Dysfunctional Democracy or Disengaged Politocracy?

(Politocracy (n) : a multi-party political system where politicians work for the benefit of their parties and not the electorate)

If you can stand back from the political feeding frenzy surrounding the Zuma/Concourt/Gupta soap opera for a moment, please take some time to consider the following:  Why are we allowing politicians to make “defending the Constitution” their main campaign focus for local government elections, and not the ever-deteriorating levels of municipal service delivery?

Local government is, with few exceptions, an unmitigated disaster. By focusing our attention on the supposedly higher ambitions of unseating Jacob Zuma and dismantling the ANC, are opposition politicians hoping that no explanation of their own political shortcomings in local governance will be needed?

Perversely, while it is a direct attack on them by the opposition, the ANC can also benefit from a “national referendum” strategy. The majority of ANC-controlled municipalities are financial and service delivery disasters. Framing the upcoming elections around defending the Organisation therefore serves the ANC better than having to confront their otherwise dismal failure at this level of governance.

The EFF, however, will be the main beneficiaries of a national referendum platform.  They have no track record of actually governing anything, so they are reliant upon a generally populist rhetoric that only really works for them at a national level.  Their increasingly belligerent and militaristic approach may work in parliament, but may not work as well for them on smaller, local stages. In announcing that the April 30^th launch of their election manifesto will “start the march to have Zuma removed”, the EFF have tied their local government election wagon firmly to the more advantageous national referendum train. It remains to be seen whether their manifesto addresses the real challenges of local governance, or turns out to be an empty drum that just makes a lot of noise.

The DA is perhaps a surprise passenger on this journey as they really do have a better story to tell when it comes to local governance. They are nowhere near perfect at it, but they are several light years ahead of the ANC when it comes to service delivery, and most certainly ahead of the EFF who have yet to govern anything at all.  In a properly functioning democracy, this should be the DA’s main thrust when campaigning, yet they have also joined in the populist howling of their main opponents. 

So while we, Joe Public, are being led by the nose down a politically populist path, what are we missing? Of critical importance is that we are missing the opportunity to hold our local government politicians to account.  We should be demanding that they justify proportional representation at this level of governance. Demanding to know why we need so many politicians, costing such a lot of money, to mismanage local government so badly[1]. 

Before I am challenged with the “everyone has a voice” justification for retaining proportional representation, let’s look at a few facts:  The DA and ANC hold 85.1% of all proportional seats across the eight metro councils, which translates into a ratio of 4.5 additional ANC and DA party voices to the 1 voice for “everyone” else. Nationally, excluding the regionally anomalous Kwazulu-Natal, they hold a combined average of 82% of all proportional seats, at a cost of around R1.4bn per year in salaries alone.

Is it really worth taking R1.4bn per year away from service delivery in order to primarily supplement ANC and DA payrolls, and only then give voices to so few others? Voices which, in any event, are generally silenced or ignored by the two main parties? An awful lot of potholes could be fixed, water and sanitation delivered, and electricity supplied for R1.4bn.

Now is the time to listen to Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, who recently said, “Ethical leadership (in South Africa) is not optional, it is a national imperative”.  Therefore, as an imperative, let the present leadership of all political parties give us their ethical justification for continuing with their disengaged politocracy, instead of embracing a true democracy, warts and all.

Sadly, I think the term “ethical politics” is an oxymoron[2], but as a parting thought: If the ANC can engineer an acceptable Zumexit, and time the announcement perfectly, is it possible that they can take the wind completely out of the “national referendum” sails of the opposition, or are they now so internally fractured that recovery is impossible?

Just asking....but having gambled heavily on a national referendum platform, if Zuma is gone, what do the opposition have left in their armoury, and where does that leave us, the paying public, in our quest for accountable local governance? 

Whichever way it turns out for President Zuma, the ANC, EFF and DA et al, one inevitable outcome is that taxpayers will continue to be fleeced by local government politicians for another five years, simply because we have taken our eyes off the ball.  It really is time to change the rules of the game.

