The consequences of a breakdown in the tripartite alliance

Political trade unions are common the world around, particularly in countries where the workers speak English: Britain, America, Australia (at least historically, and even then not socialist), Zimbabwe. Among non-English nations: Germany and Poland. COSATU is not shy of political involvement, and might very well pursue the mode of socialist labour party. Our labour movement is not only already politicised, but there are many good international templates they might choose to copy if they abandon the tripartite alliance. And COSATU, or a Workers' Party front uniting them with non-COSATU unions, would surely contest elections after a split.

It's most troubling to imagine the state of the nation after a split. It's not like the deceptively simple breakdown of the DA when the Nats left. The government itself would be destabilised, even if it didn't fall. A conflict between urban and rural people would emerge if COSATU is as electorally strong as they hope. Even if the ANC holds on to the government, the position and credibility of the president and his government would be weakened because he could and would be accused of destroying the power base of the governing party. If the ANC is forced to protect its black African constituency, it might elaborate in unforeseeable ways on an African nationalist project.

This isn't only party-political stuff, people. COSATU leaders must know that a split might well precipitate a South African constitutional crisis. The country's political systems are not well-adjusted to a real contest for power. To begin with, the floor-crossing rules would face a more serious challenge of legitimacy. The extensive pattern of ANC 'cadre deployments' throughout the administration may cause a breakdown in the civil service, pitting ANC ideologists against the COSATU shop-stewards who were their erstwhile colleagues.

But this is the worst that could happen. South Africa would not break down. Civil society can function in South Africa even with unstable democratic government. South Africa actually needs a peaceful constitutional crisis of this kind so as to develop political systems necessary to make democracy permanent.

Highly toxic

Until last week, I'd say the fight between COSATU and the ANC was engineered by COSATU using the well-established second-rank mechanism. The second-rank mechanism is a variety of kite-flying employing spokespeople of an organisation, whose statements can later be 'clarified'. The man who started the fight about Zimbabwe, who issued calls for a blockade at Beit Bridge, and who poked Smuts Ngonyama in the eye about the Telkom deal, is Patrick Craven and he, as COSATU spokesperson, can't be considered anything more than a mouthpiece.

Only on Friday last week Zwelinzima Vavi got involved personally. Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma haven't yet replied in kind; they've just turned Ngonyama and Malusi Gigaba loose.

As usual, all this adds up to another spate of jockeying between the first- and second-strongest partners in the tripartite alliance. People are again talking of a split. But what does it take for COSATU to split from the ANC?

1. Motive. COSATU is going to need a reason to split from the ANC. Not the touted reasons involving tactics in Zimbabwe or Telkom. Rather: when will COSATU get its chance to form a government on its own terms?
2. Opportunity. Political decisions are taken when the omens are good, and at no other time. Observers of the fighting must realise that, to the extent that COSATU wants to break from the alliance, they would prefer the ANC to throw them out. They don't want to secede; voters don't like a loser.
3. A fast getaway. COSATU will need electoral support after the split. They will need exact metrics of how many voters will back them out of the alliance. The moment it looks like they can form a government without the ANC is the moment they'll split. They will also need to split shortly before an election or, if not then, to be sure they can bring down the government and force them to renegotiate power sharing. (An additional requirement is that they must be sure they won't be frozen out if the rump ANC decides to turn to alternative sources of support, such as the DA.)

The ANC must feel very sure that none of the following conditions will emerge any time soon, if can taunt Zwelinzima Vavi by calling him a 'young child'.

What of the role of the non-COSATU unions in all this? Some of those unions, particularly Solidarity, have interests in what's going on at Telkom, and they might be very keen on messages coming out of COSATU about this subject. And I'm guessing that COSATU may have more to say to the non-affiliated unions after a split from the tripartite alliance. Might the emergence of a truly multi-racial labour party be possible after all?

Kent Morkel knew his father

The southern Cape is a funny place for the Democratic Alliance. The split between the liberals and the rump Nats in the Cape Town metropolitan DA is well-known, and I've written about it before.

Many have commented that the DA is essentially an urban party. Some believe that the Western Cape and Northern Cape vary this because of a strong country vote, particularly from coloured agricultural labourers. Whatever the truth, the pattern of the DA's electoral support in the Western Cape particularly profoundly shapes how the party operates internally.

