DEMOCRACY IS NOT ONLY ABOUT THE MAJORITY OF ONE (PARTY), BUT ALSO ABOUT A MAJORITY OF MINORITIES THAT ADD UP TO VOTER MAJORITY

    For decades now, the world and humanity have known democracy not only in the Lincolnian parlance of ‘government of the people by the people for the people' but also as a construct whose optimal operation occurs when the government is constituted by those that garnered the most votes in an election, in short, the majority. Most political scientists and commentators rightly emphasize the role of the majority in the constitution of government after a free and fair election has been conducted and completed, but they often neglect to answer the questions of who is the majority, what type of majority should have the right to constitute a government, how is that majority reflective of the actual will of those that voted, and to what extent will a majority that constitutes a government enjoy the support and endearment of the electorate.

A democracy requires therefore something simple, to become what it is intended to be, the will of the electorate, or people. It takes people to create a polity, and out of polity politics will happen, and for politics as a human activity to thrive, their currency, interests, will define coalitions and individuals through which such interests will be expressed. Once packaged into a manifesto, these interests, will be presented to the people as a value proposition for them to give a mandate for public power organized within organs of state to be used in executing the mandate. It has now become a convention for public power to be exercised within the confines and limits imposed by arrangements with which society would have agreed to govern itself, also referred to as the constitution.

It takes a functional state to provide systems and processes for interests-based coalitions and/or of political parties to be converted into public policies through which public goods and services would be delivered. This functionality has for years been demonstrated by the state’s capability to devise organizational arrangements, finance its policies, create a bureaucracy to deliver services, institutionalize how services will be delivered through work procedures, and set up consequence management-centered monitoring and evaluation systems. Operating within these generic administration and management processes, states will complete the value chain of what defines a stable and functional democracy.

It is how a government is constituted or formed in a democracy that defines its ultimate quality, and thus acceptability by the people it is ‘of’, ‘for’, and ‘by’. In South Africa, a democracy which is an outcome of a political settlement that had as its greatest of contestations the regulation of the power and reach of the majority. The November I, 2021, municipal elections have brought this matter to the sharp edge of analysis. The inquest is more about the extent to which a ‘majority of minorities’ has the ‘moral’ legitimacy to constitute a government when there is a party that garnered the majority votes in an election. This examination of how a majority is a majority of minorities does not vitiate the overall voter sentiment that ‘the ANC is not the only custodian of the aspirations of the country’s natural majority (blacks), and its misfortunes in an election is thus an anomaly’, in fact, this rendition will examine this with a view to argue that not only should parties earn to be ‘leader of society’ but should do so with the full awareness that voters are sovereign individuals.

The outcome of the 2021 Municipal elections yielded hung councils and necessitated governments formed out of coalitions. The number of seats required to form a government is determined in terms of a formula that advantages smaller parties unless there is a greater voter turnout. In terms of this formula, a popular vote does not necessarily translate into a majority. In fact, party representation can yield more seats for a party that did not garner the most votes. In the City of Tshwane, and the trend is the same in other metropolitan municipalities, the ANC contested 107 wards and won 70, which translates to 67%, but it received 5 party representative seats. The DA contested 107 wards and won …, which translates to ..%, but it received … party representative seats. The EFF contested 107 wards, won no ward but received … party representative seats. ActionSA contested … wards, won …, but received … party representative seats. The Vryheids Front contested … wards, won …, but received … party representative seats. Out of the seats won by the opposition complex, including 1 seat winning parties, a total of … seats could be garnered to meet the … seats threshold required to form a government. Whilst these parties are a minority in their individual capacity, they are a majority of minorities when their seats are combined to meet the set threshold.

In set criteria terms, the ‘majority of minorities' have a right to establish a government, and thus legitimate in terms of the laws of a South Africa that is founded on the value of the rule of law. The extent to which this majority of minorities is a reflection of the will of those that voted can only be confirmed through an individual vote count of voters that voted for specific parties, and determine which party enjoys the direct support of a headcount majority. In Tshwane, the headcount numbers are … . The headcount of votes would in a democracy that allows first past the post or winner takes all, the government in Tshwane would have been formed by the ANC, and all other Parties would have been in opposition benches. As things stand the ANC does not have the majority seats required despite it having won the popular vote, and the most headcount votes than any other party, worst, it also won the most wards.

