame for lack of services at the door of the apartheid government, as we should have been able to do. The ANC government of the Mbeki era is now jointly culpable.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is putting itself forward as an alternative to the ANC government because of this failure of the Mbeki government to deliver on basic services. A growing number of black people are joining the DA, seeing it as a viable alternative to deliver services to the black communities, and even as an alternative national government.
Yet I do not see how any black person could begin to see the DA as an alternative government to the ANC. Let me explain.
Let us suppose, for the sake of argument that the DA won all the municipalities in the country and dominated local government. Could the DA as a government come up with a sound agrarian reform policy for the country?
The DA is a white party, and whites own 87% of South Africa's arable land. Can we imagine the DA implementing a policy that would reduce this monopoly over land ownership, even to a fifty-fifty level? If it did so, it would so antagonize its white membership they would leave it in droves, a look for a new political home.
It is an elementary political maxim that it is not workable to put people with different economic interests inside the same political organization, the ‘haves' and the ‘have- nots'. This explains why the United Democratic Movement (UDM) as originally conceived by General Bantu Holomisa and Roelf Meyer became unworkable. The whites who followed Roelf Meyer into the UDM felt betrayed by De Klerk and the National Party, but still hoped to find a political home where their economic interests (land primarily) would be protected.
Roelf Meyer was their man, at least for a while. When the blacks who had joined Holomisa started to demand that land be re-distributed, these whites fled to the DA, which is why the UDM to-day is a black political party.
People in a political organization are brought together primarily because they share the same economic interests. The majority of the blacks in South Africa are poor, semi-literate and semi-skilled. The majority of the whites in South Africa are well-off, literate and highly skilled.
The two groups could not live harmoniously under the same political tent. It suits the DA to-day to say, ‘We deliver for All', because if they entertain serious hopes of becoming the next national government, they know they need the black vote. The blacks, in their desperate poverty, are willing to believe anything that remotely resembles a solution to their problems.
Yet the DA is hoping to convince the black people of South Africa that it is worthy of being considered as a viable political alternative to the ANC by promising delivery of basic services, because the ANC, up to now, has done very poorly in so far as the delivery of these services is concerned. My point is that a black person who comes from our political history cannot begin to see the DA as a political alternative to the ANC...with all its failings.
The ANC has a manifesto, the Freedom Charter, the likes of which the DA can never produce. There are no white interests in the Freedom Charter, yet the DA would have blacks believe it can satisfy the economic interests of the poorest of the poor and those of the richest of the rich. Baloney, as the Americans would say.
Trevor Manuel and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela have said it openly that the ANC has failed the poor. This is because since 1994 the ANC has been dominated by black people who cared very little about the problems facing the poor. This does not mean, however, that the DA would succeed where the ANC has failed. Its ideology and the interests it represents cannot become a substitute for the ideology of the ANC, the Freedom Charter.
The DA is just exploiting the gap that the failure of the ANC leadership has created. What would the DA do if Zuma's ANC girded it loins and appointed officials who would implement the promises that have been made to the poor? The DA would sink back into political obscurity. The question to ask is: Does the Zuma ANC realize that it does not have a permanent place in the hearts of the black people?
Does this ANC realize that if it does not implement the promises contained in the Freedom Charter, the black people could take revenge on it by even voting in the DA, just to get even, and suffer permanent misery under DA rule? People have been known to commit suicide when their lives become so miserable they can bear it no longer? Let us be warned.
Thula Bopela, is the author of Umkhonto weSizwe, Fighting for a divided people and he writes in his personal capacity. Accordingly he takes sole responsibility for the opinions expressed here.
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