DA mal

Municipal Systems Act applying to municipal managers

2006-04-11T15:27:00.000+02:00

What follows are the legal outlines for Wallace Mgoqi's employment. The exact details of his contract are private between him and his employer.

The Act quoted below states the task of the municipal manager is leader of the city's civil service, and the manager should not be unreasonably pushed around by elected political office bearers. Well and good - so long as the manager in this case behaves like a member of the civil service.

Mgoqi's non-cooperation with the multi-party government makes city government difficult. His behaviour amounts to breach of any reasonably-construed performance agreement (but then again, the ANC was in charge of defining that for Mgoqi).

In this way, he is abusing his office twice: he claims the benefits of the Act in protecting his job, and so makes us ratepayers pay for destroying the government's effectiveness; and he also forces us to pay his salary while he turns the civil service into a political grandstand, which is against the spirit of the Act.

From the Municipal Systems Act:

Inconsistency with applicable labour legislation

52. In the event of any inconsistency between a provision of this Chapter, including the Code of Conduct referred to in section 69, or a regulation made for the purposes of this Chapter, and any applicable labour legislation, the labour legislation prevails.

Part 2: Political strictures, political office bearers and roles

Roles and responsibilities

53. ( 1 ) A municipality must, within the framework of and in accordance with relevant provisions of the Municipal Structures Act, this Act and other applicable legislation, define the specific role and area of responsibility of each political structure and political office bearer of the municipality and of the municipal manager.

(2) The respective roles and areas of responsibility ot’ each political structure and political office bearer and of the municipal manager must-

(a) be defined in precise terms by way of separate terms of reference, in writing, for each political structure or political office bearer and the municipal manager; and

(b) be acknowledged and given effect to in the rules, procedures, instructions, policy statements and other written instruments of the municipality.

(3) instruments defining, acknowledging or giving effect to the roles and areas of responsibility of these political structures and political office bearers and the municipal manager must be appropriate to the category and type in which the municipality falls.

(4) Terms of reference mentioned in subsection (2)(a) may include the delegation of powers and duties to the relevant political structure or political office bearer or the municipal manager in terms of section 59.

(5) When defining the respective roles and areas of responsibility of each political structure and political office bearer and of the municipal manager, the municipality must determine—

(a) the relationships among those political structures and political office bearers and the municipal manager, and the manner in which they must interact;

(b) appropriate lines of accountability and reporting for those political structures and political office bearers and the municipal manager;

(c) mechanisms, processes and procedures for minimising cross-referrals and unnecessary overlapping of responsibilities between those political structures and political office bearers and the municipal manager;

(d) mechanisms, processes and procedures for resolving disputes between those political structures and political office bearers and the municipal manager; and

(e) mechanisms, processes and procedures for interaction, between—

(i) those political structures and political otlice bearers and the municipal manager and other staff members of the municipality; and

(ii) councillors and the municipal manager and other staff members of the municipality.

(6) If a municipality has a decentralised regional administration in any part of Its area, the municipality must determine mechanisms, processes and procedures for interaction between the regional management of the municipality and—

(a) the ward councillor or other councillor responsible for that part of the municipality’s area:

(b) any subcouncil or ward committee, where applicable, in that part of the municipality’s area; and

(c) the local community in that part of the municipality’s area.

Code of Conduct for councillors

54. The Code of Conduct contained in Schedule 1 applies to every member of a municipal council.

Municipal managers

55. (1) As head of administration the municipal manager of a municipality is, subject to the policy directions of the municipal council, responsible and accountable for—

(a) the formation and development of an economical, effective, efficient and accountable administration—

(i) equipped to carry out the task of implementing the municipality’s integrated development plan in accordance with Chapter 5;

(ii) operating in accordance with the municipality’s performance management system in accordance with Chapter 6; and

(iii) responsive to the needs of the local community to participate in the affairs of the municipality;

(b) the management of the municipality’s administration in accordance with this Act and other legislation applicable to the municipality;

(c) the implementation of the municipality’s integrated development plan, and the monitoring of progress with implementation of the plan;

(d) the management of the provision of services to the local community in a sustainable and equitable manner;

(e) the appointment of staff other than those referred to in section 56(a), subject to the Employment Equity Act, 1998 (Act No. 55 of 1998);

(f) the management, effective utilisation and training of staff;;

(g) the maintenance of discipline of staff;

(h) the promotion of sound labour relations and compliance by the municipality with applicable labour legislation;

(i) advising the political structures and political office bearers of the municipality;

(j) managing communications between the municipality’s administration and its political structures and political office bearers;

(k) carrying out the decisions of the political structures and political office bearers of the municipality;

(l) the administration and implementation of the municipality’s by-laws and other legislation;

(m) the exercise of any powers and the performance of any duties delegated by the municipal council, or sub-delegated by other delegating authorities of the municipality, to the municipal manager in terms of section 59:

(n) facilitating participation by the local community in the affairs of the municipality;

(o) developing and maintaining a system whereby community satisfaction with municipal services is assessed;

(p) the implementation of national and provincial legislation applicable to the municipality; and

(q) the performance of any other function that may be assigned by the municipal council.

(2) As accounting officer of the municipality the municipal manager is responsible and accountable for—

(a) all income and expenditure of the municipality;

(b) all assets and the discharge of all liabilities of the municipality; and

(c) proper and diligent compliance with applicable municipal finance management legislation.

Appointment of managers directly accountable to municipal managers

56. (a) A municipal council, after consultation with the municipal manager, appoints a manager directly accountable to the municipal manager.

(b) A person appointed as a manager in terms of paragraph (a) must have the relevant skills and expertise to perform the duties associated with the post in question, taking into account the protection or advancement of persons or categories of persons disadvantaged by unfair discrimination.

Employment contracts for municipal managers and managers directly accountable to municipal managers

57. (1) A person to be appointed as the municipal manager of a municipality, and a
person to be appointed as a manager directly accountable to the municipal manager, may
be appointed to that position only—

(a) in terms of a written employment contract with the municipality complying with the provisions of this section; and

(b) subject to a separate performance agreement concluded annually as provided for in subsection (2).

(2) The performance agreement referred to in subsection (1)(b) must—

(a) be concluded within a reasonable time after a person has been appointed as the municipal manager or as a manager directly accountable to the municipal manager, and thereafter, within one month after the beginning of the financial year of the municipality;

(b) in the case of the municipal manager, be entered into with the municipality as represented by the mayor or executive mayor, as the case may be; and

(c) in the case of a manager directly accountable to the municipal manager, be entered into with the municipal manager.

(3) The employment contract referred to in subsection ( l)(a) must include, subject to applicable labour legislation, details of duties, remuneration, benefits and other terms and conditions of employment,

(4) The performance agreement referred to in subsection (l)(b) must include—

(a) performance objectives and targets that must be met, and the time frames within which those performance objectives and targets must be met;

(b) standards and procedures for evaluating performance and intervals for evaluation; and

(c) the consequences of substandard performance.

(5) The performance objectives and targets referred to in subsection (4)(a) must be practical, measurable and based on the key performance indicators set out from time to time in the municipality’s integrated development plan.

(6) The employment contract for a municipal manager must—

(a) be for a fixed term of employment not exceeding a period ending two years after the election of the next council of the municipality;

(b) include a provision for cancellation of the contract, in the case of non-compliance with the employment contract or, where applicable, the performance agreement;

(c) stipulate the terms of the renewal of the employment contract, but only by agreement between the parties; and

(d) reflect the values and principles referred to in section 50, the Code of Conduct set out in Schedule 2, and the management standards and practices contained in section 51.

(7) A municipality may extend the application of subsection (6) to any manager directly accountable to the municipal manager.

Remuneration of municipal managers and managers directly accountable to municipal managers

58. A municipality must, on or before 31 October of each year, publish in the media the salary scales and benefits applicable to posts of the municipal manager and every manager that is directly accountable to the municipal manager.

Response to Cassandra

2006-03-08T07:25:00.000+02:00

The critics this week are all very negative. But most suggestions made are meant constructively and some ideas are worth close scrutiny.

The DA can't form a majority government on its own in Cape Town. We polled over 40% of the votes in Cape Town, and the ANC nearly 40%. The next city government is balanced on a knife's edge.

I believe this week's Cassandra complex misses the mark. In its own right, 40% of the vote in Cape Town is hardly insignificant. This 40% is the DA's core constituency: 40% of the voters of Cape Town vote DA when they are asked. We've known the extent of our core constituency since about 1998 or 1999. Before that, many of those people voted National Party in the past and, in fact, nearly all previous National Party supporters now vote DA. This should surprise nobody, and can be instantly verified by cross-checking with the results of previous elections in which the Nats participated.

The support for the DA in other cities is quite as resilient, and similarly shouldn't be trivialised. In Johannesburg our share of the vote is slightly eroded, but in Pretoria it is slightly increased. The DA's not going to disappear, it is not in decline, and we have no reason to think that the writing is on the wall.

So why is everybody worrying about Cape Town? Because the DA vote went from 53% last election to 41% in this? Laurence Caromba says: 'The problem is that as fast as the ANC is losing support, the DA is losing it faster.' Let's now look at that.

Some observers look at a 'decline' of support for the DA from the 53% in 2000 that created a government (later demolished by floor-crossing) to 41% in 2006 and describe it as an absolute decline in DA support. This is ludicrous. We know where those 'missing votes' are - in the back pocket of the Independent Democrats. Do the maths. If you add the ID's vote to the DA's you are back where you started in 2000 - or, indeed, 1994. The ANC has made no gains, and the DA's message of 'don't split the opposition vote' is precisely on target.

I don't for a minute want to describe the ID's support as somehow illegitimate. On the contrary, we in the DA should be asking ourselves hard questions about how it came about that this new party can take a fifth of the vote away from us. We just know that these voters will be disappointed at the next floor-crossing. It will give the ANC a lot of trouble to poach the minimum nine DA councillors in order to erode our elected numbers. But the ANC will find it relatively easy to steal a minimum of three ID councillors. Splitting the opposition vote has never been more dangerous or costly. Maybe we didn't make that clear enough to the voters of Cape Town.

This 10% of voters who lent their support to the ID in this election are not to be dismissed lightly. We know, roughly, who they are. Most of them live in Mitchell's Plain, and some of them live in Atlantis, Kensington, Grassy Park, Lotus River and Ottery. In those suburbs, the vote split three ways. In all of them except Mitchell's Plain the ANC benefitted from the split.

What's psephologically interesting about these voters is that they voted for the Nats in the 1996 and 1999 elections, for the DA in 2000 and for the ID in 2005 and 2006. These are, unexpectedly in South Africa, undecided voters. South Africans believe that voter support for parties is very fixed, and so it is; but here is the great exception.

Electorally, here is a place where the DA must be critical of itself. We have, perhaps, grown excessively used to the idea of a core constituency; and though we work hard during elections to mobilise these people, we do not devote sufficient time and resources to persuading the undecided voters of Cape Town to elect our candidates. We can and will work on changing that. What we know is that this 10% of Cape Town voters have, in the past, voted for the DA, and now vote for the ID. They did not vote for the ANC, and never have. These voters are not the ANC's to gain, they are the DA's to lose.

From a core constituency a party can draw supporters, funds, a definite base of votes and, most importantly, a sense of legitimacy and permanence. In this country, only the ANC, the DA, the IFP and, in a special sense, the ACDP have this kind of legitimacy and permanence. All other parties depend on the degree to which the three biggest parties have tiny undecided margins. The PAC, Azapo and the UDM feed on voters on the periphery of the ANC. The VF+ is absorbs marginal DA voters. The only place in the country where undecided voters are a fairly large block is Cape Town, which explains why some marginal parties like the ID tend to do well here. But the ID requires to do well solely among undecided voters: their support base is volatile and transient by its nature. I will be surprised if ID support stabilises, and will feel vindicated if it evaporates, UDM-style, at the next election.

Whether or not we pursue and persuade this group of 10% undecided voters, the DA simply can't forget the 40% of Cape Town voters who already vote for us. The 40% have always supported the DA, and they really, really matter. At base, it is these people who we must represent most fiercely. We will disappoint them if we spend all our time chasing after new votes at their expense.

Brendan Boyle in the Sunday Times has this about the ANC:

'As the provincial leadership of the ANC hunkered down yesterday to plan its recovery from the electoral disaster wrought by months of bitter party in-fighting, a source said its strategy for the next five years would be "to break the back of the DA in this province".'