What is at issue about the current coalition arrangement is the party with the most votes is not part of the government. The extent to which this anomaly is in variance or otherwise with the spirit and intent of the constitution is a subject that South Africa might have to discuss and maybe review the arrangement. In the political environment that South Africa finds itself in, the ward councilor is the immediate and off-the-household-doorstep representative of the government and should thus provide most answers to communities when there are issues with the local state. This defines the caliber and character of councilors this new configuration demands, councilors who understand the difference between their in-government oath of office and their party-political membership oath, pledge, and/or similar. The threat that this outcome has had on the ultimate prize of politics, which is government, the single most influential agency of the State, in the looming 2024 national elections, is what our democracy also has to think about as we experiment with the change of power in the local state.

This is a fragility society needs to zero in on. As Pretoria grapples with the exigencies of taking the country out a post-pandemic economic slump, a collapsing public infrastructure reality, declining health outcomes with reported increases of already controlled calamities such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, a shrinking black middle class as a result of its less resilient and propertyless undergirding basis, and a deindustrializing economy that creates more consumption and retail-based jobs, the growth in confidence of the opposition complex can further defocus the governing coalition led by the ANC to re-Polokwanize or re-NASRECanize its leadership choice processes and extend the instability at the center further. Whilst the posture of the face of the governing coalition at the national sphere does not suggest any imminent and drastic change from within the ‘governing palace’, a political activity that preceded electioneering before November 1 and its aftermath is well outside the subdued cycle it was entering into after the SG of the governing party was arrested.

Intimate and in-family social media interactions are buzzing with content that indicates a coalescing of agendas to that seems to be creating units of conversations which may be a current of an undefined, and yet existing program. The mere existence of constitutionally imposable platforms such as regional conferences, provincial conferences, the national general council, the policy conference, and the ultimate December 2022 National elective conference of the nexus, and arguably, of South African politics the ANC, creates a condition where the November 1 outcomes will not be responded to impulsively. The now established legacy of recalling national Presidents crisis is more conducive to escalation than to continue with the factionalism that sustains the uneasy peace interior to the governing palace. The leveraging of the state of national disaster to facilitate a political lull may have been overutilized, and the inevitable rebellion to lockdown conditions might well be the ignition required to start a movement towards regime or leadership change.

The significance therefore of a ‘majority of one’ versus a ‘majority of minorities’ will be felt in how extra-parliamentary processes and in-party political contestations influence our politics. Whilst the anti-state capture complex won a peculiar victory over the ‘RET’ forces through the mega communications systems propelled information warfare and thus consent manufacturing gimmicks associated with the delegitimization of any anti-establishment narrative, the opposition complexes victory in a high voter apathy election battle might reignite new struggle rhetoric that might resonate with realities of the economic situation. The margin of in-ANC factions still committed to national grievance resolution is qualitatively and quantitively substantial and might undermine a prematurely celebrated victory of the capital-media-academic complex that was in the ascendancy before the November 1 wake-up call to even those that were growing closer to its liberal order creation promise.

The stratagem of equating the demands for a ‘radical economic transformation’ with ‘corruption and state capture’ might be in the process of backfiring and ushering in renewed demands for a complete review of the nature and character of South Africa’s constitutional democracy. These demands might have as a point of departure equity in the prosecution of ‘state capture’ operatives across the board and interrogate the extent to which the constitution is an enabler or inhibitor to a program of changing templates of economic and socioeconomic domination. As the triumphant opposition complex is growing more confident politically and economically, there will be a concomitant growth in suspicion to the intents of dislodging what the governing coalition has historically represented, and thus a shift of attention and resources to defending those gains might propel a movement to reclaim it back into that agenda. State capture and corruption might be of peripheral interest to the extent that there is prosecutorial equity and equality of all before all courts for the same transgressions. CUT!!!