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[1] See featured post : Disconnected Priorities

[2] Oxymoron (noun) - a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction e.g. deafening silence, Military Intelligence, civil servant, Microsoft Works etc.

Dishonourably Honourable

It may have been entertaining watching opposition parties line up in parliament to take well-argued and extremely well-aimed pot-shots at President Zuma and the ANC, but behind the theme of all the attacks was their acknowledgement that the efforts to impeach the President were doomed to failure.  In an editorial comment the following day Alec Hogg[1] of Biznews perceptively highlights that the “ANC will Dump Zuma – but only in its own good time”.

It is widely recognised, even within the organisation, that Jacob Zuma has become a liability to the ANC. The longer he stays at the helm the more advantageous it is for opposition parties in the upcoming local government elections. President Zuma’s demise was, and remains inevitable, so why was the opposition so hasty in calling for an impeachment debate?

It beggars belief that the DA and EFF suddenly discovered altruistic streaks in their self-serving political agendas large enough for them to willingly give up this gem of an advantage. Were they really sincerely concerned that the ANC will take too long to do the right thing, or more concerned that the ANC will do the right thing too soon, before they, the main opposition, are able to milk it to their ultimate advantage?

As I suspect that the majority of politicians have altruism erased from their persona at birth, I lean towards the self-serving motive. The most effective ways to drive the ANC into laager and ensure that Jacob Zuma stays in place is to challenge the ANC to recall him, or to try to obtain his removal through the parliamentary impeachment process.

It is too generous to assume that the ANC were about to imminently dump Zuma, as he still enjoys considerable support within the organisation, but by openly challenging the ANC, the opposition have now made it a cast iron certainty that he cannot be dumped any time soon. 

So, political advantage has been gained by the opposition, but at what cost to the country? The impeachment process was really nothing more than the opposition contributing towards what Standard and Poor’s Konrad Reuss describes as “political noise” that will almost certainly have a negative effect on our sovereign credit rating.

Having started the whole debacle, the ANC are not blameless in escalating the political cacophony. They turned up the volume themselves on Friday when first President Zuma, and then Secretary General Gwede Mantashe failed quite spectacularly to accept any responsibility, or pronounce upon any consequences stemming from the Constitutional Court judgement.  Tuesday’s predictable outcome of the impeachment process just ramped up the volume of political noise even further, bringing us ever closer to junk status.

Sadly, and because of this, the EFF & DA are about to turn their Constitutional Court triumph for our democracy and democratic institutions into a facile and pyrrhic victory for politicians. In the 1980’s, British humourist John Cleese produced a 4-part series of corporate training videos entitled “So you want to be a success at selling?  In part 4 “Closing the Sale” one of the strongest messages was that when you have made the sale, stop talking before you say something that makes your customer rethink their decision.  The EFF and DA had made their sale at the Constitutional Court, but they haven’t yet stopped talking.

What this circus really tells us, though, is that none of our politicians puts the country first. They are all so wrapped up in scoring political points in their all-consuming quest for power, that they have lost sight of their true purpose. Their true purpose is not only to uphold and defend the Constitution, but also to always act in the best interests of the country and its people.  In this, they have failed us miserably. 

It most certainly was not in the best interests of the country and its people to push us closer to the potential hardship that will result from junk status, but in true political style they carried on playing the game, even though they had long ago dropped the ball.  

The only thing that will make a difference to all these dishonourable “Honourables” is a change in the electoral system, the need for which is now dire.

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[1] www.biznews.com or http://bit.ly/1V95PsW to go directly to the editorial comment.

The Job Thieves

Ashleigh Furlong of the GroundUp organisation has highlighted the plight of the unemployed in Cape Town in her article Waiting for work, day after day after day”[1], yet behind all the public rhetoric about our struggling economy and the need to create more jobs, our political leaders are hiding a very large secret. Their secret is that they actually have it within their power to create 30,000 entry-level job opportunities paying around R50k per year.

Where will the money come from?

Our local government electoral system has a proportional representation component which, due to legislative defects, is essentially redundant.  I have covered this subject from many different angles, and the evidence is conclusive that proportional representation serves only to provide sheltered employment for the party faithful, while having no effect on political control within any municipality bar one.