Very well then. The DA doesn't wish any harm to come to the ANC or its supporters. Our nation is a liberal democracy, in which people may champion causes that one does not like and with which one does not agree. We in the DA contest the ANC's ideas, policies and government, but we don't oppose their democratic rights.

When the ANC speaks of breaking the back of the DA in the Western Cape, they suggest not only that the ANC does not accept the legitimacy of the opposition party, but they question also the legitimacy of opposition voters. They are actually attacking our core constituency.

And when, in consequence of attacks of this kind, the DA seems pugnacious and inclined not to cooperate with the ANC, we essentially have the interests of our constituents at heart. Ah, but 'the DA simply doesn't seem patriotic enough,' says Laurence. But we are patriotic, in the same sense that our constituents are patriotic. When they and we are attacked by the government of the day we defend the rights to which we are all are entitled, because we are citizens of South Africa. South Africa is not monolithic like the ANC; we are a people of many parts and traditions, and there must be room for all of us. Our definition of patriotism requires a synthesis of these traditions, and we believe that if the back of our liberal tradition is broken, then South Africa will be a much poorer place.

Laurence also says that 'for the good of the both the party and the country, [the current DA leadership] should take the opportunity to usher in a new generation of leaders, and then step aside.' In due course this will happen; and as you rightly say, it will happen for the good of the party and the country. It will not happen now. We elect our leaders in a constitutional manner at the Federal Congress of the DA after sober reflection on the interests of our constituency and our nation.

He continues with 'the DA's biggest mistake was getting too caught up in their own anger towards the government.' We are caught up in a much more general public anger towards the government, Laurence. Forgive me if I mistake you, but I gather you also are angry with the government in many ways. You voted for the DA. Should we not represent your interests? How would it serve better to misrepresent you? What anger should we discard? Should we welcome the Firearms Control Act? Should we practice Aids drugs appeasement? Should we peacefully accept tender corruption as a fact of patriotic South African life? Angry we may be, but we are not unguidedly angry, because there are good reasons to be angry.

And we are not blindly rude to the ANC. The ANC government has done some things well. We may well govern some municipalities with them, perhaps Cape Town itself, but this will not hinder the DA's usual mode of constructive criticism.

Farrel Lifson says that the DA 'desperately need a prominent municipality (like Cape Town) to prove to voters that they are capable of governing effectively and can do a better job than the ANC.' I also think the DA will be more credible when we show we can govern. The point is largely political, though - we can and will represent the interests of our constituency whether or not the DA is in government.

zaBlogger says: 'If current opposition parties can't take a large bite out of ANC support in this environment then frankly they should quietly wander off into the sunset a let a new set of opposition parties/leaders come to the fore.' Must the DA's existence be judged by our ability to destroy or undermine the ANC? We don't accept that. The ANC has its own business to attend to, and we will ever be the faithful watchdog. Our own success will be measured by our loyalty to our constituency.

I'm not sure if a true rebuff was needed to the depressed and anxious articles on the future of the DA. The sense is that the writers all have an interest and enthusiasm for oppositional politics; they fear to be let down by the DA; they fear we will not fulfil the mandate given to us. If I write a rebuff it suggests that I somehow believed their pessimism was fundamentally wrong. It is not wrong to be pessimistic; but pessimism is misplaced. Oppositional politics isn't going away in South Africa, not while the DA can help it. The oppositional mode is needed just as much as ever because the ANC seems to see a chance finally to flatten it altogether.

Do not see the ANC's arrogance as a cause for despair, because it is an opportunity for all South Africans. In the DA we have mobilised potent support against the ANC, as we demonstrated in the local election. Having done that, and so refreshed our mandate, we again will attempt to teach the leaders of the ANC the lesson they must learn: that democracy is a resolution of the many parts of Man.

I got a job

2004-12-20T09:50:00.000+02:00

Right guys - I'm employed from the New Year. I can stop wittering about my personal future now and start thinking about the state of the nation.

Delport's reaction to gay marriage ruling

2004-12-01T08:01:00.000+02:00

It looks as though the DA's going to class gay marriage as one of those free vote issues. Tertius Delport says he's surprised by the ruling.

Hm.

A debate in the DA about gay marriage is of no material importance towards the process towards legalising marriage for everybody. So I think I'm grudgingly prepared to accept that the DA has a few homophobic members so long as their opinions a) don't have any effect on the rights of gay people and b) don't publicly damage the tolerant reputation of the party. Practical reasons towards internal unity only. But the moment a bigot raises his or her head above the public parapet, you can count on me to take aim. You already know my opinion of Tertius Delport's ability to involve the party in scandal.

The consequences of a breakdown in the tripartite alliance

2004-11-30T13:41:00.000+02:00

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

2004-11-29T13:03:00.000+02:00

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?

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?
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.
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

2004-11-19T13:22:00.000+02:00

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

2004-11-19T13:18:00.000+02:00

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

2004-11-09T13:25:00.000+02:00

'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

2004-11-09T10:19:00.000+02:00

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

2004-11-08T14:33:00.000+02:00

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

2004-11-05T08:44:00.000+02:00

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

2004-11-04T13:08:00.000+02:00

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

2004-11-04T07:31:00.000+02:00

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

2004-11-01T14:12:00.000+02:00

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.

HaloScan - no historical comments

2004-10-28T16:05:00.000+02:00

Haloscan has ditched all previous comments. Horrible, but can't be helped. I think the back-dated comments are still in Blogger, but invisible because I'm not using their system any longer.

COSATU being brave in Zimbabwe

2004-10-26T15:29:00.000+02:00

I very much hope that these guys will be safe; and I'm sure they will be. Strange as it may seem COSATU are not the first South African political organisation to go to Zimbabwe to make the point. Tony Leon's been there before on the same purpose. The DA sent a delegation of public representatives to discuss methods of government with the MDC mayor of Harare shortly after the last local elections there.

Still, it is obviously a lot easier for COSATU to undertake this kind of action safely; or, at least, I hope it is. It may also have more effect. The action will, of course, have no direct effect on Zimbabwean affairs, but that's not its purpose. The whole point of the COSATU action is to embarrass the South African government, not the Zimbabwean government.

So: Zimbabwean reformers out there - don't let this drop. It'll only work if the SA government and the ANC are left looking like fools. Which, on this topic at any rate, only remains to be demonstrated.

Worried about a death penalty policy

2004-10-26T08:12:00.000+02:00

I have a bad feeling about this. Doug Gibson, advocate that he is, might have defended a position he didn't necessarily endorse last night on Dennis Davis's show about the death penalty. But that's not how politics works.

Doug's actually one of the pro-death penalty free voters, and I've said before that he is entitled to his opinion. But the party's in the throes of its 'revisioning' (is that like exam revision, or is it about replacing a vision?). We approach a Federal Congress, the only venue at which an endorsement of policy change about the death penalty might be undertaken. To say things about the death penalty now amounts to kite-flying.

Some reasons to oppose the death penalty:

It is torture.
The Constitution invalidates it, and to support it is implicitly anti-constitutional
It does no good
Its victims can't be brought back to life, particularly following miscarriages of justice, but just as much if capital punishment is later rescinded from statute
It completely abandons any attempt at rehabilitation of criminals
It is the touchstone of retributive vigilantism, sanctioned by the state
It is a statutory license for violence
God knows apartheid South Africa's done enough harm with the death penalty in the past; so it's at least ironic, if not grotesque, to support it now

I'll let you know.

Questioning the President

2004-10-22T08:25:00.000+02:00

I find myself struggling to say anything intelligent about the President's Question Time yesterday.

Ryan Coetzee went into attack mode on the subject of rape, crime and HIV and AIDS. I've no doubt that some people will accuse him of disrespect to the President. Ryan got in his question and used two supplementaries to press the President for an answer that Mbeki was quite clearly unwilling to give. Does one press the President for answers? I surely think that this is what Question Time is for.

Ryan's published a statement this morning in which he flatly states he now questions whether Mbeki is fit to govern the country. This approach from the DA is entirely new. Until now we have doubted government policies, attacked the ideology of the ruling party and, on necessary occasions, inveighed against persons, like Tony Yengeni, in the government on matters such as corruption. What we have never done until now is doubted the President's fitness to govern the country. Ryan may possibly have gone too far in two ways: he may have trifled with the democratic mandate the President holds, and he may also have violated the DA's policy on attitudes to the government.

But, good grief, he has so much reason. I felt anguish, heartache, embarrassment seeing that man, our President, use his podium in Parliament to rail so dementedly about racism. The man seemed paranoid. He was almost confused. He seemed so patently unable to handle his interrogator. He seemed inarticulate. He seemed unable to calculate the impact of his words and phraseology.

I recall how in the past Thabo Mbeki was described as the intellectual President; how his academic successes and attitudes granted him a higher order of analysis of our nation's problems. He was to be practically a Platonic philosopher king. So much we expected of him; and such a titan has been cast down; and even his defenders know that their role is no longer to champion their hero but to defend his manifest weaknesses; that he is so dependent on those who like and support him; and we in the DA know so well now how easy it is to undermine this mere man, this President; and it is easier to feel pity than contempt.

I do not know where this leaves us. The President's inadequacies tell us nothing about the state of our nation and, whatever Ryan says, nothing about the fitness of the ruling party to rule. We are faced, perhaps, with the stalking shadow of the terrible anguished history of the exiles. So many of these brave men and women have returned in triumph as heroes; and we must only now comprehend how wandering Achilles is flawed.

Registration table at West Coast Village

2004-10-20T13:41:00.000+02:00

There's a fine shopping centre in Sunningdale called the West Coast Village. Unlike the Piazza in Parklands, they saw no problem with me organising a non-partisan registration campaign there.

I'm organising a dozen or so people to man a table at the West Coast Village during shopping hours on Saturday 6th November. We'll open up at 9am and stay open until 3pm or whenever the crowds thin out.

We'll be collecting names and phone numbers so that we can call people on weekends when the IEC opens registration stations. We'll also have the voters' roll available so people can check if their registration is valid.

Anyone reading this who'll be in the area is welcome to come around and meet me and the rest of us.

Parklands registration targets - a preliminary estimate

2004-10-20T13:32:00.000+02:00

I worked out some wildly inaccurate statistics yesterday, based on deductions I tried to draw from the voters' roll and the evil proprietary telephone database (EPTD). I'll start with the accurate stuff, and go on to the deductions.

The EPTD yields 720 new telephone numbers of houses that are not registered on the voters' roll. This excludes numbers of houses which are on the voters' roll, but whose occupants are not registered, which will happen when previously registered occupants leave and are replaced by new people who haven't registered. This gives us a baseline for how productive the EPTD can be for us right away. Re-registering the houses where registered voters have moved will do nothing but stabilise the present register, it will not increase it.

So how many people live in each house in Parklands? I took a sample of twenty streets, and counted how many people live at each registered house. I deduce that 1.72 voters live in each house of those twenty streets. So 720 houses becomes 1239 residents.

I think this is great news. It means we can get somewhere up to a thousand new DA voters just by getting these people registered, because 80% of Table View voters supported the DA in 2004.

How many people do we need to get voting DA before we win Ward 104? We're 4000 votes behind the ANC in what will be Ward 104 right now, and they'll also be registering people. So we need to catch up at least 4000 votes. I assigned an arbitrary 2000 additional ANC votes to Ward 104 by next year, which I think will be an ambitious target for the ANC in Doornbach and Dunoon.

This would mean we need 6000 additional DA voters. So we're already somewhere less than a sixth of the way there, just using the EPTD numbers.

I've done rough calculations from my sample of streets that suggests that our hit rate, if it follows through in the rest of the VD, might result in up to 9000 registrations in Parklands. The margin of error must be considered huge in this estimate, and I don't even have a way of calculating the margin right now. As statistics improve I'll get a better picture of how many registrations we can expect in Parklands.

What I'm saying is that Ward 104 is entirely winnable. It's just going to be a looooot of work!

DA, proud owners of Telkom

2004-10-20T08:35:00.000+02:00

Er, what? I hope this is some kind of satirical attack on BEE. I can think of better things that my R10 membership can be spent on than buying Telkom shares.

I'll write more when I know more. I suspect the party's not going to be buying any bits of Telkom itself, but instead organising people in groups who can buy shares themselves.

What could be the worst extent of arms deal corruption?