The towns of Knysna, Hermanus and Wilderness are liberal ex-DP havens. Several of the other towns, like George, Oudsthoorn and Calvinia owe their political tradition in the DA to the NNP. And the voting pattern amongst the coloured citizens of the Western Cape hinterland differs from the pattern in Cape Town: the DA finds less traction amongst poor coloured voters in the rural Western Cape, contrasted with strong support amongst poor coloured voters in Cape Town (or at least until the ID stuck its oar in).

The southern Cape's political strength is very much buttressed because the party's Provincial Leader is the mayor of George. He commands loyal support from the ex-NNP south coast, from the conservative west coast and grudgingly from the ex-DP south coast also.

Theuns Botha's position in the party is, therefore, strong. But it is not certain. Added together, his rural support doesn't outweigh the voting strength of the (divided) Cape Town metropolis.

The reason for this is because of the credible claim that the DA is fundamentally an urban party presently - even in the Western Cape. Cape Town provides more than 50% of the votes obtained for the party in the Western Cape, overshadowing the performance of the rest of the province combined. It is always more difficult to create large political organisations in country areas, so the metropolitan DA has a natural advantage, which it could use to dominate the provincial party if so it chose.

But instead, the Western Cape DA attempted to overbalance the provincial constitution's democratic mandate in favour of the rural areas. During the 2004 candidate selection process, the Cape Town DA conceded that the rural party would fill 60% of the seats in the electoral college and the city would fill the remaining 40%. Why? It was claimed that an effort be made to prevent disaffection and walkovers. This effort, if the rationale is accepted at face value, seems to have worked fairly well: the DA in the Western Cape suffered few defections in councils since the general election. In fact, the DA gained the West Coast District Municipality: I doubt this would have been possible without placating the west coast DA. (The electoral college deal was overturned by the DA's Federal Legal Commission, but the result of the electoral college stands because the FLC's decision was not retroactive. Special case, special pleading. But it worked.)

Even this left Theuns Botha a few votes short of a mandate to write his list of candidates for the general and provincial election. So he picked up those votes in the city with a little help from the Morkels. This was an interesting choice of ally, because the Morkels are very far from being exemplary representatives of the ex-NNP faction in the city. They play a different game: populism and patronage.

Since the election, since the cross-over period, certainly since the Provincial Congress, the alliance between the Botha faction and the Morkels appears to have died. Kent is supposed to have called in the favour of his electoral college support by being voted DA chairperson. But this is a small play. The urban claim on the province's party structures has grown constitutionally and is restored to its 50% representation in party structures. The urban voice is not that of the Morkels or the ex-NNP faction but that of Helen Zille speaking her clarion voice in Parliament. The country vote, led by Theuns Botha, is scarcely heard.

And now Kent Morkel has admitted to taking about R10000 from the micro-finance company Gilt Edged Management Services (GEMS). This, he says, was for organising a meeting between them and the South African Municipal Workers' Union representing workers in George. The purpose of the meeting was to get some SAMWU applications to GEMS processed administratively by the municipality. Because he wasn't a councillor in that municipality, he believed he was entitled to claim a fee for that work.

Kent was intelligently interrogated by John Maytham a few days ago on Cape Talk. Did he have a contract from GEMS for arranging the meeting? No. Did he pay tax on his earnings? No direct answer. Kent claimed that he had a receipt for the money, and this had to prove that his intent was honest because people don't sign receipts for bribes. What is the truth? The truth is that Kent's career is at the mercy of DA members who must ask whether or not the Morkel reputation is permanently damaged. The truth is that party machinists and brokers have one less faction to manage.

Kent's political fate will be an interesting barometer of the fortunes of the Western Cape DA factions. Kent Morkel seems already to have spent his political capital; his brother Craig's career languishes for so long as the Travelgate scandal is unresolved; their father Gerald is loved by a few, but hated by far too many; the ex-NNP faction is silent; and the Western Cape DA speaks loudest in the voice of Helen Zille.