In addition, the vast majority of proportional representatives are only part-time councillors, so their salaries of over R200k per year at the lowest local council level and of over R440K per year at metro council level, are generous in the extreme.  That is a lot of money for a part-time job, where the only challenge is to turn up from time-to-time in order to vote the way you are told by the party caucus.

Cape Town alone has 110 pointless proportional councillors who cost taxpayers around R48.5m, or the equivalent of 970 entry-level permanent jobs. Not a bad trade in my view, taking out 110 politicians for the benefit of 970 “real” people.

Nationally we could rid ourselves of 4158 pointless PR political positions which will free up around R1.5 billion per year that can be used to create as many as 30,000 proper jobs, or at the very least fill some of the frozen operational posts in municipalities.  Not taking out these pointless political positions is tantamount to stealing jobs from the poorest of our people in order to perpetuate a political fraud of the first order.

Can it be that easy?

It can be changed quite easily, but the problem is that political parties rely on the proportional representation party list system not only to reward their followers, but to also cement party loyalty firmly ahead of constituency accountability.  They are therefore not going to willingly give up access to their supplementary payroll provided from the public purse.  Nor are they going to willingly relinquish the level of control over their adherents that the PR party list system gives them.

As it is only the politicians who can change the system, we have a challenge the equivalent of which is persuading turkeys to vote for Christmas.

Where to now?

First of all, let us start by asking party leaders to justify why they would even want to keep 4158 completely pointless part-time jobs in preference to uplifting 30,000 other people through permanent employment. That alone should elicit some interesting responses.   Civil society organisations that are concerned with the plight of unemployed people should be asked to bring pressure to bear, and society in general should also be asked whether we want to keep a redundant clause in the constitution, or whether we would prefer to see more people gainfully employed.

It will not make a major dent in the overall 8.2 million unemployed, but if it is not addressed politicians will remain guilty of stealing another 5 years worth of jobs from the most needy of our people, and we will be complicit in that theft by virtue of our silence.

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[1] Follow the link www.groundup.org.za or http://bit.ly/1RZHyzo to go directly to the article.

Disproportional Representation

The Good Governance Africa (GGA) organisation’s latest journal[1] contains a special focus report on the quality of local government in South Africa, which includes their municipal performance index for all 234 local and metro councils. It makes very interesting reading in that it confirms, among other things, that the majority of people have lost faith in the ability of their local councillors to properly represent them.

The journal also alludes to a lack of constituency accountability as being a factor in the disconnection between politicians and their voters when it says “....a legislative defect protects constituency-based town councillors from real accountability to their electorates. The electoral system at the local government level is hybrid, and includes an element of constituency-related activities as well as proportional representation. They then go on later to say “However, once elected, councillors are beholden to the whims of the party that nominated them. A political party can recall a councillor if it is displeased with that person for some reason.”

I am now going to try to unpack the “legislative defect”.  First of all, contrary to what politicians say, you do not vote for “the candidate of your choice”. You actually vote for the candidate of their choice, namely a politician who has been selected by other politicians to stand in your ward. We have no say in the selection process, and in many instances we have no idea what their qualifications are, or where they were parachuted in from by their party.  The constituency ward vote is therefore Hobson’s Choice[2].  In essence, nothing more than a party vote which leaves the ward councillor “beholden to the whims of the party that nominated them”, rather than beholden to their voting constituents.  Strike 1 against constituency accountability.

The proportional representation vote goes towards padding a council with additional politicians based solely upon their party affiliation.  Proportional councillors are therefore entirely dependent upon their parties for a high enough position on the party list to be assured of a seat in council.

Proportional councillors have no “constituency-related activities” and are therefore even more “beholden to the whims of the party that nominated them”.  In addition, a ward candidate who loses their constituency election can still be appointed a councillor because of the dual candidacy nature of the proportional party list. How democratic is that? The generally accepted terms for this political practice are cronyism or cadre deployment. Strike 2 against constituency accountability.