2004-10-18T14:14:00.000+02:00

Here is the sweet and low down of what some allege is the extent of corruption in the arms deal. It will be interesting to discover the extent to which these allegations are proven in the Shaik trial. Gonna get me a check list, yep.

Politics and game theory

2004-10-15T09:46:00.000+02:00

I admitted to being a constitution nut. I'm also a game theory nut!

Southampton University Electronics and IT researchers entered an 'Iterated Prisoners' Dilemma' competition. They won. The game has deep significance for the practice of politics, and the way they won has fundamental implications for how alliances are built and how they operate.

The prisoners' dilemma is a mathematical and philosophical game with two players and three rules. The two players are hypothetical prisoners, kept in separate cells and accused of the same crime. There's a deal on the table, which presents each prisoner with the option to turn state's witness, or to deny their involvement in the crime. Their decision is influenced by the three rules:

If they both turn state's witness, they both get two years in prison.
If they both deny their involvement, they both get four years in prison.
If one player turns state's witness, and the other denies involvement, the witness goes free and the other prisoner is imprisoned for five years.

You can see the dilemma - each prisoner doesn't know what the other will do, which must in some way influence their own decision.

The idea of performing this game multiple times allowed the Southampton University group to develop the concept of signalling. The University entered sixty different prisoners (actually little computer programs) in the run-off competition. The idea was that in any given iterative game their prisoners would play NOT to win, but to discover if the other player was a Southampton University entry. This is done by playing 'in Morse code', so to speak, by playing in a way that is recognisably Southampton-y.

If the prisoner decided the other prisoner was also a Southampton prisoner, the two programs had a decision-making system that allowed one of the two to sacrifice itself so that the other could win. But if the prisoner decided the other prisoner was not a Southampton prisoner, it automatically denied involvement in the crime for the rest of the game, which was its way of diminishing any advantage the other prisoner could win.

As the article states, Southampton prisoners came first, second and third - but the remaining fifty-seven entries all remained near the end of the entries, having sacrificed themselves for the benefit of their comrades.

Now, it's my belief that this has profound implications for political science. Think of the prisoners' dilemma as a series of games played between political groups who have no knowledge of one another's true intentions regarding an alliance between them. If both groups endorse the alliance, they allow one another to share a part of the political advantage. If they both reject the alliance, they will lose all advantage of co-operation and damage each other. If one endorses the alliance but the other rejects it, the rejector gains the advantage by sacrificing the other on the 'altar of expediency'.

What price the Coalition For Change, guys?

Ward 104 - triumph, and a bit of humble pie

2004-10-15T07:55:00.000+02:00

I've been debating with myself how to report this. The best approach seems to me simply to report on the facts, and on my state of mind about those facts.

The Municipal Demarcation Board has reissued maps of the proposed new ward boundaries for Cape Town and for the rest of the country. They've redrawn the proposed boundaries in Table View so that Parklands is included on the new eastern ward which also includes Dunoon and Doornbach.

My first reaction is joy at a triumph: Councillor Ian Neilson had appealed to the MDB to do just this. The DA can't take victory in Ward 104 for granted, but it now becomes a marginal winnable ward. My second reaction is shame at having accused the MDB of gerrymandering; the MDB has effectively agreed to concede the chance of Table View remaining an entirely DA suburb, and that means they can't be as beholden to the ANC as I'd stated. My third reaction is - good grief, there's a lot of work to do...

Arms and the Man

2004-10-13T10:24:00.000+02:00

Tony's written lately to draw the public attention to Thabo Mbeki's role Thabo Mbeki in the early stages of the arms deal, while he was Deputy President before 1999. I'd also add that Kadar Asmal, head of the Arms Procurement Committee at Parliament, has had a strange and stifling involvement in the process.

Good. If things get too hot around the arms deal, for example as a consequence of the Schabir Shaik trial, then it might be easier for the ANC government to sacrifice Jacob Zuma that to allow any examination of the scope of Mbeki's own involvement. I hope the DA keeps the public eye firmly fixed on the performance of the whole government, not just of certain personalities.

Study rules out mercury pollution in Vissershok

2004-10-13T10:16:00.000+02:00

Hello. I hate news reports that don't describe the scientific methodology behind the studies they quote. In this case it appears that Noordhoek was used as a control for a study of mercury pollution in Vissershok. No more comparative data than that is described. So perhaps we should conclude that Noordhoek is also a cause for concern about mercury pollution?

No; the article is pitched to answer the political problem, not the health risk.

I'll try to get more information about the study. Meantime, the period for public objections to the regularisation of the Vissershok dump is now past. I previously encouraged the locals to make use of this period, but I'm not sure that they have done this. The public initiative is slipping away...

Evil proprietary telephone number list

2004-10-11T09:00:00.000+02:00

I got my hands on a list of telephone numbers in Parklands, Table View, from a proprietary database of phone numbers. I know, that's evil. But in pursuit of votes, I'll do what it takes. I'm sorry, I'm not naming the vendor, that might be useful information to ... other people.

The weekend I spent collating the list and reconciling it with the voter's register. The register is published with the voter's ID number, name and address, but without the phone number. One of the major DA activist tasks is to find phone numbers for all registered voters. The list I had gave me quite a good yield of numbers for voters.

But the proprietary list isn't drawn from the voters' roll, so it also yielded a lot of names, addresses and numbers for people who aren't registered. This is also very useful: we want people in our heartland to register so that they can vote, and now I have the means of asking them to do so. We'll make use of these numbers when the registration weekends come up in due course.

The picture is as depressing as I had feared. Parklands is badly registered. In fact, even if I get all the people registered for who I now have phone numbers, I won't have a quarter of all Parklands voters registered. There are still gaping holes.

This list reflects the same principle detected in the voters' roll: the list had more phone numbers in areas of Parklands that are longer established, just as the voters' roll has better registration in those same areas. New areas are a gold mine.

Black voters in Table View

2004-10-11T08:50:00.000+02:00

(The ANC's definition of 'black' is 'not white', and the implication is that non-white people ought to stick together. Just so we know, I'm not using this definition, and normally neither does the DA at large. The result is often that the DA appears to speak more about racial groups than seems healthy, but this is only a difference in language, it's not judgemental. It remains true that the ANC is interested in racial hegemony as a consequence of its rhetoric about 'the masses of our people', while the DA is not interested in race except as it affects how people think about themselves. As a party we think about individuals, not groups.)

Going by the names in my evil proprietary telephone number list, there are quite a few black people living in Table View. I can't say whether the proportion in the list is a fair reflection of the proportion of black people actually living in Table View, because I've no knowledge of the vendor's sampling method. But I'd estimate that no less than 5% and probably no more than 10% of Table View residents are black folk.

What's equally apparent is that the ANC is not spending a lot of time mobilising these voters - I guess it's not worth the while of a party with finite resources and with an effective method that works in in core ANC areas. I also judge that, by correlating my proprietary list with the voters' roll, no greater proportion of black people are registered in Table View than of white people, and I think, from my list-correlation, rather a lesser proportion. This is interesting, and it can be explained in three different ways:

Black voters in Table View are registered somewhere else and will vote somewhere else
Black people in Table View are not registered at all
Black voters in Table View are registered somewhere else and will not vote

Alternatives 2 and 3 are interesting to the DA. Black people living in Table View are more accessible to the DA than they are to the ANC, and it occurs to me that we should make capital out of this. I imagine that DA canvassers turning up on their doorsteps will not be very convincing; but still...

This isn't something we can concentrate on until we have our core vote fully registered and voting, though. Priorities, mal, priorities.

'The mass of our people' don't want electoral reform

2004-10-07T11:42:00.000+02:00

Bah.

Netshitenzhe is saying that because the issue didn't emerge at the government-sponsored ANC rallies - known in the jargon as 'imbizos' of 'the masses of the people' - the cabinet doesn't owe the country a consideration of representative politics.

Why does the Electoral Task Team have a majority in favour of representative democracy? Why would the Sunday Times be writing articles in hope of it? From whom, then, is John Perlman taking enthusiastic calls on SAfm if 'the masses of our people' are not interested in representative democracy? Do we live in a Kafka novel or something?

DA/UDM takes West Coast District Municipality

2004-10-07T09:05:00.000+02:00

This is a report in the print edition of the Cape Times. I've no hyperlink yet, but if I get one I'll update this.

The single West Coast UDM councillor has allied with the DA and becomes deputy mayor of the municipality.

Pottie Potgieter becomes mayor of the West Coast. Pottie's a gentleman, very strongly from Theuns Botha's ex-NNP side of the party and fiercely loyal to our party. He is a strong advocate of the rights of Afrikaans speakers. He is outspoken in advocacy of the death penalty, an issue over which I have respectfully jousted with him twice. He is a devout Christian. He chaired the electoral committee of the Western Cape DA, which selected its candidates for MP and MPL in the 2004 election.

The West Coast has got a really good guy as mayor.

The question was put to a DA spokesperson of whether Deputy Mayor Majola's position amounts to the kind of bribe condemned by the DA in the aftermath of the recent floor-crossing; and the answer is, quite obviously, no.

There is a profound ethical difference between a bribe for someone to cross the floor, who thus abandons the party's voters; and the division of a government into roles fulfilled by members of different parties in an alliance. Deputy Mayor Majola has exercised his mandate from his constituency. He remains a member of the UDM. He doesn't accept the DA whip. That he is now the deputy mayor of his municipality simply reflects his role in the coalition government.

Provincial party ditches Coalition for Change

2004-10-07T07:30:00.000+02:00

'I saw a brief peice about how the KZN conference this past weekend
voted to ditch the coalition for change.

'But how does this work? It's merely a regional conference or was it
the national? Most odd to find only a small snippet and three days
after the event.

'Any insight would be great.' -- zaBlogger, by email

Ask and you shall receive.

I'm afraid only the Mercury is carrying this, and they've not published it online except to subscribers. And the DA itself has gone deathly quiet on the matter. So you have me at a disadvantage, zaBlogger!

There's now a (subscribers only) headline on the Mercury saying that 'The Coalition has not changed'. I hope someone can give me the gist of that article.

In general, each provincial DA structure is autonomous with respect to its province only. Each 'shall be competent to act on behalf of and legally bind the Party but only to the extent necessary to exercise the functions and achieve the goals of the Party at provincial or regional level respectively'.

But there are a few limitations on this.

Specifically, the DA's federal constitution forbids provincial parties to make deals with non-DA political organisations without first getting the permission of the federal party. Almost the last substantive entry in the federal constitution reads:

'11.2 An election or any other agreement with any other political party or independent candidate may not be entered into by:

'11.2.1 any member, aspirant candidate or public representative;

'11.2.2 a branch, a constituency, a regional sub-structure, Regional Council or Provincial Council;

'11.2.3 any group of members of the Party;

'without the prior consent of the Federal Executive and disregard of this provision is deemed to be an act against the interests of the Party.' -- DA Federal Constitution

At first sight this doesn't seem necessarily to restrict a provincial DA structure from dissolving an agreement with another political party. But I'd say it violates the spirit of the constitution, and would probably be judged as such in an appeal to the Federal Legal Commission. I do not believe that the KZN DA is permitted the constitutional or political space to make this particular decision alone.

But let me set aside the legalism for a moment; this is also a political problem. If a dissolution of the Coalition for Change is a resolution by, say, the KZN DA Provincial Council, this pitches that structure directly against the stated wishes of the DA's Federal Council. They KZN party is backed by a resolution of the last KZN Provincial Congress; this suggests an overwhelming opposition to the Coalition in the province where it matters most.

I suspect that some of the other provinces may be interested in asserting provincial rights to make policy in this arena. This is the kind of question in which the Federal Executive may feel it can't afford to appear to lose its authority. They need to appear strong. But the feeling in KZN is clearly powerful enough to risk defiance and possible disciplinary action. If this is endorsed in other provinces, the Federal Executive might be wise to listen.

Electoral reform: what's up for discussion

2004-10-05T07:25:00.000+02:00

I wanted to break the news, but good ol' Farrel got in first!

This could be exciting, but let us be cautious. There is no such thing as a perfect electoral system. Also, electoral systems lie very close to the heart of all democratically elected parties and the system that will be adopted will tend to conserve the majorities of the present largest parties, since they are the ones choosing the system.

The DA's happy that this issue is back on the table; but my party is also appealing for caution.

The cabinet's going to examine the 2003 report of the Electoral Task Team (the complete report is published in parts 1 and 2). This report contained two proposals.

