20 July 2007, Pennington (Durban South)
We wish to thank the IEC for convening this symposium to reflect on the state of South Africa’s democracy. We think that the IEC, as an independent body responsible for conducting elections in our country, it is perfectly placed to act as a platform for such reflections.
But at the same time a number of issues that one will touch upon are beyond the scope of the IEC, as its work is largely restricted to registering political parties, conduct and oversee elections. However it is very important for the IEC to interact with these matters as it provides the context within which elections are conducted, thus better informing it on its own work.
The SACP’s conception of democracy
The SACP, as part of the tripartite alliance that fought against, and defeated the apartheid regime, remains committed to the democratic institutions as encapsulated in our constitution adopted in 1996. We are committed to it also because we were fully part of the negotiations that led to the final adoption to this constitution.
In addition we are generally very proud about the deepening consolidation of our democracy, in so far as we are also part of strengthening these institutions of representative democracy in our country. We believe that the right to vote by all South Africans is a right that must be defended at all costs. We at least believe that in line with the prescriptions of the Freedom Charter, we now do indeed have a government that has the right to rule based on being elected and endorsed by all South Africans, irrespective of race, colour or creed.
However, we do need to fully articulate our conception of democracy so that we are fully understood on this front. Much as we have institutions of representative democracy, the SACP is fully of the view that these on their own are necessary but not sufficient for a fully democratic society.
We appreciate the fact that both in our constitution and in various other pieces of legislation and government policy, there is full recognition of building structures of participatory democracy, including the right to freely organize to pursue legitimate demands, as well as the right to strike and the right to hold demonstrations. To us these are very important components of our democracy.
The SACP has always understood democracy to be centred on how people maximise their collective and individual creative energies to eradicate social ills that afflict the South African society—poverty, hunger, unemployment, disease, environmental degradation, homelessness, ignorance, unemployment, oppression and exploitation. In short, for our democracy to be fully democratic it must incorporate the building of structures and institution aimed at eradicating the class, national and gender inequalities, in their interrelationship, in the whole of South African society.
Meaningful participation should always be at the centre of democracy and political governance. Democracy goes beyond casting votes once every five years. Democracy means that people should be able to impact, in an ongoing manner, on decision-making processes, mainly on issues that affect them. If the people of a country are able to meaningfully input into the way decisions are made at different levels of governance; that begins to give the word democracy meaningful content.
Certainly, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has in the past 10 years, played a critical and important role in ensuring the realisation of one of the pillars of our democracy; free and fair elections.
The three national and provincial democratic elections that were conducted by the IEC in South Africa and various other (bye) elections al local government levels were widely and profoundly declared free and fair by both internal and external observers—and this is a positive and plausible aspect of our democracy and building of a coherent and united nation.
While Elections are a cornerstone of democracy, they do not constitute an overall content and meaning of democracy. And this is what I want to address in this brief address today.
Funding effective democratic participation at local level
However, we do need to note that many of our institutions of participatory democracy are not functioning as optimally as they should be. The reasons for this are varied and cannot simply be placed on government alone. For example a very important institution like ward committees, which seeks to ensure ongoing participatory democracy for the majority of our people at local government level, is hardly functioning optimally. This is as a result of lack of adequate resourcing from the state for such organs to function optimally and indeed the lack of vibrant community organization since 1994. This is also partly a reflection of a tendency towards the decline of mass participation in cases where autocratic and repressive regimes have been defeated. This is a tendency that tends to emerge in many post-colonial situations, where democratic governments tend to be seen as a solution to all the problems facing our people.
A related factor in these developments is that of lack of funding for local government representative structures, thus stifling the very critical component of vibrant local governance in our situation. For instance, as far as the SACP and many communities are concerned, it is a travesty that there is no dedicated funding for local government representatives, as is the case with constituency offices at national and provincial levels. This is a matter that we believe an organization like the IEC has a right to raise publicly and with government in particular. Many of our councilors, especially in rural areas, are expected to cover very large geographical wards without any resources whatsoever.
As the SACP and part of the community constituency at NEDLAC, we would like to use this platform to call for party political and councilor funding at local government level, as well as proper resourcing of ward committees, as a crucial component of strengthening our democracy and its institutions at local level.
