The purpose of voting in a democracy is to, amongst others, allow voters to influence, at least, who ultimately gets to use 'public power' and ‘all that the state monopolises' to determine sovereign human destinies. In South Africa, this right to vote has been equated to the ultimate means of translating what liberation and emancipation can be. Consequently, most South African voters have a relationship with voting that speaks to their condition in ways that might undermine the power embedded in the vote.
Conditions in
which voters find themselves tend to influence their ability to discern reality
from fiction out of what those campaigning to be voted say to them. In squalor
situations, anyone who stimulates voters' hopes for a 'better life' can quickly
become a source of authenticity, even if they are fakes. In these conditions,
the tendency of underprivileged voters to decide to vote for a person as an act
against (perceived) privilege, even if the candidate is pathetically hopeless,
is the predicament that democracies will face in a sea of inequality. The
authenticity of election outcomes as reflecting livelihood-based voter
decision-making is questionable.
For a while,
South Africa has had its inequality gap widening at the instance of
race-engineered privilege as a dominant vector. However, since 1994, the
convergence of race and social class as motives that further widened the
inequality gap has made ascendance to political power associated with a path to
privilege. In fact, to the poor, it would seem that being in politics is a form
of accessing the economy, and voting on one of their own is appointing
ambassadors of under-privilege into the political-economy power matrices.
As the
personal (wealth) circumstances of those in politics and public service were
changing for the ‘better’, the relationship of the underprivileged with
politics, government, and voting as a proven passcode into the proverbial ‘better
life’ has been redefined. In this quest to enter, many have thus devised means
through which the new path to privileges could be captured to serve their false
economies. In these circumstances, demand and supply dynamics for leadership
have generated fertile ground for new leadership breeds to occupy blind spot
influence with devastating impact on society's value system. The criminal
element started to eye political capital as being critical to unlocking all
other capitals.
In this
combination of little to no barriers to entry, the capacity of 'good persons'
to avoid being overwhelmed by new forms of bad and dishonest politicking is
compromised. Voter behaviour, a complex phenomenon, would under these
circumstances either flow with good and allow the best in society to emerge as
leaders or rebel against privilege and get into an 'every blemish is beautiful
trance' that we have seen in the local sphere of government, and dare I say all
spheres. In South African local government, voting has always come down to the
party-political brand more than the quality of what or who was presented as the
candidate, and this, voters knew, but handled it as a dilemma of the 'newfound
right to vote simply'. The falsehood of making the primacy of the local in
politics national has compromised the ability of the local voter to say no to
incompetence because the national camouflages it.
In a UNDP,
SABC, and IEC special broadcast debate and discussion on electoral integrity
and improving confidence in local government, the falsehoods of the national
leader as representative of the local got exposed by unedited inputs of the
Diepsloot local community as an abstract of the national general. SABC anchor
journalist and moderator reflected on the tapestry of privilege, underprivileged,
and squalor that decorated her route to the debate venue. Her comments
reflected how going through Steyn City to Diepsloot represented a reproduction
of another Sandton Alexander picture that headlined TIME Magazine as a
representation of growing global inequality. The manipulation of the poor
through the social grant system, free housing, and other organs of
state-orchestrated handouts, as well as bussing in of support into Diepsloot to
create a façade of approval for some politicians, was in the debate painted by
one participant.
The need to
repudiate privilege, as a proxy of inequality, has now been elevated into an observable
'symbolic protest' against the 'establishment' by either not voting or voting
‘our own' to go and fight the system. Parallel to this has been the gradual
withdrawal of the talented from ‘public service’ and politics as a reputation-guarding
and management strategy. As a result, populist rhetoric started to define
heroism to levels where procedural politics and good governance became refugees
in (the local sphere of) government and politics. As politics started to
accommodate criminals as leaders, the value of lying found a way of being
normative to an otherwise unsuspecting voter community faced with the dilemma
of believing that if 'such worsts got out of poverty through politics', then
politics is a new hope. As the reputation of lying got rewarded by heroism, so
has the reputation of the quality of votes grown to be suspect to the extent it
is representative of the will of society.
Consequently,
the local government sphere became a breeding ground for demagoguery as a new
currency of local politics. Lying demagogues and, in some instances, criminal
gang leaders started to not only hold appeal to an otherwise underprivileged
voter community but grew into modern-day Robin Hoods with their own selfish
pockets being beneficiaries. As these representational crises rise commensurate
with 'political power devaluation', so does the resentment of formal political
systems by society and state organs expected to enforce rules and regulations
upon a society led by thugs for political executives. The edifice of government
in the local sphere has thus been fragile to levels where local state failure
is inevitable. The collapse of basic human livelihood infrastructures such as
parks, libraries, museums, sewer reticulation plants, resilient energy supply,
and water services in most municipalities indicates a failed state and, thus, a
fragile democracy.
In a world of
fake news, the declining surveillance capability of the state to deal with
malfeasance, the growing confidence of political executives to believe in the
power of affording the best legal representation to even interdict being
investigated, and political factionalism that is defining what is prosecutable,
the politics of lying have increased the dilemma of the underprivileged voter.
As justice becomes an affordable matter and a commodity of the powerful and
privileged, the integrity and confidence of voters in local government are also
being battered. What has been disturbing is that the more the demagogues are
exposed for the fakes they are, the more nefarious support they garner with
distinguishable social consequences.
Instruments
created by the constitution to intervene when ‘executive obligations’ of
spheres of government are not fulfilled have usurped most of what is left of
the local democratic will of voters. The number of municipalities that are
under section 139 administration, and yet the elected and appointed officials
are still basking in the 'sun of privilege', have, in effect, entrenched into
the system a condition of 'populist consequence management' instead of one that
is accountability driven. Instead of focusing on the instance of the power they
manage, elected officials have craftily created a fictitious power of privilege
that excludes them in the matrix simply because they want to stay perpetually
parasitic to it. This has deepened the dilemma of what is it that is correct to
vote for by the electorate.
As this morass
continues unabated, enter the independents whose announced intents are to
reverse the tide. New entrants might not be aware of the extent to which the
problem is human or systemic. The 2021 local government elections have
attracted the most independent candidates and new parties. This can only serve
to reduce the concentration of voter mandate into one party but may not be able
to deconcentrate the hold of bureaucratic malfeasance on the extent to which
the mandate can have new meaning to voters. New coalitions will spend most of
their energy 'speaking truth to power'. They have a mandate to 'utilise' to
make the very power true to their mandate.
The suppressed
truth of the voter dilemma is the growing representation crisis in South
Africa. This truth has made the country vulnerable to anarchy, legitimised as
factional battles within political parties, splits of opposition parties, and
demagoguery in new formations. The South African voter with the power to change
has now been relegated to a legitimacy-dispensing bystander with no true ability
to direct the state. Whomever they would have voted for would still have to
negotiate a maze of litigations if they dared try to recalibrate templates of
economic dominance. So the voter, who would have queued to exercise their most sought-after
privilege, right, and political capital, will again emerge with a system that
remembers them when the time to renew, except funding the system through rates
and taxes.
The
underprivileged voter will, in this unfortunate circumstance, continue facing
the dilemma of who and what, as well as why they should vote. The essence of
democracy might be slowly becoming a universe with which the poor have a
different consciousness. With no sages of democracy amongst the majority of
poor voters, the dilemma depends on the very elected officials to untangle
society from the path to state failure it finds itself in.
Cut!!!
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ponisa, a ndzi xumaeli
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