The minority proposal was that the South African electoral system created in 1994 be retained. In the event, this proposal was adopted for the general election of 2004, but the cabinet said at the time that the report would be revisited after the 2004 election.

The majority proposal was a mixed model system, a cross between the Irish multi-member constituency system and the German constituency-plus-list system. Each constituency would be represented by between three and seven Members of Parliament. These MPs would be elected in proportion to the number of votes cast for their party in the constituency.

The majority proposal discussed the problem of how the ballot would be cast. At issue was whether the South African system could sustain a single transferrable vote. An STV allows the voter to cast an ordered vote for several candidates on his or her ballot by assigning each candidate a number. Instead of making a single mark on the ballot, the voter would instead order the candidates by preference. The majority proposal rejects this approach on the grounds of public innumeracy: the STV would make a ballot incomprehensible to many people.

The proposed alternative is that each constituency would elect candidates from closed lists prepared by the parties, just as at present. The voter is simply asked to vote for the party of her or his preference, as now; the system merely differs in its granularity. The party preference is now resolved at the level of a constituency, rather than at the level of a province or at the level of the entire country.

The majority proposal states that this is an imperfect solution, and it is, specifically because it damages the answerability of MPs that it sets out to improve. The proposal recommends that as public numeracy improves, the option on the STV be revisited.

In addition to 300 MPs elected from 69 multi-member constituencies, the majority report recommends that 100 MPs be elected from national lists, very similar to the system at present. The idea is that this will enable smaller parties to gather enough support to elect MPs, where they might otherwise fail to elect any MPs in the smaller constituencies.

If the majority proposal of the ETT is adopted, what would be achieved?

The proposal makes three-quarters of all MPs accountable to a constituency. In fact, this is only true if, by election of an MP, he or she is made invulnerable to their party's later decision to dismiss them. Because the MP comes from a closed list, the reliance of the MP upon the party may well remain.

Whether an MP may defect to another party remains a problem. The majority proposal does not ask voters to elect candidates, so it will be impossible for the electorate to 'take their revenge' on a candidate who doesn't do what they want. The problem might be alleviated to a degree because voters will be more inclined to examine the local performance of a defecting MP at the following election, and then vote against the offending parties.

The 69 constituencies may vary in size between three and seven MPs. The reason for this is because in rural areas, particularly in sparsely populated areas like the Northern Cape, having too large a number of MPs will make constituencies physically too large to be practical. The larger, seven-member, constituencies would be urban; and the smaller, three-member, constituencies would be rural.

Having many MPs in a constituency is mostly a good thing. More MPs means the votes cast are divided into smaller quotas, which means more minority MPs are elected.

The relationship between constituency MPs and national list MPs will be something to watch. In many mixed systems national list MPs are typically party organisers who are not asked to work with the public directly, but who function in government or in pure political roles; while constituency MPs are expected to function as popular delegates or representatives. An informal class system can be expected to emerge in parliament.

In all, the ETT's majority proposal is a great improvement over what we have at present, because it preserves proportionality but introduces representivity where none existed before.

But it can only be viewed as a step in the right direction. The degree of representivity must be increased further in future, particularly by the introduction of the STV when public numeracy improves.

Bear in mind that the cabinet is going to consider the report only; the decision may be to accept the minority proposal for good. This would be a disaster for representative democracy.

Donwald Pressly on Tony's tenure

2004-10-01T13:10:00.000+02:00

An extensive examination of the issue by someone who knows how to winkle info out of the DA.

Donwald has the job I envy, parliamentary reporter. Lucky guy.

I'm sick of BEE

2004-10-01T08:35:00.000+02:00

Enough. The jargon of 'Black Economic Empowerment' has been hijacked by ANC cronies and back-room boys.

Even the Kgalema Motlanthe, secretary-general of the ANC, can see it's an utter failure. It's a sham. It's a heist. It's banditry. It does nothing to reform 'apartheid-era' business leaders, who just love to learn that their former enemies are just as crooked or greedy as they can be. And as these people strip the nation's assets, our black citizens become ever poorer.

The debate about economic reform of the country is reduced to despicable ideological rants from the President against businessmen and racial groups.

Intelligent comments about economic reform are possible. But the nation's dialogue is now hampered by the ANC's derisory jargon. 'Black Economic Empowerment'? We know this means trusted members of the ANC's National Executive Committee. 'Broad-based'? This means the husbands and wives of ministers. Enough, entirely enough.

I propose we start our own language. I want to kick these terms, that mean nothing more than robbery by the ANC, back in their teeth. If they want to talk BEE and broad-bases, let 'em. These words have been corrupted just as much as the ANC NEC has been corrupted.

You won't hear the words 'BEE', 'Black Economic Empowerment', 'broad-based', 'previously disadvantaged' or others of that ilk on this blog again, except in tones of contempt.

I'm rather going to talk about equality, not empowerment. I going to talk about universal opportunities, not a broad-base. I going to talk about future advantage, not previous disadvantage.

Defense of the Western Cape provincial constitution

2004-09-30T16:20:00.000+02:00

zaBlogger and I have had a lively and enjoyable discussion about the merits of the Western Cape provincial constitution. Following on from this, I decided to submit this motion to the DA Provincial Congress, coming up in a few weeks' time:

Motion resolving to defend the Western Cape Provincial Constitution

'This Congress believes the province of the Western Cape must be constituted by an entrenched Constitution. An attempt by the African National Congress to repeal it is an attack on the constitutionality of the province and the nation, and a blatant attempt to further centralise power in the hands of that party.

'This Congress therefore resolves to defend the Western Cape Provincial Constitution against any African National Congress proposal to repeal it. Specifically, Democratic Alliance Members of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, so named, will vote against any repeal bill brought before them.'

Proposed by Mal Morrow
Seconded by Councillor Ian Neilson

I don't have very much doubt that it will be endorsed. This means that the DA Congress will have made a very real impact on the law of the province and the nation! zaBlogger, thanks a million for the shove in the right direction!

Mbeki: no third term

2004-09-29T14:38:00.000+02:00

Silence from the peanut gallery; well, probably not, but I suspect Thabo Mbeki's statements will be applauded by the DA and all right-thinking South Africans. Especially those citizens who think they can have a crack at the succession.

This will be one of the big divisive issues the ANC will have to deal with in the term of the second government since 1994. It will be interesting to see how they cope with the stress. Mbeki cannot formally nominate a successor; the ANC constitution stresses that its leaders are elected. But there is so much to play for that it will be hard to see how politics cannot play a large part.

My guilty pleasure

2004-09-29T13:57:00.000+02:00

Why do I like Boris Johnson? Dunno. His style, mostly. For a conservative Conservative he's extremely approachable and entertaining. He's apparently idiotic, but in fact witty and bright. His opinions carry have that 'oh, that actually makes sense' thing about them, even if one doesn't agree. I mean, he supports fox-hunting, but in doing so he has a lot of sensible things to say about civil liberties.

Sorry, I just have to put him in my blogroll. I hope you don't mind.

Jack Bloom: 'Tighter control' of the mentally ill

2004-09-28T15:39:00.000+02:00

Jack Bloom, the Gauteng DA spokesman on health matters, thinks the mentally ill must be subject to 'tighter control'. The background to this is a tragedy, but it's a one-in-a-million incident. Jack appears to be advocating diminishment of the ordinary liberties of mentally ill people, and I hope he will now set out to correct that impression.

The country could more profitably invest its energies in 'tighter control' of the criminally convicted. The DA must concentrate on that issue rather.

Liberalism and the death penalty

2004-09-27T11:08:00.000+02:00

'The reality is that under Leon the DA seems to have peaked for now and the failed coalition for change with the IFP coupled with his support of the death penalty adds further nails to his coffin.' -- zaBlogger

Thus zaBlogger leads the charge about Tony's coffin being nailed shut. He might be right, but Helen Zille's not the lady to hammer those nails this time:

'I have no intention of standing for the leadership of the DA against Tony Leon, and I will be fully supporting him for re-election.' -- Helen Zille, 27th September 2004

What's interesting, browsing past discussions on the DP's and DA's policy on the death penalty, is the extent of misunderstanding.

The DA is not anti-death penalty; neither is it pro-death penalty. The DA as a party is disinterested (but not uninterested) in the question. The question is available for debate in the party; a member or representative may offer his or her own opinion on the subject; but the question is not available as a matter upon which a representative can offer a party-political opinion.

The DA has the space for politically unresolved questions. The two great issues on which the DA has not mandated a party preference are abortion and the death penalty. On these subjects, when DA representatives are asked for their vote, they may exercise it freely according to their conscience. Tony Leon's position is apparently moving towards pro-death penalty. His position on abortion is not a matter of public record, so far as I know.

This is a simple position to maintain, and presently it keeps the infighting to a minimum, but it is a terribly difficult position to justify to a polarised public.

The space allowed to conscience is a good example of why the DA is a liberal party. Liberalism is all about individual conscience. No authority is granted to 'the masses', or to 'historical forces'. Political assembly, in liberalism, is about the grouping together of people with individual political conviction. Only the extent to which they can reconcile their differences allows them to unite, and this is fundamentally the reason why a free vote on these divisive issues is allowed.

All debates about free market versus social democracy, federalism versus unity, pro-life versus pro-choice, right-to-life versus death penalty - all these are mere subjects of individual conviction, and all of them are matters requiring the liberal talent for compromise between individuals.

Hey, that's no way to say goodbye

2004-09-27T07:09:00.000+02:00

I know what you're all going to ask me, and the answer is no, I've got no insider information about it. Well, I have some speculation, but it's not very interesting, though it's topical by virtue of the weekend reports.

In 2002, when the DA fell apart, some of us asked Helen Zille to run against Theuns Botha for the provincial leadership. She refused. At the time it seemed like provincial party suicide; Theuns has qualities, but charisma and electability are not among them. But though Helen has those qualities, she clearly felt they would be better exercised in Parliament after 2004. How right she was, we should never have doubted her.

Who are these 'we' people anyway? The two factions in the Western Cape DA are, as you might well imagine, the ex-Nats and the ex-Progs. Time has passed; the boundaries are becoming blurry; not everyone born to each party now belongs to their respective faction. But the factions still exist and they cast a long shadow over present politics in the party.

'We' in this context are the ex-Progs. It's not hard to see that Helen is an ex-Prog, and Theuns is an archtypical ex-Nat. Helen can count on undivided support from the ex-Progs, and on lukewarm support from the ex-Nats, because of her leadership qualities. Theuns can count on undivided support from the ex-Nats, and almost no support whatever from the ex-Progs (or at least, this is what we thought: I'll write about the Haasbroek Protocol another time).

In a straight fight, though, the ex-Nats are stronger in the Western Cape. If Helen goes up against Theuns, she loses.

But the picture is very different in the rest of the country. The ex-Progs are overall far stronger nationally than the ex-Nats. It's obvious now that, whatever the ex-Progs would like for the Western Cape, an ex-Prog leader from our province who wants to win must take her fights nationally. There is no alternative, because she will get a simple veto from her own province if she tries to 'climb the ladder' in a conventional manner.

This, I speculate, is what Helen is doing. She carries absolute and unwavering support as a DA leader from the liberals in her own province. She is fairly well-known in other provinces, but believe me we are not resting on our laurels and neither is she. The rest of the party is getting to hear all about her abilities.

Does this add up to a challenge for the DA Leadership? No. Or, at least, not yet.

Tony Leon, it is true, is a ruthless leader by democratic standards. But for such a divided party, he is a very strong leader too. He claims quite strong support from the ex-Progs because he is, whatever he says about the death penalty, a very thoughtful and intelligent liberal.

But he claims support from the ex-Nats too. The reasons for this are very interesting. The National Party had a strong tradition of leadership, not to say a leadership cult. The absolute stagnation of leadership in that party has left many ex-Nats with an overwhelming thirst for someone who can pull things together and get things done. Though he is reviled among the ex-Nats for many reasons, Tony still claims a lot of credit among them for rescuing them from a political death. This support wanes gradually, but it can still come in very handy for him. In addition, because of the sometimes tense relations he has with the ex-Progs, ambitious ex-Nats see Tony as a leader with an Achilles heel, and that is an attribute you always desire in a leader if you plan eventually on getting rid of him.

The fact that he is a unifying force is not lost on the liberals either. So for a variety of reasons, some very ambiguous, Tony remains in his place.

