It is hard not to feel ambivalent about the Congress of the People. The breakaway has to succeed (to some degree) if South Africa is to make the transition to a more balanced and responsive democracy. Yet another massive election victory for the ANC is likely to restore its overweening power and authority, and knock the stuffing out of civil society. As Blade Nzimande and Jeremy Cronin have correctly noted such a victory for the ruling party will leave the media, for one, "flatfooted and humiliated." In the short term at least COPE is the only party in a position to draw substantial black South African support away from the ANC, and thereby check a return to one-party dominance and all its attendant evils.

The COPE manifesto too - published on Saturday (see here) - says many of the right things about defending and strengthening democracy in this country. The party will, it says, "fearlessly defend the constitution and uphold the rule of law." It calls for all political parties to annually make a complete disclosure about the "source of the funds and material assistance they receive." It promises to "continuously work at improving the protection of the independence of the judiciary, freedom of the press and the independence of the reserve bank."

It says it will act to protect state and parastatal employees "from victimisation by public representatives and members of the Executive." And, it calls for the direct election of President, Premiers, and Mayors and the adoption of an electoral system which combines constituency and proportional representation components.

On issues of governance COPE promises to adopt measures to eliminate corruption in the awarding of government contracts, and to make it easier to fire corrupt individuals from the public service. It will also, it says, reinstate the Scorpions and "empower them to focus on organised crime, including corruption in both the public and private sectors." It will also "establish specialised unit to combat identified priority crimes and crime areas in each of the provinces."

Yet despite the undoubted importance of COPE to democratic consolidation in South Africa, and its stated commitment to many laudable principles, it is something of a struggle to keep continually encroaching doubts at bay. COPE may not just be a party of disaffected Mbeki-ites. But it draws a significant part of its leadership from the losing faction at Polokwane, and it remains inspired by and loyal to the recalled former president.

In this regard, the manifesto makes much of pursuing Mbeki's signature NEPAD project, but makes no mention of the crisis in Zimbabwe. It seems that the new party has not completely extricated itself from the AIDS quackery of the Mbeki-era either. Though not opposed to anti-retroviral treatment the manifesto says COPE will also "promote the use of natural medicines and indigenous knowledge systems and increase the recognition of traditional healers."

What is one to make of the fact that when in power the Mbeki-ites pursued a programme of centralisation which ran directly against the principles which COPE is now advocating? For instance, one of the Mbeki-ites final acts as the ruling faction of the ANC was to engineer the adoption of a resolution at Polokwane proposing measures which would have significantly curtailed judicial independence (see here).

The question is, does this matter? As noted before, the loss of power and the shift into opposition means that it is now in COPE's objective interests to defend constitutional checks and balances, and limits on the ruling power. Such contradictions are also unlikely to have much of an effect on COPE's performance at the polls, one way or the other.

But still, a party which opportunistically adopts certain principles (laudable as they may be) can ditch them just as quickly. There is one striking example of this in the COPE manifesto.

At the party's inaugural conference in December, and in the finalised resolutions published in mid-January, COPE seemed to propose a review of affirmative action. It suggested, for one, that "certain sectors of the economy that are suffering a crisis of skills shortage... could receive exemption from affirmative action [requirements.]"

COPE now seems to have done an abrupt about turn on the matter. The manifesto now calls for the adoption of measures to "strengthen the implementation of the Employment Equity Act and Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment." This would include the state taking the lead in "developing procurement policies that encourage the private sector to accelerate he implementation of these policies and to achieve employment equity especially, but not only, in senior management."

It is almost tautological to say that a party which adopts a principle for opportunistic reasons cannot be relied upon to defend that principle when it is no longer in their self-interest to do so. If COPE wins back office in the elections - and can actually implement what they promise in their manifesto - what incentive will there be to respect the checks on their power? If they only gain an oppositional foothold in the legislatures, what ideals are going to sustain the party through the long hard slog of opposition?

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