Intermission

Dear readers: I'm busy trying to find a new job. I won't bore you with the details. This is taking a lot of time in my day, and for reasons of priority DA mal is playing second fiddle.

Profound apologies. I will make post about Kent Morkel now by special request, but will resume regular posting, perhaps with an elaboration on my job situation, after I'm fully employed once again.

ANC leaders want to buy Telkom

'Is this good?' asks Hellkom (which doesn't support permalinks). No, it is not good! It's terrible. It's a caricature of the ANC's theories about 'empowerment'.

Look, the thing is this: you don't have to prove corruption; conflicts of interest need not be corrupt in order to be totally irregular and out of order. Smuts Ngonyama and Andile Ncaba should have nothing to do with buying any bits of Telkom, especially when the bits they plan to buy have been bought for them by Telkom itself in its notorious self-funded buy-back scheme. This thing just reeks. Ngonyama and Ncaba may not be corrupt, but how can we possibly trust them?

Delport, Fischer and the honorary doctorate

Tertius Delport has involved the Democratic Alliance, despite his protests that he speaks only for some rather dodgy caucus in Stellenbosch University and not for the party, in an ugly, unnecessary and wholly ideological dispute about whether to award Bram Fischer a posthumous honorary doctorate. It is rather too much to suggest that Delport is deliberately trying to engineer a party-political platform on the issue. If I know anything about him, I know this: that he is unsophisticated in his over-educated way; that he neither recognises the subtle issue of dividing his responsibilities between the university and the party, nor does he understand that the Stellenbosch radicals may have deliberately set a trap for him and his unreconstructed opinions.

All he had to do was shut up and let Herman Giliomee, who is more lucid anyway, take up the issue and defuse it. Instead, his decision to speak left the party out on a limb, and this has been enthusiastically exploited by our opponents. I hear no comment about the issue that doesn't describe Delport as the DA's justice spokesperson and, since this reaction is wholly predictable, Delport is therefore wholly culpable.

He personally stands to lose everything from his public intervention in the matter; and I hope that he does. At a strictly practical level, his naivety allows us to question his capacity to speak for the party. And since he didn't consult the party about his intervention in the matter, so it is perfectly legitimate to discuss whether he has brought the party into disrepute.

Delport's grounds for his opposition to the award is that he doesn't think communists should be honoured in such a way.

Now Fischer may have been, as he claims, a Stalinist who advocated violent revolution. But, as I have said elsewhere, issues such as these are questions of modern politics, not of original intent or historical curiosity. Delport's words imply that he has a problem with the involvement of the Communist Party in the modern dispensation. There is no other way of reading it. Delport is undermining the legitimacy of the modern, governing, constitutional SACP.

Allow me to stand this on its head. The DA would be within its rights to protest without reservation if anyone doubted our own constitutional participation in modern politics in an equivalent way. If Blade Nzimande were to say - unlikely, I admit - 'I won't permit Molly Blackburn a posthumous honorary doctrate from the University of Fort Hare on the grounds that she represented a party in the apartheid parliament' that would strike fundamentally at the modern legitimacy of the Democratic Alliance. So, conversely, when Delport attempts to deny Fischer an honorary doctrate only on the stated grounds that he was a communist activist, he equivalently undermines the legitimacy of the modern SACP.

Stellenbosch University, I suspect, feels exactly the same way. Delport has effectively undermined the university by associating his political disputes with their otherwise outstanding academic reputation.

I hope everyone who reads this can appreciate the issue of the honorary doctrate itself differs from the fact that Tertius Delport chose to speak about it. The award may have merit, or it may not - that's entirely besides the point. It is that Delport decided to immure himself in it that polarised the debate so much.

Voter registration at the West Coast Village

On Saturday, when we ran our table at the West Coast Village, we got thirty-two names, addresses and phone numbers from people who are not registered. So at this rate we need to run another 190 tables and we'll have the newly-demarcated ward in the bag 8-)

The event we did was experimental; nobody in Table View has ever organised a get-registered event before and we needed to see what turnout we'd get. We can rely on a name added to the list every five minutes on an early-month rugby Saturday at the West Coast Village. We have to get that rate up. I calculate we can only expect another four to six registration tables at any given shopping centre, and if we hope to get 6000 new voters registered by the next election, that means we'd have to get at least a thousand registered each time. This is clearly not going to happen.