In addition, the nature of a challenge must be considered. The DA elects its office-bearers, including its Leader (yes, capitalised for extra spookiness), at a biennial Federal Congress. As is usual in modern political parties the congress is a staged event. To some degree this is inevitable: nominations for office bearers must be in hand long before the conference, so the organisers can make a plan to manage the media if it looks like there's going to be a fight.

But managing the internal divisions of the DA is now the sine qua non of getting ahead in the party. Whoever challenges Tony and expects to win will have to make provision for handling the behaviour of the Federal Congress. zaBlogger stresses the role of caretaker Leader will be crucial in this eventuality, and he is right. Ideally, from the successor's point of view, Tony would resign in advance and make absolutely sure that there is only one name on the ballot.

When it happens, as it must happen sooner or later, I believe it will happen this way.

Helen Zille on electoral reform and floor-crossing

2004-09-23T08:37:00.000+02:00

Remember folks, you heard it first on DA mal.

'Deputy President Jacob Zuma's recent comments that the Democratic Alliance initiated floor crossing intentionally obfuscates the DA's consistent position on the form that floor crossing should have taken.

'What Zuma fails to mention is that the DA proposed floor crossing in the context of a reformed electoral system where voters elect constituency MPs. Under our proposed system, public representatives would need to seek a mandate from their constituents before crossing the floor or risk losing their seats at the next election.

'The DA felt that the scrapping of the anti-defection clause in this context would break the party leaders' stranglehold on public representatives, making for more accountable legislators and government...' -- Helen Zille, DA National Spokesperson, letter to the Cape Times 23 September 2004

ANC wants to repeal the Western Cape constitution

2004-09-23T07:36:00.000+02:00

Why does this matter?

I'm a constitution nut. This is one of the really important reasons I'm drawn to the DA; and also why I will never be embarrassed to support its predecessors the Progs and the DP, even if they are accused of participating through the apartheid constitutions. See, one of the most important aspects of our principles, and the most important aspect as it applies to how law is made, is ultimate respect for and dependence upon our constitution.

In fact, it's more than this. Constitutionalism is the belief that bodies of people can act together safely only under agreed and entrenched constraints. In a way this is no more than a statement of the obvious. Power politics would freely degenerate into chaos and violence if there were not normative rules in place. Dene Smuts knew this very well in her contribution to CODESA, which is why the present South African constitution owes so much to her and the other DP thinkers who participated.

It is the hardest thing to explain this to those who follow the other parties: that it actually doesn't fundamentally matter what goes in the basic law, but that only a universal and equalitarian respect for the basic law is important. I mean, there are good standards for a constitution. The South African constitution has an excellent bill of rights, which is great; it also has a relatively weak division of powers, which is not so great. But none of this fundamentally matters if the most important thing of all is achieved: buy-in.

Everyone must be happy to support the constitution in all its strengths and weaknesses if South Africa is to work. In this sense, constitutionalism is a state of mind. It is a state of mind that compelled Helen Suzman to take her seat among the Broederbond in the tricameral parliament - not because she wished to legitimise their politics, but because she wished to work within the agreed framework, to avoid the violence and chaos that nearly everybody else felt was either inevitable or necessary.

Constitutionalism is the definitive civilising factor in politics. It makes no difference if the politics are barbaric, or if the politicians themselves are barbarians. That the constraints of the generally agreed constitution are accepted is enough to earn those politics and those politicians their place in the space it defines.

But there is also a long history of anti-constitutionalism in South Africa. The Nats earned their stripes as anti-constitutionalists by rewriting the South African constitution twice. Their first rewrite created the finest democratic NGO with which South Africa has ever been graced, the Black Sash, and the black sash over a woman's shoulder remains the most recognisable constitutionalist symbol of our nation.

The ANC condemned PW Botha's tricameral constitution and refused to work with it. They preferred revolution. Indeed, to this day the rhetoric of the ANC is infused with revolutionary sentiment, and there is so overwhelming a sense of ambiguity about their commitment to a constitutional process that it is hard to do anything other than cringe when the Speaker of the Western Cape legislature announces he would like to repeal the provincial constitution.

It may be said that the Western Cape government can function sufficiently well under the constraints of the national constitution. This is true in a limited sense, but it has two serious problems.

Firstly, a constitution must be capable of amendment by the people it constrains. In this case, it must be possible for a Western Cape constitution to be amended by the people of the Western Cape.

And secondly, it is an announcement by the ANC that they do not intend to accept constitutionalism as a state of mind, in the way that the DA absolutely requires it to be accepted. The ANC also will rewrite or repeal constitutions, just like the Nats did in the heyday of their madness.

Thabo Mbeki and Z Pallo Jordan have a theory that a system of government can most simply and effectively be composed by control of 'levers of power'. They have a mandate from their party to complete the 'National Democratic Revolution'. These terms and ideas have nothing in common with our shared constitution; and while we in the DA grant the ANC every right to which they are entitled within the constitution, we will oppose them always if they try to overstep the mark.

Kannaland corruption, part 2

2004-09-22T13:08:00.000+02:00

Jeffrey Donson is to resign, if he agrees to what the MEC for Local Government and by the provincial secretary of the ANC require of him.

I know this man should go. He and his cronies are poisoning the political landscape in Ladismith, as Denise Robinson discovered. It's just so sad that he should be forced out by such an anti-democratic manner. If this man is a crook, why does it take intervention by the ANC to get something done about it? The failure of government oversight is staggering.

Marius Fransman, the MEC for Local Government, must also be under the cosh if he has taken action in this way. He is a close friend and associate of Donson's.

Better estimate of registration in Parklands

2004-09-20T08:29:00.000+02:00

It's very bad.

I got a printout of the DA's 2004 general election canvassing record for Parklands on the weekend.

In the older southern areas of Parklands registration is probably around 50%. In the new northern areas, it's no better than 10%, and we've canvassed much less than half of those people.

In other words we are a) letting thousands of votes go to waste and b) not even getting the small number of registered voters out on election day.

Change of heart on floor-crossing

2004-09-20T08:20:00.000+02:00

'The Party’s Federal Council on the weekend, proposals will be discussed for amending the legislation that permits floor crossing.' -- James Selfe

I have reliable information that the DA will change its policy to support for floor-crossing only when representative accountability can be maintained. That is, floor-crossing for constituent representatives only. Right now, of all elected politicians in South Africa, only ward councillors are in this category.

Update 15:17 20/Sept/2004

Sorry I was so cryptic, zaBlogger. I'm protecting my sources, but I should have made myself more clear.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I think the DA will still accept defectors in the future, however they are elected. It's a case of 'do what I say, not what I do'. Better than nothing, I hope.

My post was a hint at what the new DA policy, in the sense of proposals for new law, on floor-crossing will be. Feeling is that while floor-crossing is reprehensible it's in some important ways necessary, and not just for the DA, though you rightly said that it was for us that it became statutory. The idea is that crossing the floor is an element of constituent representivity, so it should be allowed only for those who actually represent a constituency.

It may interest you to know how deeply hated the floor-crossing law is amongst DA members. The objections to it in the party are as strong as the understanding for our initial need for it. Helen Zille is frankly public in her dislike of it, though Raenette Taljaard's vote against the law in parliament means she is still the poster-child for the anti brigade.

So - how do we dig ourselves out of the hole? How can we gracefully turn 180deg and appear not to be doing so (which is, of course, the essence of politics)?

Well, Helen will probably lead the charge on the subject, since her reputation isn't damaged by the issue. I personally hope we link it to electoral reform.

Elections: the numbers game

2004-09-17T08:18:00.000+02:00

Readers might be thinking that there's something awfully mechanical about the registration project I'm embarking on. What about politics? Isn't it about the issues? Can't we spend more time persuading voters to vote for the DA rather than another party?

Not really.

Electioneering isn't much about politics: it's a numbers game. I mean, the politics is always there. When you field a candidate in a ward you can't win, you do it for political reasons primarily; but even then, it's often as a means of throwing down a marker for your future campaigns when you do plan to win.

The real politics of a campaign works at media eye-level. In the case of Table View, this means dealing politely with Heather Brenner, who's the excellent local journalist for the free newspaper Table Talk from the Independent stable. All other media do not consider Table View worth covering specially: they only pay attention when there's a particular story going on in the suburb, which isn't terribly often. And this kind of attention is cultivated over time; so the best time to get started with local politics is between elections.

During a campaign you will be told what to think and what to say by the party's central campaign. The centralised political campaign can make the best value out of the media leverage the whole party can exert. So a local campaign is left only with local political issues; and it's too late to start politics about local issues then.

The voting patterns in an area like Table View are a relatively static structure. We can tell well in advance exactly what proportion of voters will support us in an area. This gives us a good idea of where to concentrate our limited resources. The primary aim of the game is to make sure as many of our voters are found, registered, canvassed and polled. The secondary aim of the game is to suppress polling amongst other voters.

At this stage I'm concentrating on finding our voters. At the same time, if I'm lucky, I'll find voters for other parties, which will be useful later on.

Identifying streets in Parklands

2004-09-17T08:13:00.000+02:00

Yowza, slow work.

I spent a few hours last night making a list of streets in Parklands VD; I'm up to streets beginning with 'F'. It's clear to me how poor registration is. Sometimes I find streets where someone is registered in house number 4 and someone is registered in house number 52. What happens in between? Those are the people we have got to get registered.

The plan phase 1: Find the Voters

2004-09-16T14:36:00.000+02:00

An election campaign is conceived and executed in several phases. Also, it varies depending on the territory.

Parklands is safe DA country. Our objective is to ensure the maximum turnout. If the effort contributes slightly to the vote for other parties, because we encourage a few of their supporters to get out and vote, it isn't significant.

The voting record of Parklands in the 2004 general election looks like this.

Party	Votes
ACDP	159
ANC	321
DA	2040
ID	115
NLP	0
NNP	66
UDM	7
VF+	32
Total	2774
Registered	3005

So the DA took 75% of the vote in Parklands. Even if the DA election campaign increased the vote without discriminating between supporters of different parties, we'd still add three votes to the DA's tally for every one vote cast for another party.

But our election campaign can be run more directedly than this. We already know that about 75% of people living in the voting district will support the DA. The first target in the campaign is to discover who these people are and to make sure they become or remain registered in the voters' roll.

Parklands is a very new area. Many residents are the first people living in their houses. It's probable that nearly all the houses in this prosperous suburb have fixed-line telephones, but it may be that a larger number than is usual are not listed in the telephone directory.

We're going first to find as many telephone numbers and addresses as we can for those people who are already in the phone book. This will give us an elimination list for the registration campaign, as well as a foundation for the 2005 election canvassing that follows.

After that, we find the gaps. We need to get telephone numbers and/or addresses for people who live in the area, but who don't appear in the voters' roll. That's where it gets more interesting, and difficult. It's these people who we must then contact and, if they support the DA, we persuade them to register so they can vote.

Any citizen can register to vote at any time. But usually the effort to get people registered between official IEC registration campaigns is too great. We only need the names, addresses and phone numbers of those unregistered people for now, so when the IEC gets its act together, we know exactly who to contact, and exactly where they must go to register.

Glossary

2004-09-16T11:26:00.000+02:00

Anti: describing voters who will vote for a party other than the DA

Canvas: the campaign waged after the election date is set to discover to discover known supporters

D: Doubtful, describing voters whose voting intentions are unlikely to support the DA

DM: Doubtful Minus, describing voters who we do not expect will vote for the DA

DP: Doubtful Plus, describing voters who we expect will vote for the DA

F: For, describing voters who will support the DA

Get Out The Vote: the campaign waged on election day to turn out known supporters at the polls

GOTV: Get Out The Vote (qv)

I/E: Ineffective, describing voters who can no longer vote; for example, they are dead or not in the country

Polling station: a place where voters can cast their votes

VD: Voting District (qv)

Voting District: the geographical area whose residents vote at a given polling station (qv)

WV: Won't Vote, describing voters who will not vote for anyone

Parklands registration campaign

2004-09-15T08:05:00.000+02:00

In case you think this blog is all opinion and no action, here's the plan.

Table View is the nearest Cape Town suburb to where I live, and I used to live there for several years. I still live nearby. It's a great place. It is one of the fastest-growing affluent suburbs in South Africa. Table View has some busy commercial districts, such as the pleasant seaside Marine Circle area that serves the glorious Blaauwbergstrand beaches. The houses and flats on the beach are some of the most valuable properties in Cape Town; but inland there are houses affordable to young middle-class people.