Parliament and money bills
Our constitution, adopted in 1996, that is 11 years ago, called for the passing of the necessary legislation for parliament to be able to amend money bills. As the SACP we are extremely concerned that this has not been implemented, thus basically leaving parliament very weakened and the budget and its priorities remaining a matter for the executive alone. This is one of the reasons why we believe that parliament is a very weak institution that is basically dominated by the executive and its institutions.
We would also like to use this platform to call for the passage of the legislation for parliament to amend money bills as a matter of urgency. Failure to do so remains a very serious violation of the separation of powers and the supremacy of parliament as the overall representative organ of the will of the people of South Africa as a whole.
Floor-crossing and a mixed electoral system
Another urgent matter that needs to be attended to in our electoral system is that of floor-crossing. As the SACP we believe that the practice of floor-crossing, whatever its origins might have been, stand in stark contrast and contradiction to a proportional representation system. We welcome a system of proportional representation as a system best capable of representing the variety of political views and interests in South African society. This must however be mixed with a constituency based system, where our people can directly elect their representatives in particular constituencies. And this is the only way we can allow floor-crossing, whereby those who change their political parties must resign as public representatives and subject themselves to fresh elections and electoral mandates.
We strongly condemn the hyprocrisy of some of the opposition parties in South Africa, who voted and supported floor-crossing to suit their short-term and immediate political interests, and then condemn it when it doesn’t work in their favour.
The SACP strongly believes that it is time now to review our electoral system to incorporate both proportional and constituency based systems, and to allow ‘floor crossing’ only in relation to the constituency-based component of our electoral system.
An end to ‘no-go areas’
Coming to matters affecting this province in particular, it is very important that all political parties and the mass of our people in general, effectively end ‘no-go’ areas. Whilst as a country we have come a long way from the apartheid war waged against the liberation movement, especially in this province, we however still do have areas that are regarded as no-go areas for some political parties. For instance, I have read, during the past week about failure of the ANC to hold a political rally in Ulundi, on the grounds that the ANC has no members in that part of our country. This surely cannot be true.
Therefore one of the remaining tasks in deepening our democracy is that of allowing free political activity in every corner of our country. It is also important, and we regard this as a legitimate part of the work of the IEC, to fight against and pronounce on activities that still promote ‘no-go areas’, especially in this province.
The socio-economic and the politics of democracy
Perhaps the most important message we are bringing to this gathering is that democracy without socio-economic rights is no democracy at all. We live in a society where the wealth of the country is created by the overwhelming majority of the workers, but its fruits are only shared by a minority – the capitalist class –which owns the means of production.
We applaud the fact that our Bill of Rights, as enshrined in our constitution does recognize the importance of socio-economic rights. But these rights can never be realized in a society that simultaneously privileges profit over social need, private accumulation rights over the collective needs of society, and a system that justifies exploitation of a majority by a few. This is the reason why we are a communist party, that stands for the socio-economic interests of the majority as the true foundation of a democratic South Africa.
The process of private accumulation by a few, at the direct expense of the direct producers – the workers and the majority – stands in fundamental contradiction to all what our constitution seeks to achieve; a truly egalitarian society. Whilst the vote is important, but our democracy cannot just be reduced to a vote once in five years.
For South Africa to be truly democratic, it must democratize its economy, so that the wealth of our country is truly shared amongst the workers and the poor. For us as the Communist Party and the poor communities of South Africa, there can be no political democracy without socio-economic democracy. For the South African communist this is all what we mean when we call for a socialist South Africa – the only society capable of being democratic. It is this reality, unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, that the South African media and the elite in our society seek to hide.
Because of these socio-economic realities and inequalities, our democracy is also threatened by the power of money. The fact of the matter is that the South African economy, and therefore its politics, is still overwhelming shaped by the rich. It is this reality that we must change in order to solidify the foundations of our democracy. In a society where the minority has money and the majority is poor and without resources, there is indeed a danger of the triumph of money of the people’s will. To protect our democracy we need to ensure that the people’s will triumphs over money!
In order to achieve this we must resource our democracy, and resourcing our democracy means resourcing the poor and strengthening institutions that will ensure that the voice of the workers and the poor is the predominant voice in society. This does not only require resourcing but also the mobilization of the poor through strengthening the participatory structures of democracy. Surely the IEC has something to say and campaign for in this regard!
With these words we wish you a successful conference!