Even though we may have voted for the ward councillor, “a political party can recall a councillor if it is displeased with that person for some reason”. Without any further reference to the electorate, the party rules supreme.  Heaven forbid that your councillor actually represents your interests when those interests are in conflict with the party caucus. It does not happen very often, because councillors know they will suffer sanctions.  Strike 3 against constituency accountability.

This unacceptable “3 strikes” outcome is actually caused by a number of compounding legislative defects.

Defect 1 Our Constitution dictates the use of proportional representation in local government, but does not specifically preclude a ward candidate from also being a proportional candidate. Political parties frequently use this legislative defect to appoint losing ward candidates as proportional councillors. This is a deliberate and premeditated circumvention of the will of the voters, which further serves to entrench the power of a party over all their councillors.

Defect 2 The Municipal Structures Act No 117 of 1998 eliminates the need for proportional representation as envisaged in the Constitution. This Act stipulates that “The Demarcation Board must delimit a municipality into wards, each having approximately the same number of voters.” The Board, in conjunction with the Independent Electoral Commission, diligently conspires to execute this requirement. If you accept the premise that a ward vote is just a party vote in disguise, it stands to reason that, in the majority of instances, a voter’s proportional vote will go the same way as their ward vote. This being true, two votes for the same party across wards of equal size will result in the same outcome as having only a single ward vote. 

In the vast majority of councils the PR vote therefore serves only to fulfill a constitutional requirement, and has no bearing on the outcome of political control. In fact, there are only nine coalitions among the 234 local and metro councils.  Of these nine, there is only one council where political control would change if PR was eliminated.  This essentially translates into having 4158 proportional councillors for the sake of one anomalous municipality that has only five wards and four proportional councillors of its own.

If you are still not convinced that the system needs to change then look at the difference in numbers between the top 20 and bottom 20 municipalities on the performance index.

The top 20 have a total of 450 councillors of which 233 are ward councillors and 217 are proportional councillors.

The bottom 20 have a total of 920 councillors of which 463 are ward councillors and 457 are proportional councillors.  The other striking statistic to come out of the bottom 20 municipalities is that they are all held by the ANC with overwhelming majorities.  In fact, at 281 the ANC have more proportional seats in these municipalities than the total of 197 ward and proportional seats of all the other parties combined. At a cost of around R122m proportional representation in these municipalities is unaffordable, completely pointless, and in comparison with the top 20 suggests that more actually provides less.

If you are still not convinced, then you must be a politician. The rest of us have learned a couple of things: first of all, that all the power lies with party leaders and none with the electorate, which proves Mark Twain’s point that “If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it”; and second, that we must stop “the insanity of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”.

We really need to divert all our energy towards fixing the defective legislation, which should also rid us of a satisfactory number of defective politicians.  #PRMUSTFALL

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[1] The GGA report can be found at www.gga.org or follow this link http://bit.ly/1WYPTqV to go directly to the report itself.

[2] Hobson’s Choice – the choice of taking either that which is offered, or nothing.

Hypocrisy, Fraud, and Tyranny

When Frederick W Robertson said, "There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy - hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny", he could have been talking about our current crop of politicians.

Hypocrisy

Julius Malema insisting that Jacob Zuma "pays back the money" is hypocrisy of the first order - how about your R20m in outstanding income tax Mr Malema? Helen Zille’s hand wringing over budget cuts that will mean freezing more operational posts, while saying nothing about the Municipal Demarcation Board creating even more political seats in local councils, is also highly hypocritical. Nothing more needs to be said about the jaw-dropping hypocrisy of the ANC that hasn’t already been said.

Fraud

In among all the known areas of blatant corruption, our local government electoral system is itself a pernicious fraud of the first order. All proportional councillors in local government, and the parties who appoint them, are defrauding the public of money that should rather be spent on service delivery.  The Municipal Structures Act, and the Municipal Demarcation Act remove the need for proportional representation. This is borne out by the 2011 electoral results, where proportional councillors could influence the balance of power in only 14 of the 234 local and metro councils.  For the rest, DA and ANC councillors vote as instructed by the party leadership, and the “also-ran” parties are just ignored. Proportional representation is an expensive political irrelevancy, costing in the region of R7.5 billion for the 5 years from 2011, which is likely to increase to around R9 billion for the next 5 year term.

