Where are the Members of Parliament?

A basic element of democracy is the requirement that the elected politicians represent their electorate.  They are not there to represent their Party, although this seems to be very much the way the modern politicians see their role.  If that view were correct, the word ‘democracy’ would no longer be appropriate.  The system would be more aptly named as a dictatorship, as now seems to be the case in South Africa, where the buy-off or blackmail of members of the Party seems to be effective in retaining the worst President in the history of South Africa in power.

The requirement that the Members of Parliament represent their electorate, regardless of the Party affiliation of the electorate, means that the Members must vote according to the reasoned and informed wishes of the electorate, regardless of their personal convictions or desires, and regardless of their personal benefit or disadvantage.  Of course, this is like asking the politician to jump over his own shadow.  The structure of Parties requires strict adherence to the Party line, and that, of course, implies strict adherence to the views of the Leader of the Party, the most influential person in the Party.  There can be no clearer examples of this than Sir de Villiers Graaff, the Leader of the United Party, the official Opposition for the beginning years of the National Party’s reign, and Jacob Zuma, the Leader of the African National Congress.  De Villiers Graaff, an ineffectual politician, by his policy of gentlemanly tactics and refraining from any form of attack on the excesses of the then ruling Party, enabled the National Party to dominate the history of South Africa for many years, permitting that Party to introduce and strengthen the policy of Apartheid and so steer the country into the darkest era prior to the introduction of what seemed to be true democracy.  He was followed by a series of equally ineffectual leaders of the Opposition, none of whom had the charisma to allow the electorate to trust them, or, perhaps, all of whom were so patently there for their own benefit that the bulk of the electorate could not trust them. 

Then came Mandela.

Capitalising on the fact that the collapse of the USSR had induced the West to believe that the threat of a communist takeover of Africa was no longer a realistic threat, Mandela, a member of the Communist Party, won the first democratic election and started the new democracy.  Unfortunately, Mandela, an old man and worn down by many years of disappointment, failed to understand the dynamics of the ANC.  His attempt to set the country on the path to a new democratic order started well but faltered when it came to the first hurdle, the imposition of the new Apartheid, the policy of Black Empowerment.  It is fair to believe that Mandela believed that Blacks are equal to Whites.  They are, but, lacking the many years experience in business and in management, the policy resulted in a very large number of more or less incompetent managers gaining positions of control in business or Government.  It also resulted in the experienced Whites, as well as Blacks and others who were not members of the ANC, realising that there was no future for them or their children in the country.  Instead of voting for a better Party, they voted with their feet.  The departure of this large number of experienced and effective managers left a large hole in the capabilities of the country in every sphere.  The number of those people is estimated at more than three million people of voting age, sufficient to overthrow the slim majority of the ANC.  The result was that the large bulk of unqualified, poorly-educated and ill-informed voters left behind were those that supported the ANC, convinced by the propaganda and the outright untruths disseminated by that Party, and by their tactics of stuffing the Civil Service with ANC cadres, who owe their jobs and their inflated salaries to the ANC, and by the distribution of largesse, in the form of free houses (built by the Party favourites at huge cost and low quality), free electricity, free water, social grants to make up for the jobs that could have existed had the available funds been applied in a rational, rather than Party-supporting, way.  The effect was that the economy of South Africa, at one time the leading light in the Dark Continent, went into a decline.  The decline was gentle at first, but steepened as more funds were skimmed off the economy to go into buying votes rather than developing the prospects of the people at large, or simply into the Swiss bank accounts of the Party favourites.  The present situation was clear to see, and was publicly stated by the writer in 1997  Democracy followed the same decline, strongly helped by the political manoeuvring of Thabo Mbeki as he worked to prevent any investigation by Parliament into the scandal of the Arms Deals in the late ‘90s, and subsequently by Jacob Zuma, who has made this an art form.

If the three million voters, of all races, who have left the country in disgust since the accession to power of the ANC were present at the last election, the ANC would have been thrown out.  It is not possible to say that the Democratic Alliance would have gained power if the election had gone this way.  Their mediocre performance in the political arena has not endeared them to the electorate, even in the face of a far superior performance in Government of the Western Cape Province, and this was complicated by the fact that the top politicians appear to subscribe to the de Villiers Graaff code of political ethics.  The new Parliamentary Leader, Mmusi Maimane, seems to have a better understanding of what the electorate wants, perhaps driven by the antics of Julius Malema, who learned his politics in the ANC.  That is good news for South Africa, but it is not enough. 

The politicians are in Parliament, paid large salaries, to represent the electorate, which means that they have an obligation to question every act of the Government.  They must question every appointment to a senior position, in any organ of Government or Government-controlled corporation.  They must look into the background of the candidates, check their claimed credentials, evaluate their performance, publicise every deviation from ‘excellent’ in a way that will enable the most poorly-informed voter to understand what the ruling Party is doing in their name.  ‘Understand’ is the operative word.  It is not enough to talk to the Party faithful, to communicate with those who already support the Party.  It is not enough to communicate with (in fact, talk at, not with) them at election time, when every other Party is doing the same.  It is not enough to disseminate the highlights.  A responsible Member of Parliament, as well as future candidate, has a duty to inform all of the voters of what is being done, and so to ensure that they are able to formulate their desires in a reasoned and informed way.  And then they must represent those views in Parliament, regardless of the Party Line.  Only then will we have democracy.

Do the ANC MPs do this? 

They are effective at passing on the Party line, which is often very far from the real truth.

Are the present Opposition Parties doing this?

The answer must be a resounding NO.  The losses of the ANC over the past years are more a result of their own poor performance than of the excellence of the Opposition.  The capability of the DA in managing the Western Cape Province is not enough for them to gain power, unless they communicate this, in a truthful way to the electorate of the country.  The abjectly poor quality of the ANC-deployed cadres is a wonderful opportunity for the Opposition to highlight the continuing failures of the ANC.  The continued failure of the ANC to hold its nominees in Government to account gives the Opposition a chance to point out the failings of that Party.  Doing that in the very biased atmosphere of Parliament, in which every ANC MP is brainwashed, blackmailed or paid to support the Jacob Zuma myth, will achieve little or nothing.  The voters are out in the real world, away from the cosy club of Parliament.  The truth must be brought to them, consistently, honestly and in a way that they can understand.  And now is the time to do that.