What did we do? We were allowed to put two small neat tables and a computer in front of Pick 'n Pay facing the central quad in the West Coast Village. It was a good traffic area, because most people were either visiting Woolworths or Pick 'n Pay in their visit. It didn't take any effort to ask people if they were registered. People who weren't interested said as much, and people who stopped to talk didn't seem at all resentful. The most discouraging thing was the evident disinterest in politics; many people muttered that registering and voting didn't matter. Few people who said this stopped to debate the issue. Those who stopped to talk were frequently politically aware already, and were already registered to vote.

What is apparent also is that the ANC government of the city doesn't form much of a talking point for most people who aren't politically aware. Some reactions to the ANC are, as I always anticipate, viscerally racist and disparaging - but one can at least say that people who think this way are, in a sense, exercising their political will. No, the majority of middle-class people do not allow politics to form part of their experience at all.

So the lesson I take from this is that apathy is something we need to beat first. In order to make our registration campaigns more effective, we must first tackle people's lack of interest.

We agreed around the table that we need a publicity campaign that works simultaneously withe registration campaign. There are a number of messages I hope to develop that will speak to the minds of Table View voters.

I wrote a letter to a business tenant of the West Coast Village who showed loyalty to the Democratic Alliance and helped us a lot in organising the event last weekend. I said

'One important aim of our party is to get vigorous and independently-minded local public representatives elected, who can speak their minds on behalf of the community amongst whom they live. The residents of greater Table View need answers to real local problems, which include pollution, traffic congestion and crime. We know that crime in particular hampers the development of local business.

'We in the DA definitely believe that the future representatives of Table View, Parklands, Sunningdale and Blouberg must be drawn from the people who live in these communities. Who, after all, knows better how to tackle the issues of the area than someone who lives in the community? And we will always oppose the ANC's "deployments" of outsiders whose only loyalties are party loyalties.' -- My letter to tenant of West Coast Village

This letter expresses some of the more conventional messages the DA has used to mobilise support in its core constituency. I'm worried that this range of messages is insufficient to drive a popular mandate for the DA. This isn't the same thing as saying that I doubt that we would get a popular mandate in Table View - I'm certain that the DA is the party of choice for more than 60% of the suburbs of greater Table View. But there is a wide gap between people's tendencies and their votes. We need to make sure that everyone who might express a tendency towards supporting the DA will get out, register and vote.

West Coast Village registration drive tomorrow

Tomorrow from 9am I'll be convincing people to register to vote at the West Coast Village shopping centre. We'll run the table until about 3:30pm, because nobody will be around after the rugby match begins.

This is the second phase of my experiments to find the best means of registering the hopelessly under-registered Parklands area.

The property managers insist on our drive being non-political, which is entirely understandable and acceptable. We'll be collecting telephone numbers for a registration campaign only. This means we cannot re-use the telephone numbers for DA campaigning. This is a pity, but we have every reason to maintain our integrity on this. The property managers know that we're members of the DA, so it is a leap of faith for them to allow us to run the registration table at all. Practically speaking, it can only help our relations with them if we stick closely to the non-political deal.

Harksen redux

Oh good grief. Well, I suppose if he's extradited to South Africa after his term then we'll just have to live with the inevitable rehash of Gerald Morkel's idiocy. Somehow I don't see the German justice system cooperating though.

Confessions of an election junkie

My policy is not to discuss here what isn't primarily the business of this blog: pursuit of the aims and policies of the Democratic Alliance in Cape Town and in South Africa at large. So - no posts on the subject of the American presidential election. This post starts at that point because I wanted to enlarge on a subject that struck me as I followed the enthusiastic reportage of the American election.

It's this: all ye who enter here, abandon logic. I tried to remain restrained and disinterested, and found that the consequence of this led me early to the certain conclusion that Bush would win a second term.