Tyranny

Political party leaders are guilty of tyranny as they hold all the cards when it comes to who gets what job at all three levels of government, with an ultimatum to toe the party (my) line or get kicked out. The EFF have also taken tyranny to a new level with their unsubtle intimidation of anyone who disagrees with them, as underlined by their veiled threat to certain journalists at a recent press conference.

No Mercy

Civil society holds the key, and we must show the present political cabal no mercy. We must start to believe in ourselves and stop listening to all the politically populist babble, and their even baser ploy of throwing pooh at each other in the hope that some of it will stick.  We need to stand up to politicians of all parties and say we have had enough of your divisive policies and behaviour. We must also tell them in no uncertain terms that we are no longer going to pay for unnecessary sycophants, and other party faithful cadres, that they parachute into municipalities through the irrelevant proportional representation system.

To break the stranglehold that politicians have over us and our local governments, we need to change the dual candidacy proportional representation party list system to a single candidacy constituency based system.  While political resistance to this is guaranteed, we must believe that we can force them to change this insidious system, and not just shrug it off as an impossibility – as Madiba said “It is always impossible until it is done”.  Time is short, but #PRMUSTFALL before we are saddled with another 5 years of this unnecessary political expense.

Party, Party, Party

“Too many politicians, regardless of which side of the political divide, have the idea that their parties come first and the country last. President Jacob Zuma was just the unlucky one who expressed it in unsophisticated terms. If this were not the case, opposition politicians would have been able to change the political landscape of this country long ago, especially with the vulnerability of the ruling party over the past decade. Instead, they spent time building toy kingdoms, where each is some sort of king or queen.”

Onkgopotse JJ Tabane - Civil society vital to counter madness – BDLive 18^th November 2015

I could not agree more with this sentiment. In local government, I  also believe that the primary fault lies with the dual candidacy, proportional representation party list system, which promotes and perpetuates cadre deployment and political elitism over constituency accountability. A system where the Party comes first and constituents, invariably, come last.

The numbers tell us that the party-based politics of local government has become a viper’s nest of cadre deployment and political patronage.

Resulting from the 2011 Local Government Elections:

• There are 4235 Ward Councillors and 4159 Proportional Councillors in SA's 234 combined Local and Metro Councils[1]
• Political control was only uncertain in 14 of the 234 Councils[2]
• 44 Proportional Councillors held the balance of political control in those 14 Councils[3]

It is therefore safe to say that a mere 1.06% of proportional councillors had influence over the balance of power in a paltry 6% of local councils. The remaining 4115 proportional councillors added no value to the process, effectively rendering them surplus to requirements.  Surplus to our requirements as municipal taxpayers, that is.

The cost of proportional councillors is around R1.5 billion per year in salaries alone.  Never mind the high cost of providing the support infrastructure that goes with them, and the ongoing pension and medical benefits that will live with us long after they have made enough money to leave the political stage.

We really do not need these people in our local councils, so why are they there?  The answer is quite simple.  It is a very easy mechanism for party bosses to reward the party faithful with sheltered employment at our expense, while at the same time ensuring that their unwavering loyalty to the party comes before constituency accountability.  We do not choose these individuals, their party does, and if that is not the epitome of cadre deployment and political patronage then I will struggle to understand what is.

As a result, local government is in a mess. Municipal infrastructures, even in the so-called better run DA councils are crumbling because decisions on infrastructure maintenance are being made by unaccountable politicians.  Instead of having a properly devised technical approach to planned maintenance or infrastructure development, councillors in virtually all municipalities are deciding which infrastructure to renew, repair, or maintain based solely upon political agendas, or personal enrichment objectives.