Crime is a managable problem; the sad increase in car hijackings in the southern suburbs has thankfully not yet reached Table View; and the local SAPS is highly regarded. There are good private schools, like Parklands College and a network of excellent Educare creches.

Table View has problems, like all places. I've mentioned a few already. There are the many problems of poverty in Dunoon township and Doornbach squatter camp to the east. Table View suffers pollution from the Caltex refinery and Vissershok dump. Transport is a nightmare, since the roads are already hugely overloaded by suburban growth and there are no public service alternatives except the erratic buses and taxis.

Unlike Sea Point and Hout Bay, which are similar suburbs, Table View has space to grow. Developers marked out four major new areas in the last ten years: Parklands, Sunningdale, Bloubergsands and Dunoon. Parklands and Dunoon are the biggest, and also the most strongly contrasted.

Parklands is a wealthy townhouse residential area with facilities like shopping complexes, private schools, churches, entertainment. Dunoon is a township of RDP shoebox houses with hardly any facilities other than the basic provision of Sophokama school. Most churchgoers in Dunoon travel to other parts of the city for their observances, and nearly all those residents who have jobs there work elsewhere and are heavily dependent on dangerous taxis hurtling down Koeberg and Blouberg Roads.

Until now, Table View has been a political gold mine for the Democratic Alliance. Table View elected two ward councillors in 2000, and since it has grown so much since then it will probably elect three ward councillors in 2005.

However, Dunoon and its neighbouring informal settlement Doornbach overwhelmingly vote for the ANC. The pattern is stronger here than it is even in the ANC redoubt of Crossroads: Dunoon and Doornbach cast 6814 votes for the ANC in the 2004 general election, and 643 for all other parties including the UDM, who obtained the overwhelming balance of the ballot. Dunoon and Doornbach could now be used as anchor tenants of a gerrymandered ward.

The local DA - me amongst others - believe we can change the situation, but this hinges on what we can do about Parklands. This is because the huge growth of Parklands is not well-reflected in the voter registration of Table View. The Parklands voting district (VD) has 3005 registered voters, but we believe that VD may be home to five times that number of voting-age citizens.

The message is clear: to win Table View for the DA we must register those people.

Tomorrow I'm going to meet with Neil Ross, who is an old hand at elections. He's ward councillor for Plumstead, which is also a DA gold mine, but a very different suburb. We're going to examine tactics in Parklands and come up with a plan.

Hard copy

2004-09-15T08:00:00.000+02:00

I sent in a letter to the Cape Times yesterday, published today though the editor trimmed it a bit. Here's the original:

Dugmore makes no plan

It appears that, though teachers may be on strike from this Thursday, no proper provision has been made to safe-guard children at school. I learned yesterday on a radio programme, and today in the Cape Times, that the Education MEC Cameron Dugmore doesn't plan to close schools in the Western Cape. But he also has not made any central provision for looking after stranded children.

Instead, Dugmore is trusting to luck. He's apparently hoping that schools will make provision for children who turn up on Thursday morning, even if none of the teachers are on the premises. He's issued some calls to school governing bodies to take care of the matter but that, frankly, is derisory.

The paramount concern for the Education MEC in this situation should be concern for the kids. But if we learn that children are left on the side of the road on Thursday, you can be sure that Dugmore will be the first to disclaim his responsibility.

BEE Watch

2004-09-14T08:43:00.000+02:00

DA mal suggests you look at BEE Watch, which collects news articles related to the implementation of Black Economic Empowerment. The editorial slant is critical of BEE. BEE Watch also has an open forum.

Kannaland

2004-09-14T08:14:00.000+02:00

On Friday 3rd September Denise Robinson, DA NCOP, called Bob Reinecke in Ladismith. The conversation went like this:

Denise: 'Hello Bob; we're very much looking forward to meeting you and the residents. My DA caucus has asked if we can meet you socially before the meeting so we can talk about the problems of Kannaland Municipality more informally.'

Bob: 'Yes certainly I can arrange that. Can we maybe meet earlier on Wednesday afternoon at my house, and you can bring whoever you like ...'

Denise: 'Sorry, but that would be Monday, surely. The NCOP commission is visiting Kannaland on Monday.'

Pause.

Bob: 'Well I have organised our community to be at the meeting on Wednesday, because that is when I was told the meeting was planned.'

They agreed to meet on Monday in any case, and Bob said that even though it was short notice he would reorganise the community meeting for Monday 6th September. He thought most concerned people in Kannaland would be there, even if it meant changing their plans for the week.

The background to this? Geoffrey Donson, mayor of Kannaland, promoted a gardener eleven pay-scales to be the municipality's internal auditor. He channeled somewhere between R35 000 and R100 000 into the purchase of musical equipment for a disco he operates weekly in the community hall. He is accused of sexual harrassment, and of using council funds to buy himself household equipment, cars and clothes.

In March, before the South African general election, he faced immediate disciplinary action from the ANC. Following the election, the action was quietly transformed into a slow internal investigation. Donson, his municipal manager Francois Human and his deputy municipal manager Reginald Timmie were allowed to continue in office. The ANC's internal investigation is only now reportedly coming to a conclusion.

In the meantime, the National Council of Provinces had decided, because of its mandate to protect provincial interests, to start its own investigation. A cross-party delegation from the NCOP Governance Standing Committee was arranged to visit Ladismith on Monday 6th September. Bob Reinecke, a local community activist representing poor people in the area, was invited to bring his supporters along to speak their minds.

Denise Robinson, relieved that she had fixed the confusion about the date of this meeting, reported to the Governance Standing Committee as a whole on the following day, Saturday 4th September. She said that there would be no confusion now and the community would be ready to meet the delegation on the Monday when it arrived.

Immediately the ANC, along with the ID, the ACDP and the UDM, cancelled their participation in the delegation. Nothing Denise could do would persuade them now to go to Kannaland on Monday. Apparently the risk of embarrassment during the floor-crossing period worried them - although it's strange that before Denise corrected the local community's information about the date, they were very happy to go to Kannaland.

Denise reported this sudden change to her DA caucus in the NCOP. The DA decided that instead of cancelling their visit, they would simply go as a single-party delegation, just as previously arranged. They would meet the Kannaland people. The delegation would no longer be able to make a report on behalf of the NCOP as a whole, but at least the story would be heard.

The delegation of Denise Robinson, Helen Lamoela and Robin Carlisle duly arrived in Ladismith, met Bob Reinecke and proceeded to the meeting.

A story of wholesale looting of the public purse emerged. People who protest have been threatened with violence by Donson and those who back him if they speak to the media. The council has run up huge and unrecoverable debts. One of the council employees implicated, Petrus Roodman who was previously the financial manager of the council, has absconded to Britain. The local ANC appears to be beholden to the looters.

People are not only angry, but now very frightened.

Denise, Helen and Robin, accompanied by a number of local people, went to the police station to ask for special awareness and protection of the people against any threat of violence from the mayor or his friends. They were met with indifference.

The problems of Kannaland are beginning to resemble a gang-enforced Tammany Hall. The ANC is entirely unwilling to act against its supporters regardless of their transgressions, even up to the point of violence and wholesale looting.

Denise told me she and her party colleagues will write a report on her visit and the situation in Kannaland. I'll keep you posted.

Strike: don't sacrifice public opinion as well as public service

2004-09-13T11:54:00.000+02:00

At face value, seems that a teachers' strike can't accomplish much if the government plans to be intransigent. Simply: diminished productivity won't hurt the employer, as it would in an ordinary company.

In the normal course of business the organised right to withhold work is, crudely, a means of holding the employer to ransom in exchange for improved conditions of employment. Strikes penalise the employer by reducing his productivity. So the question that must be asked is: what productivity will this strike affect? The wags suggest that a public service strike might actually improve service delivery, given that it is commonly so poor anyway.

In South Africa the government won't be damaged or even inconvenienced by reduced productivity. The government doesn't need profits - it's got taxpayers to generate income. It's the general public who will be affected, and we have no direct power to negotiate better conditions of employment for the public servants.

An extended strike will tend to alienate the public, and if the public begins to side with the government against the unions the unions should fear being isolated.

Public opinion should matter deeply to democratic governments such as ours. An effective public service strike should mobilise public opinion in its favour. If teachers mobilise parents in their cause, if prison officials and police appeal to the public they protect, if nurses and health workers ask their patients for support, and if the public reciprocates, the government will get worried.

A public servant strike calculated to gain the support of the public should aim not to cause the public distress, but to obtain publicity. The teachers should strike for single days occasionally, at times when children don't face exams. Or, they should strike so as to affect only extramural activities. This will get the headlines, but it will also get the confidence and support of parents.

Pollution in Table View: did Caltex get to Gareth Morgan?

2004-09-10T09:38:00.000+02:00

'Pollution is an inevitable consequence of production. We can never aim for totally pollution free production, although we can aim, and should aim to reduce pollution wherever possible, especially to levels that are not harmful to human health and the environment at large. It is a reality in South Africa that our biggest emitters are also strategic players vital for the security of our economy. These include, amongst others, the oil refineries and ESKOM. While these companies certainly do not have a right to jeopardise the health of South Africans, the implementation of the Air Quality Management Act must be done so as not to place an overly burdensome responsibility on these industries over too short a period. During the establishment of the National Framework for this legislation it is imperative that the Department of Environmental Affairs work closely with the Departments of Trade and Industry, Minerals and Energy, and Local Government. With an oil price that is already in excess of $40 per barrel, government must be careful not to stress these industries to a level where the costs of compliance are unnecessarily passed on to the consumers with the likely associated inflationary effects, or where big industry is forced to cut jobs. The Democratic Alliance is in principle fully in favour of emitters paying the full social cost of their production, and indeed for being accountable for emissions, but government must move at a pace which allows for the appropriate adjustments by business.' -- Gareth Morgan, DA environment spokesman, speech to the NA

No. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.

The DA is in favour of emitters paying the full cost of their production, including the cost of their pollution. Nobody else should pay for their pollution, but nobody. If industries pollute so that other people are hurt or inconvenienced, that must stop - not some time in the future, but right now.

A few weeks ago Table View was showered with oil from the neighbouring Caltex refinery. This isn't a particularly isolated occurrence: people were complaining about the refinery in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. Table View is a few kilometres from the illegal Vissershok dump that leaches mercury into the local groundwater.

For electoral purposes Table View is a suburb that supports the Democratic Alliance. How do I explain to my neighbours that their parliamentary spokesman is apologising for industries that makes their lives miserable?

Jammed between Vissershok and Caltex are Dunoon township and Doornbach squatter camp. How can I defend Gareth's statement to those citizens, who are perhaps most vulnerable of all to the pollution? Does Gareth think their health is expendable?

Caltex has no right whatever to shower oil and smoke on land they don't own. Vissershok has absolutely no right to pollute public water with mercury. If they can't clean up their act, they have no right to operate where they are today.

So someone must pay for the clean up? Fine - let Caltex pay. If they pass the cost on to their customers, so be it; that's the nature of the free market. If the market doesn't like it, then Caltex has a problem, and that's their tough luck.

Has Gareth been 'gotten to' by Caltex? Because his speech certainly reads like it.

It's not difficult, Gareth: Caltex can pollute to exactly the extent that it is safe for the general public. The moment anyone else has a problem is the moment that Caltex must fix that problem.

The Speaker has got to be tough and impartial

2004-09-10T07:56:00.000+02:00

Sandra Botha disallowed a point of order raised by Doug Gibson yesterday. The SABC says that ANC members were delighted, which I think demonstrates all we need to know about the SABC.

This is the first time the DA's been given the acting chair of the NA, and Sandra shows how it should be done. Good for her.

Left-wing? Right-wing? DA image problem?

2004-09-09T07:05:00.000+02:00

'Seeing that the DA is aligned with the Liberal Democrats I don't think it's quite right to say they'll be a South African version of conservative commentary. Which I think is just illustrative of the image problem the DA has, that despite being aligned to a left wing political movement they're seen as conservatives.' -- Farrel Lifson

Alignments between political parties in different countries are almost the definition of ineffectiveness. I'm not talking about alliances between governing parties in different countries, such as the working arrangement between the ANC and the Zanu-PF of Zimbabwe. The DA's connection to the Liberal Democrats in Britain has yielded a few speaking engagements at one anothers' conferences, and the voluntary work of a very nice guy called Stephen Jolly from Cornwall as researcher with the DA's parliamentary office last year.