Politically I think this is very troubling; but mostly troubling for America herself and for countries in the Middle East and a few scattered others such as Venezuela and North Korea. There may be political consequences for South Africa from a militarist USA, but they will probably be mixed consequences. For example, SA's economic fortunes will probably improve on the back of American economic decline - up to a point. It would be terrible for everybody if the USA's economy finally imploded; but their lesser misfortunes may provide the rest of the civilised world with opportunities to replace American outsourced jobs, and to provide ample resources to hedge against the declining dollar.

So Bush's victory, dispassionately viewed, can be something of a good thing for South Africa and other nations.

But of course, in the end, I caved. I wanted Kerry to win; I got caught up in the fever; I started reading Kos; I wrote a letter for the Guardian's Clark County Ohio campaign. Anyone who's fought in an election will know the feeling that I felt, that I always feel in our own South African elections: the fun and adrenaline and the sense that a tidal wave sweeps you up and carries you into victory, that nothin's gonna stop us now.

But the voters stopped the Kerry campaign in the end, just like the voters stopped DA hopes of a more decisive opposition mandate in 2004. The taste of defeat is more acidulous because of the emotional tide that made one fight in the first place. One becomes a victim, and accuses the other side of dirty tricks.

The experience of victory, though, is worth the risk of losing. The DA victory in the Cape Town council in 2000 vindicated the fever, and the desire to relish the pain of the losers is not only hard to resist, but it also amplifies one's own pleasure.

Such, I imagine, are the sensations of the Kerry and Bush campaigns. If anything, the aftermath polarises the parties yet more than the campaign does.

I could be pious and hope that the American parties and people will now reconcile and 'move forward'. But elections don't work that way, and this is as it ever is. Elections are emotionally transformative: cathartic for the winners, and inspiring of introspection and melancholy in the losers. From these transformations are built the next contest; fought over the same ground and invested with the same emotions, but with new issues and new faces.

Provincial Congress at Stillbaai

Contrary to my promises, I did not go to the Congress. I am a very bad Democratic Alliance member.

But I have news nevertheless. On the issue of party organisation, some of you may have read the Mail&Guardian last Friday on the subject of a deal between Theuns Botha and the Morkel clan (subscription required). The M&G suggested this was a fix-up. Here are the results of the election for office-bearers, and I let you judge for yourselves:

• Leader: Theuns Botha (East region)
• Chairperson: Kent Morkel (Metro region)
• Vice-Chairperson for Metro region: Leon van Rensburg
• Vice-Chairperson for West region: Ernest Maroem
• Vice-Chairperson for East region: Marius Swart
• Chair of Finance: Kobus Marais (East region)
• Metro Regional Chair: Helen Zille
• Western Regional Chair: Kraai van Niekerk
• Eastern Regional Chair: Michael de Villiers

Of the urban liberal section, the only name here is Helen Zille, whose base is now in the national Parliament. Marius and Kraai are also MPs. The others are either councillors or MPLs. All but Helen are men. Importantly, I'd estimate that all of them except Helen are operators, or political machinists, and not charismatic public-face politicians.

The M&G speculates that Kent Morkel was given the post of Provincial Chairperson because he would then have a good base from which to launch a crack at becoming Cape Town's DA mayoral candidate at the next municipal election. So far as I can see, little stands in his way. Leon van Rensburg would be delighted to help him, I'm sure; he is extremely happy to co-operate with the Morkels by past performance.

The M&G also speculates that Theuns's people and the Morkels are now having to cut deals to avoid hurting one another. This would be a change from the previous status quo because they worked together against the Metro liberals during the 2004 national candidate selection process.

This is all I can tell from this list. I'll try and find out more by talking to some of the delegates.

The Congress was faced with some issues that might well, if endorsed, have swung the provincial party in a conservative direction. A motion about the death penalty and of abortion came up, though phrased in nicely ambiguous terms by suggesting that the party needed 'leadership' on these issues, without actually endorsing a platform on its own. However, time problems prevented about half the motions, including this one, from getting to debate, which is very unfortunate. This time the problem was acute because Muslim delegates were struggling by the end of the day because it is Ramadaan. All outstanding motions have been referred to the Provincial Council for deliberation. The Council may adopt them, or refer them back to the next Congress.

My own motion on the defense of the Western Cape Provincial Constitution, which in my absence would have been proposed by Ian Neilson and Frank Raymond, has also been prorogued in this way.