In 2016 there are likely to be more unaccountable councillors than ever, once the Municipal Demarcation Board has finished redrawing Ward and Municipal boundaries.   Even without this, the latest salary increases of between 5.5% and 6% for local government politicians will immediately add another minimum of R250m to the local government political wage bill.[4]

Based on all of the above, I can think of no rational argument to retain proportional representation at this level of governance.  It is an ineffective and expensive mechanism that should be abolished prior to 2016 elections, or we will be stuck with another 5 years of unwarranted and unnecessary expense.  The money can be better spent on delivering adequate services, and uplifting the living standards of poorer communities, rather than lining the pockets of political parasites.

Unfortunately we need national government politicians to pass a Constitutional amendment that is contrary to their own self-interest, so don’t hold your breath. 

Unless we find ways to join hands as communities, rich and poor alike, to voice our dissatisfaction with the present political dispensation, then we deserve the governance, or lack thereof, that we get.

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[1] District Councils have been excluded as we only vote for 40% of the Councillors, 60% are Party appointees

[2] Three in KZN (KZN233/242/265), ten in W.Cape (WC011/022/026/034/041/042/045/047/051/052), & one in N.Cape (NC065)

[3] Two of the 14 Councils (WC041/052) would require an unlikely coalition between the ANC & DA involving 6 Proportional Councillors, making totals of 12 Councils and 38 Proportional Councillors a more realistic assessment.

[4] It is interesting to note that in an election year they award themselves inflation-based increases, but no doubt they will return to form with above-inflation increases once the election is over.

Rubicon 2016

Politicians are doing a good job of pointing fingers everywhere but towards themselves in their search to fund the #FeesMustFall higher education budget shortfall. Yet the political arena is where the money can most easily be found. Not only by denying politicians their luxury vehicles and other extravagances, but also by taking a hard look at the systems that have brought us to this potentially Rubicon moment.

Start by asking, do we really need so many politicians? Both the emotional and practical answers are that we do not. Local Government in particular is overburdened by a political overhead that makes municipalities generally dysfunctional and in many instances, blatantly corrupt.

Under our mixed constituency/proportional representation local government electoral system, the Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB) is tasked with ensuring that every Ward within a single municipality has approximately the same number of registered voters. This action completely voids the purpose of using a proportional system.  Only where there is a need to balance votes cast by widely differing constituency populations, spread over a wide geographic area, does Proportional Representation come into its own. Courtesy of the MDB, this does not apply to municipal elections in South Africa.  [1]

The numbers in this case are not difficult to follow: 

9984 Local, Metro and District councillors cost taxpayers around R3.2billion annually in salaries; of these, 4782 are proportional councillors, costing around R1.5billion in salaries alone.

We could dispense with Proportional Representative Councillors, whom the MDB have effectively reduced to the status of Ghost Workers, and immediately save R1.5billion in direct costs.  Add to this all the indirect infrastructure and support costs, including long-term pension and medical liabilities to be saved and the #FeesMustFall shortfall will most likely be taken care of.

Not only will we save a huge amount in unnecessary expenses but, by returning to a purely constituency-based system, councillors will have a direct line of accountability to the electorate. In addition, making councillors accountable to the voters will almost certainly have a significant impact on curbing current levels of corruption and mismanagement.  Savings to be made in this area are inestimable, but all indicators are that it will run into the tens of billions of Rands, which will go a long way towards funding totally free higher education for economically disadvantaged students.

Two birds with one stone. Significant money saved and accountability returned.

The obvious roadblock to this political realignment will no doubt be put up by the politicians themselves.  The status quo suits them as it keeps power and accountability in their own hands. 

There is no doubt in the minds of most commentators that the electoral system needs to be reformed, and quickly.  As it stands, if we do not act to change the local government system before the 2016 elections, then we will have to face up to at least another five years of municipal ineptitude and corruption.  Another five years of above inflation increases in municipal tariffs coupled with declining service levels.  In that same five years, many of our students will have qualified and will be in the workplace suffering along with us.  They have secured their short-term future through #FeesMustFall.  We owe it to them and ourselves to secure the longer term future through electoral system change. Now #PropRepMustFall.

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[1] If you have the patience to work through the numbers and theory that prove PR is ineffectual, take a look at my previous posts.