I personally like the LibDems. They've got a lot of policies I wholly endorse, such as electoral reform, and scepticism about British motives for involvement in the war in Iraq. They're the world's flag-bearers for a number of kinds of liberalism. The heritage of the LibDems includes: the 19th Century aristocratic radical idea; the remnants of the Social Democratic Party; an aim to disestablish the English Church; commitment to Scottish/Welsh and local self-government. Generally this party is the strongest and most consistent proponent of the idea of British reform, where both the other main parties embody different conservative ideas. (I'll be delighted to dispute the theory that the British New Labour Party - the bit of it that runs the government anyway - is left-wing. I'll take all comers.)

This post is not about comparing the LibDems and the DA, though: it's about image.

If the DA is considered ineffective in projecting a coherent image, this bothers me. Image is very highly-valued in the DA. Image is a thing of parts:

Political tendency, which Farrel talks about above, but which is more complicated than simple left- or right-wing tendency

Political coherency, which is the degree to which people can understand its platform as an abstraction

Political presence amongst its core constituency

Party discipline

A well-known position on every topical issue

Strong personalities whom the electorate can identify as leaders

Bold colours and logo

Media presence

An ability to command the loyalty of its activists, and for those activists to identify themselves as such

There are other elements of image, I'm sure you can think of them.

Reading this list, you can probably see where the DA is strong. Bearing this list in mind gives you a good idea of why Tony's position remains unassailable. He is endorsed by our commitment to an image with a strong leader, and our need - never more than since the NNP split - for party discipline.

You can also see where the DA's weak. We don't have a powerful activist base - that's one reason I'm doing this blog. We have poor command over our image in the media. Our political tendency is sometimes confused - are we left-wing, right-wing or some definition of liberal; are we Africanist and what does that mean anyway.

You can see similar strengths and weaknesses in the image of each of the parties in South Africa. The ANC's colours and logo are poor, but they have immense activist power and an iron grip on the media. The ACDP has a strong political coherency and tendency, but no media presence and wretched leadership (for a party based on charismatic Christianity I think they could do a lot better). The now-defunct NNP had almost no control over its image - it failed in nearly all the attributes above.

We're not going to get any answers to image problems from the LibDems in Britain, or from anyone elsewhere in the world. That experiment has been tried with mixed results - the Fight Back campaign of 1999 was engineered by an American political consultancy.

The DP's insistence on problems of image astounded the Nats in 2000 when the DA was formed. I think the image issue wasn't considered nearly well enough: it might have led the DP to the conclusion that the formation of the DA wasn't such a good idea after all, since it meant abandoning the image the DP had painfully constructed up until then. Tony and Ryan Coetzee tried to preserve as much of the DP's image as possible in the name, colours, logo, leadership, platform and tendency of the new party. They unfortunately ignored coherency and activist loyalty; and the consequences for the DA's media and constituency presence of the 2002 split are there for all to see.

It's a terrible indictment of the DA that its image might be seen as a problem. This is not how it's meant to be. We think we know what we're about; and one of those things we're about is projecting the DA as a party with strong image. If we're failing in this, then we want to put it right.

What do you think we should do to solve the problem?

Is protecting house value NIMBYism?

2004-09-06T09:39:00.000+02:00

Nick at NjaloNjalo talks about the ANC's plan to integrate poor and wealthy areas in housing planning. He says 'For me it is essentially an ideological debate.' He says a lot else; preemptively dismissing the argument that the strategy might undermine property values, and accusing those who argue against the idea of NIMBYism.

The idea, as he says, has been afloat for a while. The Sunday Times ran it as its headline last weekend because it was refloated by the Department of Housing DG Mpumi Nxumalo during the launch of a new housing policy. A new housing policy for the government is very long overdue: it seems to be widely acknowledged that the little boxes built in townships across the country have answered the need for housing only in a most basic way.

Nxumalo says 'We will draft regulations to ensure that people would only sell houses under specific requirements. One of the regulations would give the province or the municipality the first option to buy the house after five years. This would ensure that the house is taken from that particular individual and given back to the government which would re-allocate it to another poor person on the waiting list.'

This is property ownership with serious strings attached. A central attribute of property value is the degree of ease with which it can be sold. A buyer in a free market needs a guarantee of rights - and without property rights it's no wonder 'RDP' houses don't function as an investment. These houses have very low or no resale value. Banks do not typically accept them as security for loans.

She says 'We are also putting up systems and mechanisms to ensure that any maladministration, corruption and fraud are dealt with effectively.'

The distribution of low-cost houses is rife with corruption and gangsterism. Anecdotes of ANC councillors endorsing the distribution of houses (a practice which is entirely illegal) and of eviction by gangs in favour of their preferred occupants are very common. It's to be applauded that the Nxumalo aims to reduce these problems - but she must accept that her poor record so far leaves many of us sceptical.

Nxumalo says 'The primary objective is to build a non-racial society'. This is pure ANC-speak for their attempt to change voting patterns. I've drawn attention previously to the use of ANC strongholds as 'anchor tenants' in wards that are otherwise populated by opposition voters.

None of which is at all reassuring to anyone living in an affluent suburb, suddenly faced with a policy that apparently advocates the integration of 'RDP' housing right next door.

I do argue in favour of protecting property values, which is a perfectly valid argument against this policy. Nick at NjaloNjalo will think I'm a NIMBY. But NIMBYism isn't something in which only wealthy people indulge themselves. There have been many cases of township and camp residents who complain about the conditions in which they live. Who would want to live next to the polluted Jukskei River? Not wealthy people - but not poor people from Alexandra either. Who wants to live next to a mine dump? This isn't a question of your wealth. One's neighbourhood is something one would want to protect, preserve and improve. This includes property values and many other things, whether or not you are wealthy or poor.

My mortagage loans suggest to me that I should be concerned about the value of my investments in South African land and property. I'm very interested in protecting or growing the value of my property. I fail to see why my self-interest should be considered equivalent to having a 'separatist mentality' or endorsing 'apartheid spatial divisions'. I don't deny anyone else their own right to their self-interest - that's what the ANC's does when they deny township dwellers the right freely to sell their own homes.

DA Western Cape provincial congress

2004-09-06T08:03:00.000+02:00

The Western Cape DA, the province most heatedly divided between ex-NNP members and ex-DP members, will hold its next provincial bunfight on Saturday 30 October 2004 in Stillbaai on the west coast. The programme is still in the planning stages.

At a provincial congress the DA elects its office-bearers, proposes, debates and adopts motions and nominates its delegates to the federal congress. It's also a good chance for the party to discuss things informally between provincial members who might not otherwise get a chance to meet.

Why is this important?

This may be the last provincial congress before the municipal elections of 2005. The Western Cape is quite likely to be another ANC stronghold for some time to come, so the party office-bearers appointed this time will probably lead the DA into opposition throughout the province. This will be a sea-change in the party's fortunes. How the party copes with it will be interesting.

Provincial congresses of the DA aren't toothless, unlike their equivalent in the ANC. The KZN DA congress held last month adopted a motion asking for the laughable Coalition for Change to be dissolved. In the relatively conservative climate of the Western Cape DA there may be appeals to reinstate the death penalty as a party-political platform - this happened at the previous Western Cape congress, though the motion was defeated (I spoke against it).

Your correspondent may travel to Stillbaai as a delegate. I'll keep you posted.

Floorcrossing - the DA contradiction

2004-09-02T10:35:00.000+02:00

Should politicians be allowed to cross the floor?

The commentators are bitter about it. It's apparent that political parties who fail to benefit from it are also bitter. It's equally apparent that parties who do benefit in a given round are glibly triumphalist. Accusations of bribery and intimidation do nothing to set anyone's mind at ease.

Why do we have this perennial political peregrination that makes nearly everyone so unhappy?

Back in 2002, when the idea of floor-crossing was first suggested, the topic of the hour was what should happen to the Democratic Alliance, which was on the point of a messy internal split. (For those interested, maybe I'll do a historical entry on the divorce at another time. The details are ingrained in the memories of all DA loyalists, and still rankle.) The NNP, which only existed in the national and provincial parliaments, wanted to get out without losing the seats they had contributed to the alliance in the local councils. The law said - and still says - that anyone who leaves their party effectively resigns their seat. That seat will then be reallocated by the party that won it to another of its supporters.

To the leaders of the DA, at any rate, it seemed that a strict application of the law would result in a constitutional crisis. If it were to happen, one or a combination of three outcomes were possible:

NNP councillors would leave the DA, and the DA would reallocate their seats to representatives of its choosing.

NNP councillors would not to leave the DA even though they wanted to, resulting in an internal political bloodbath.

The ANC government would declare snap municipal elections throughout the country, normalising the representation of DA and NNP councillors.

There were good reasons to suppose that the third option was not going to happen - the ANC didn't want any snap elections, and none of the parties had any money available to fight such elections anyway. It was felt there was no public enthusiasm for more elections then.

A combination of the first two options was most likely, resulting in paralysis both for the DA and for representative democracy as a whole. I recall well the polarisation of the DA in those days. DA loyalists felt that anything was better than having to cope with the NNP revanchists. And it really wasn't just an internal DA matter - it affected the government of Cape Town, whose authority and validity was catastrophically undermined by the internal political split.

Something absolutely had to be done. It says a lot about the sense of desperation in that hour that the DA leaders decided to back the ANC's proposed floor-crossing legislation. Support for the bill flew in the face of the DA's thinking about the nature of proportional representation. The DA stood to lose control of several councils in the Western Cape, including that of South Africa's second city, Cape Town. The party was going to forfeit the right it otherwise held to nominate its own supporters in place of any councillors who resigned, so as to guarantee temporary political stability to the nation.

It may seem like I write only an apologia for the action we took, to support that publicly damned legislation. We know how much it hurt us. At every election since, we hear again and again during canvassing how the DA betrayed its supporters in allowing that law to pass.

Some DA representatives actively opposed the law - Raenette Taljaard faced the party's disciplinary committee for voting against it. Helen Zille, who was an MPL at the time of the bill, has disavowed the law, and to this day condemns it.

I believe the short-term political normalisation was valuable enough for the price we all paid. But as time passes, the cost grows. The floor-crossing legislation stands as it did, and now its cost can be seen in the damage it does to small parties whose members, unconstrained by the notorious 10% rule, cross to the big parties for a whim. Helen Zille says darkly:

'The floor-crossing period has become a cynical farce. Originally, the floor crossing was envisaged to enable public representatives to leave their parties on the basis of principle, if their party abandoned their mandate to the voters. It has degenerated into the opposite of what was intended: an opportunity for public representatives to sell their seats to the highest bidder.'

I also believe that the revocation of the floor-crossing legislation would not answer the danger of an incipient constitutional crisis. At any time in the future a political party might fragment. The great bugbear of South African political speculation has been the possible collapse of the ANC/SACP/Cosatu tripartite alliance. If this ever happens, we must have a means to guarantee the stability of democracy.

The unequivocal answer to all of this is more than only the revocation of the floor-crossing legislation. It must come to more than this. We must have general electoral reform.

Get an ID book so you can vote

2004-09-01T15:04:00.000+02:00

You must have a bar-coded ID book in order to vote in South Africa. And you must be a citizen.

Department of Home Affairs is running a campaign to issue ID books in the neighbourhoods where people live. This is where you can find them in Cape Town during September 2004:

2004-09-01 - Du Noon, Community Hall, Phase 3, Du Noon from 09:00 to 14:30

2004-09-02 - Joe Slovo Park, RDP Development Forum, Democracy Drive from 09:00 to 14:30

2004-09-03 - Brooklyn, Martin Adams Hall, Koeberg Road from 09:00 to 14:30

2004-09-07 - Kensington, Shawco Office, 12th Street from 09:00 to 14:30

2004-09-08 - Du Noon, Community Hall, Phase 3, Du Noon from 09:00 to 14:30

2004-09-09 - Valkenberg Hospital, Liesbeeck Drive, Observatory from 09:00 to 14:30

2004-09-13 - Home Visits, Home visits X 6 from 09:00 to 14:30

2004-09-14 - Cape Town, Vista High School from 09:00 to 14:30

2004-09-15 - Cape Town, Vista High School from 09:00 to 14:30

2004-09-16 - Joe Slovo Park, RDP Development Forum, Democracy Drive from 0900 to 14:30

2004-09-21 - Kensington, Shawco Office, 12th Street from 0900 to 14:30

2004-09-22 - Du Noon, Community Hall, Phase 3 from 0900 to 14:30

2004-09-23 - Home visits, Home visits X 6 from 0900 to 14:30

2004-09-28 - Kensington, Shawco Office, 12th Street from 0900 to 14:30

The locations are excellently chosen if you are a typical ANC voter, I note. But in case anyone thinks this matters, I went through one of these ID book drives last year, and I can inform you all that you can expect typical Home Affairs efficiency. I barely got my ID book in time to register for this year's election. It took three months for the ID book to be issued.

