Political Parties – a Dictatorship?

 

To many, political parties are the epitome of Government in a democratic system.  The principle is that they roll up the views of the voters in a coherent way, enabling the Parliament to convert them to legislation that complies with the will of the majority.

But is that really so?

Far too often, the leader of a political party reaches that position by buying favours from colleagues, with promises of high position or of benefits in the form of hand-outs, of lucrative contracts or of personal honours once the leader has gained power.  Many times, the campaign to gain leadership is couched in a devout belief of the desire to improve the lot of one’s fellow man, to impose an economic order that will be more beneficial to the masses.  Most of these are no more than empty words.  In the African context, the ‘average voter’ does not have the mental equipment, the education or theoretical knowledge, to evaluate what the aspirant to the highest post is promising.  The choice becomes an evaluation, in personal terms, of the man and the promises.  A chant of ‘Yes we can’ has the ability to raise an unknown and untested Trade Unionist to the Presidency of the United States.  The donation of three cows to a village is enough to sway the chief of that village to ensure that the villagers vote for a man who has over seven hundred criminal charges against his name and a record of inability to manage his own finances.

How did this come about?

The Party system works by using groups of carefully selected Members to choose delegates to decide who will be the Party’s candidate.  Already at that stage, the elements of dictatorship become evident.  The most vociferous of the Members become members of the electoral body.  Once they are ensconced, they choose those who offer them the greatest benefit to go on to the next round of voting.  At that point, the real electorate is already being presented with a selected range of candidates to go to the next round.  The real wishes of the electorate are excluded, unless the person ultimately chosen is so wildly unpalatable to the electorate that they put their foot down at that point.  At this point, the election of the United States President, from a very small pool of potential, diverges from the South African system, in which the President is elected directly by the delegates, with no say at all by the wider electorate.  That is how it has been possible for the man who is probably amongst the least suitable to hold the highest office in South Africa to gain that position of power.  Once there, he has the power to dictate to the Party what will happen.  He has the power to ensure that anyone who does not toe the Party line (i.e. the line that he dictates) is disadvantaged, by being held back from rising through the ranks as a result of diligent and intelligent work, by losing government contracts, by being penalised by the South African Revenue Services, by being harassed by the Police.  He also has the ability and the power to dispense largesse from the public coffers, by appointment to lucrative positions in the ever-expanding Civil Service, by dispensing Government Grants, by directing development activity to the required position.

The office of State President is no longer a democratically-elected position, subject to the will of the people, and to the obligation to provide full explanations of expenditure and policies.  It is a dictatorship, in the worst traditions of African Independence.  It seems no longer to carry the prime obligation of complying with the Constitution, in law or in spirit.

Worrying signs of this progression are evident in the intention of the Minister of Defence to embark on another spending splurge on weapons and munitions that have no conceivable use in the context of South Africa, other than the generation of huge commissions to those in power and the entrenchment in the minds of the Generals that their best benefit will lie in the support of the Party against a transfer of power through the ballot box.  Another sign is the invasion of Parliament by the Police, a sign that the Party views its control of Parliament as a right.  Yet another sign is the slavish adoration of the Great Leader, Jacob Zuma, by the Party Members who, one after the other, stood in Parliament to proclaim that he had done no wrong in receiving a benefit in the hundreds of millions of Rands through the construction of his private residence at Nkandla, in the face of all the facts, the finding by a Constitutional watchdog, the Public Protector, and the cogent arguments by virtually every Member of the Opposition Parties.

The time has come for all South Africans to take stock of what their democracy, their grand achievement only twenty years ago, has become, and what it is well on the road to becoming.