My first boss was quite picky
about the correct use of terminology. I had just joined the organisation and
referred to “doing my best for our clients”. His very direct response was “We
don’t have clients, we have customers. Only prostitutes and lawyers
have clients, because the end-result
of their ‘consultations’ is exactly
the same – you get screwed!”. Sadly, politicians
can now be added to this category. Bell Pottingers’ South African “project” says we can add PR companies, and
the latest KPMG/McKinsey revelations say we can probably also add accounting
and consulting companies. The list is growing almost daily, and the only people
that this derogatory use of the word “client”
should exclude today are sex workers. They consistently deliver their services
without pretending they are anything other than who they are, yet ironically they
are also the only ones whose career
choice is presently defined as being illegal and subject to immediate arrest.
Go figure...
Globally, groups such as KPMG and
McKinsey are bigger than the Gupta’s “empire” yet they are seemingly prepared
to risk their reputations, not only in South Africa, but worldwide. The
question is, have they been so corrupted by wealth that they are prepared to “prostitute” themselves to their “clients”, or can they still stand up for
their code of ethics and put a stop to this pandemic of corruption? The ethics of
Chartered Accountants in particular seem to have been suborned by the enhanced
profit inherent in corrupt practises - remember Arthur Andersen’s spectacular
fall from grace?
But as far as our everyday lives
go, politicians are the worst offenders. On a national level they generously line
their pockets with our money, while making the most outrageous promises that either
cannot possibly be delivered or, if kept, will destroy the economy and
devastate our already fragile society. Then on a local level there are far too
many of them dragging service delivery down with their equally exorbitant
salaries and corrupt practices. So where do these so-called “professions” draw
the line? More importantly, where do we draw
the line? Our biggest problem is that too many people are listening only to
what they want to hear, rather than hearing many of the inconvenient truths of
our divided society, so the lines have become blurred.
If you think we only need to wait
for 2019 to ring the political changes we are craving, I urge you to think
again. Consensus of opinion is that 2019 will at best herald an era of coalition politics, but can a really
workable coalition emerge from our dog’s breakfast of political ideologies? It is clear that the DA will not win an
outright majority no matter what self-destructive actions the ANC perpetrate
over the next twenty months or so, and they will probably also require more
than one coalition partner to take control. But let’s fantasise for a moment,
and assume the DA can take control with only one partner, which we can safely
assume to be the EFF. Even then it is delusional to believe that a marriage of such
incompatible ideologies can end in anything other than acrimony and eventual
divorce. That is unless they both stray so far from their manifestos that they are
no longer recognisable as the parties we voted for, with the electorate left powerless
to object to such blatant misrepresentation.
In addition, given their
antagonism, the EFF had no option but to use Jacob Zuma as an excuse for
entering into municipal coalitions with the DA which, by the way, also provides
them with a governance platform they otherwise would not have. But with JZ out
of the way in 2019, it stretches the imagination to believe that the EFF would
choose an alliance with the supposed defenders of “White Monopoly Capital” over
an alliance with what would likely be a desperate, although ideologically more
compatible ANC (and yes, now that the ANC have dropped “White” the EFF are
emphasising it). The whole debate then becomes a numbers game. Heaven forbid
that they have enough numbers to cross the 66% threshold that allows them to
change the Constitution, a possibility that we cannot just blissfully ignore when
it has the potential to cause substantially more damage to our fragile
democracy. Even without such numbers, I
don’t think Julius Malema’s ego would allow him to turn down the opportunity to
become “kingmaker” to the party that rejected him in 2012. I also have a
nagging suspicion that he still dreams of becoming ANC President one day, so
wouldn’t be surprised to see an eventual reintegration of the EFF a few years
AZ (After Zuma).
The real issue for me, as things
stand, is that 2019 may only serve to prove the maxim the more things change the more they stay the same. All parties are
guilty of engendering cadre loyalty through threats or patronage, or a
combination of the two. Recent events in Mogale City, where DA councillors were
subjected to “voluntary” polygraph testing to weed out the “traitor” who did
not toe the party line in a secret no-confidence ballot, clearly demonstrates
the hypocrisy entrenched in our closed party list system. Until Radical
Political Transformation stops party leaders from Monopolising Control over
their deployees, you and I will remain nothing more than quinquennial voting
fodder. We will also remain exposed to the risk of politicians of any and every
party in power, capturing the state through the same fear and patronage tactics
JZ has perfected. Politicians are supposed to protect citizens from corruption
and rampant capitalist profiteering, yet the closed party list system is the foundation
for a symbiotic relationship between them.
Here’s what we need to put the brakes on this politico-centric
narrative:
- We need the national electoral system to be changed to introduce more constituency accountability in the National Assembly - a change which must also include the ability to directly vote for our President of choice;
- We need the Constitution to be changed to limit the executive powers of the President and his deployees: a change that must also include predefined and meaningful sanctions for office bearers who break their oath of office;
- We need local government electoral and demarcation systems to be changed to reduce the number of politicians presently consuming service delivery resources. Too many councillors who have no discernible value other than accepting the patronage of their party - paid for by ratepayers out of public coffers;
- We need to introduce legislation that compels political parties to disclose who their donors are and the amounts they donated. We need to know who is pulling the party’s strings when they take a specific position on an issue.
Simple enough you would think,
but who is going to drive these changes? Not the established political elite,
that’s for sure. They are too comfortable with the current dispensation where
the cards are always stacked in their favour to the detriment of their
constituents. In any event there isn’t a single visionary among the current
crop of party leadership. None of them has the foresight to unite the country
behind an ideology that is founded upon a belief that South Africa Works – not only functionally as an integrated
society, but also as a nation that provides job opportunities for all.
Under
these circumstances might we look to France for inspiration? The three pillars of
French democracy: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were being undermined by the
divisive tactics of politicians. From the far right rhetoric of Marine le Pen,
to the extreme left acerbic tongue of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and every shade of
ideology in between, division was the order of the day. Emmanuel Macron formed En Marche in April 2016 to refocus
attention on the pillars of democracy, rather than specific political
ideologies. Membership of the organisation was free as long as the member
signed up to the En Marche charter,
and they were also not required to give up existing membership of another
political party. Its charter states that the political status quo is the
root of the country’s problem. It talks of “unblocking” (France) and
re-energising a political landscape which had become bogged down by a distant,
impractical political class. Sound familiar? Macron recognised that only through applying
practical politics not party politics can the country begin dealing with the
problems of the people.
Our
situation has many parallels with pre-Macron France, so perhaps we should
remind ourselves of the foundation of our own democracy, and see if we can’t
find our way back to implementing those principles. In South Africa we have Liberty and Political Equality in the sense that everyone has
a right to vote, but Economic Equality
has been stifled by a seriously deficient basic education system and political malfeasance
in the form of patronage and corruption. As Economic
Equality is the foundation for Fraternity,
which would be a South African politician’s nightmare, it is unsurprising that they
use this Economic Inequality as a
divisive tactic in pursuit of furthering their own ends.
A short 14 months after formation,
Macron’s vision broke the political mould and En Marche achieved an absolute majority in French national
elections. We have around 20 months to rediscover the ethos of the Freedom
Charter “that South Africa belongs to all who live in it,
black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is
based on the will of all the people”. It is not too late for us to reach out as they
did in France to likeminded people, irrespective of their political affiliation
or ideology, to make sure that South
Africa Works. Macron showed us that we don’t need to limit ourselves to
presently available choices – we have it within us to create a completely new
political narrative, so let’s do it!