I have ID book locations for the rest of the Western Cape and if anyone wants them please contact me.

Does anyone have any idea how the voters' roll is going to be affected by the crazy idea to spend R33 billion on giving everyone new ID cards? This is a serious question. One potential side-effect is that many, many, many people will be disenfranchised if this proposal goes through.

The Big Bay tender

2004-09-01T07:46:00.000+02:00

'The corrupt democratic politician ... seems a hard case of politics to defend, ... [b]ut he must be defended against both the liberal prude who shies away from real political problems – him to whom class and ethnic discrimination "do not really exist" – and against the man who would rather have honest autocracy than corrupt politics. Most liberals, one suspects, would prefer autocracy to corruption, because it is tidier and because it may honour personal virtues more – like honesty and sincerity (in which the liberal places an excessive trust: "if men were honest and sincere, all politics would disappear" – says the liberal).' -- Bernard Crick, 'In Defense of Politics'

I try always to remember that corruption has its place in democratic life, as does all crime. It isn't enough to aspire to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our lives are not lived in the model of Tom Paine and, to be sure, not lived in the model of Thomas Hobbes either. Politics is the art of getting things done. Sometimes these things can be done to the satisfaction of all - including the worst of us - and other times we can't do more than hope to forget the dispute and move on.

It is more difficult to accept this when corruption affects the substance of politics. Corruption has this tendency: it doesn't only affect politicians but the political process also. Those who steal from the public purse obtain the means to steal more and - yet more sinister - also obtain the means to make it easier to steal in general. This is the crux of my complaint against the African National Congress's version of 'Black Economic Empowerment'. As much as most people and more than many, I want to see my black countrymen do well. But BEE, as the ANC has it, has become no more than jargon that covers hand-outs to their loyalists and supporters.

This theme is topical because of a Cape Town local issue: the awarding by the Cape Town Unicity council to Jonga Entabeni of the Big Bay development tender.

Who are Jonga Entabeni? They are a new company made up of a consortium of interests including:

Tokyo Sexwale, ex-ANC minister and present member of the ANC National Executive Committee

Chris Nissen (ex-ANC minister and sponsor of the Cape Town International Convention Centre)

The uMkhonto weSizwe Veterans Association

An unnamed organisation of unnamed black estate agents

A bunch of apparently local Cape Town community organisations with no forwarding addresses

There should be no doubt that this enterprise has strong links the the ANC, the political party presently running the Cape Town Unicity council.

But what is Big Bay? North of Table View, on the last stretch of coastline that has a clear sight of the famous view of Table Mountain, is the start of a small surfer's paradise. Some developments are already completed; my local information suggests that the prices of the rather plush houses in the area have risen by as much as 100% in the last two years. The inhabitants are wealthy; lots of Gauteng emigrants with 4x4s and time to surf. The Big Bay tender involves about 250 hectares of land overlooking the beach.

(On 26th August 2004 Chris Nissen was asked by John Maytham on Cape Talk whether low-income houses would be built by the Jonga Entabeni project, as part of its commitment to 'uplifting black communities'. The answer was an apologetic but definite 'no'. The bid is just as much about money and no more about the upliftment of black people as any of the other bids.)

Three bids were received for the development project; from

Jonga Entabeni, worth R115 million,

Immobiliare Finanziaria, worth R151 million and

Earthquake, worth R147 million

One of the requirements was that any bid satisfy Black Economic Empowerment. The tender states that this factor would be considered as 10% of the value of the council's assessment of each bid.

It's manifestly clear that if the council adhered to this tender requirement then in the financial sense Jonga Entabeni falls 22% short of Earthquakes bid, and 24% short of the Immobiliare bid. There is no way that Jonga Entabeni's BEE component can make up for the difference, at least as judged by the terms of the published tender.

All this is grist to the mill of politics in Cape Town. Democratic Alliance councillor Ian Neilson, who represents the Big Bay area, bluntly said 'This disgraceful jobs-for-pals award to the ANC's friends must be rejected. Big Bay belongs to all citizens of Cape Town, not the ANC. It must go to the developer that gives the city the best deal for all.'

In response, the ANC mayor of Cape Town Nomaindia Mfeketo said 'They [the black empowerment beneficiaries] do not want breadcrumbs from the missus and madams so that they can also build their own houses in Big Bay.'

So much for practical politics.

This is but one example of the actual operation of BEE, as conceived by the ANC. The 'community' beneficiaries are no more than fronts, universally led by the likes of Sexwale, Nissen, Hassen Adams, Saki Macozoma and a limited number of others.

The payback is obvious, even if it is unproven. The ANC is sure of the loyalty of these men - to the point that the ANC benefits financially also. The last ANC party-political conference was a fascinating display of the degree to which corporate South Africa delightedly sponsors the ANC political programme. Vodacom and the major banks all had billboards at the ANC Stellenbosch conference.

What is most abjectly and transparently apparent is how, though the DA might cry foul at the ANC's cynical corruption of the country's financial sector, the truth is at least as much the reverse. The ANC is being bought quite as much as it is doing the buying.

South Africa is not governed. She is owned.

Why DA will not benefit from dismemberment of the Nats

2004-08-31T07:19:00.000+02:00

Tonight the Great Council Migration begins again. For two weeks councillors across the country have some chance to change parties. This will be the second time this has happened since the elections of 2000.

The majority of those who cross the floor this time have done it before. This is because the largest number of floor crossers are New National Party councillors - none of whom were elected to that party in 2000, but who 'rejoined' the party in 2001. The NNP now has stated its intention of merging with the African National Congress, and is 'encouraging' its councillors and members also to join them.

Some NNP leaders, including FW de Klerk and Johann Swanepoel, decried the merger. In most cases their political preference was honourable retirement from politics. This is only an easy option for someone who is near or past the end of their political career. No NNP politician has said that they prefer to rejoin the Democratic Alliance. Politics are too polarised for that kind of public declaration.

There is next to no chance that even a minority of NNP councillors will cross the floor to the DA this time around, for at least three reasons:

The fracture between the NNP and the DA is too sensitive: indeed there are NNP councillors who would be refused the DA whip even if they asked for it, such as Cllr Kevin Momberg of Atlantis near Cape Town.

Any councillors who plan to cross the floor to another party must be one of a group of at least 10% of the sitting membership of the originating party. In Cape Town, for example, at least three NNP councillors must agree to cross to the DA in order for any NNP councillors to do so. This degree of coordination - and trust - makes the challenge much harder if the floor crossing destination is not party-approved.

NNP councillors are under a more severe whip now that perhaps they have ever been - the infamous ANC discipline as well as the NNP whip. Already they have been asked to sign loyalty pledges more than once. It was reported on Cape Talk this morning that thirty-five floor crossing applications by NNP councillors to the ANC are already signed and waiting for this evening's peregrinations; and as soon as those documents are submitted to the Independent Electoral Commission those councillors mayn't change their minds.

In a few more isolated councils around the country, where the number of NNP councillors is small, the DA may benefit. In the metropolitan areas, particularly in Cape Town, NNP councillors will all go to the ANC.

The risk of the DA losing councillors to other parties is also very small. The DA has, in the Western Cape, large numbers of councillors with whips made strong by the last exodus of NNP councillors in 2001. Morale is not good in DA caucuses, but it's not bad to the degree of an organised split.

Gerrymandering Blaauwberg - ward 104

2004-08-30T08:37:00.000+02:00

In order that you know how the Municipal Demarcation Board plans fundamentally to alter the representation of Table View, Milnerton and Atlantis, I must show the picture as it stands.

The wards I'm interested in for this review are the wards that make up the old Blaauwberg municipality, which are presently known as the Blaauwberg administration of the Cape Town Unicity. In 2000, wards 1 through 5, 54 and 55 were contested and won by the Democratic Alliance. The Blaauwberg administration was won in a clean sweep by the DA.

That it might not happen again is not enough in itself for grievance: politics and demographics can change and, in this case, they have changed.

Politically: Back in 2000, the DA had just been created. No NNP contested the election, and this left the DA without practical opposition in the middle-class and white areas of the city. In 2005 the situation is different - the NNP has left the DA and merged with the ANC, and the DA faces credible opposition, on the face of it, from the Independent Democrats and the African Christian Democratic Party in middle-class and white suburbs.

Demographically: Milnerton was nearly entirely a middle-class area in 2000. Today, the low-cost housing areas of Phoenix and Joe Slovo, adjoining Milnerton to the east, add many thousands of working-class or unemployed coloured and black citizens to the voting pattern. Even in 2000, Dunoon housing estate and Doornbach squatter camps were important sources of ANC support. Today these suburbs have grown dramatically. Together they account for a third of the registered voters of what is now ward 3, and these voters are almost entirely ANC supporters. These two areas together contain four voting districts (VDs) which have 9013 registered voters.

Since the population of these areas has grown so much, and since the distribution of probable voters has also changed, it only makes sense to redraw the electoral boundaries of the Blaauwberg administration to give all these people proportional representation. It's the job of the supposedly independent Municipal Demarcation Board to make decisions about the changes in the boundaries.

A credible and democratic allocation of seats in Blaauwberg must contain wards delimited in such a way that the ANC would win them. How else will the people of Phoenix, Joe Slovo, Doornbach and Dunoon elect the councillors they want? 9013 voters in Doornbach and Dunoon are nearly enough voters to sustain a ward on their own - the minimum number of voters seems to be about 11000 per ward.

What must be avoided is the temptation to cut the boundaries of wards so that concentrations of ANC voters corral groups of DA voters so that predominantly DA areas are overwhelmed by an artificially large number of ANC voters. Wards created in this way have long and meandering boundaries, and have no geographical or demographic unity. The creation of stretched and distorted wards for political advantage is known as the practice of gerrymandering.

This effect is most clearly seen in the MDB's proposals for Table View. Dunoon and Doornbach are used as ANC anchors to capture and disenfranchise about a third of the centre of Table View, in their proposed ward 104.

Doornbach and Dunoon are on the east of the picture, in the conspicuous bulge. Outside of the bulge, on the other side of the Rietvlei river, is traditional DA country - the entirety of the rest of the proposed ward is young, middle-class, kids-at-primary-school DA voters. As it stands, this specially engineered ward will go to the ANC.

Removal of restrictions for Vissershok dump

2004-08-27T15:12:00.000+02:00

The Cape Town municipality gazetted a public notice in today's Cape Times. It calls for objections to be lodged with the Director of Land Development Management, P.B. X9086, Cape Town 8000 before 5th October this year with respect to the following:

Ref: LC CFM 153
Applicant: City of Cape Town
Nature of application: Removal of a restrictive title condition applicable to Cape Farm 153, Vissershok, Cape Town, to rezone the property from Rural to Noxious Industry, to legalise the existing waste disposal site & associated noxious industrial uses.

For many years the residents of Morning Star and Vissershok have lived hard by what amounts to an informal waste site they call the Vissershok dump. Among other problems there are apparently unacceptably high levels of mercury in the ground water; those locals who use water drawn from boreholes or well points were at risk.

To this stage there have been moves either to relocate the dump - and presumably closing the present site - or to formalise the present site. It appears the council has decided to take the second option.

Despite appearances the formalisation of the dump site may be a good thing, for some at any rate. The dump's presence effectively prevents the local landowners from selling their land. They hold out the hope that the city government will be forced to establish a buffer zone surrounding the dump, which will require the municipality to buy their farms from them.

Others may not be so lucky. There are many homeless people and shack-dwellers in the area. Some of them live physically next to the dump. Their lot will not be improved just because the area is officially toxic.

I'll update you once I've spoken to some of the locals.

Gerrymandering the 2005 Cape Town election

2004-08-27T11:21:00.000+02:00

After the weekend, my analysis of the Municipal Demarcation Board's gerrymandering of the 2005 local government election in Cape Town, with special consideration for Table View.