lessons from the voters

we like some things, not others

We aren’t the only country holding important elections this year, as hard as it is for self-centered Americans to remember. The lessons from the earthquake underway in South Africa are worthy. With Britain’s vote on the horizon in five weeks, we may well see more shaking ground.

Whatever our many sins as a nation over the years, South Africa gives us a run for our money for wealth and for painful history. Dutch immigrants, the Boers, arrived four hundred years ago to displace the various tribal arrangements in place across the rich and beautiful land. As Holland’s star set globally, Britain expanded the Empire to include an awkward presence at the southern tip of Africa, increasingly isolating the Boers while further marginalizing the African blacks. The Boer War as the nineteenth century ended foretold of Britain ‘s trauma ahead in responding to independence movements aimed at reversing the Victorian Age of Expansion. But the Boer-Black tension in the former Dutch and British colonies only accelerated.

Suffering under legal segregation known as Apartheid between 1948 and 1991, blacks were relegated to the lowest sectors while whites, known primarily as Afrikaners, ruled as a distinct minority. The mineral largess of the nation did virtually nothing for those who physically extracted it. Anyone not white, including South Asians who emigrated during British rule, was in the ‘out crowd’ for controlling the future of the nation.

The African National Congress, an anti-Apartheid movement founded in 1912 primarily but not exclusively for blacks, fought a guerrilla campaign to overturn the Afrikaner rule but it was a long fight. Insurgent turned multi-decade prisoner Nelson Mandela became an ANC symbol. Imprisoned over seditious acts, Mandela evolved into an international symbol of the black struggle, a sympathetic character illustrating the profound injustice of Apartheid.

Following years of ever heavier international sanctions against the Afrikaners, Prime Minister F. W. de Klerk freed Mandela in 1991 and ultimately declared the end of Apartheid. Mandela and de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, the year before the ANC leader won the presidency as the first black in South Africa’s history. De Klerk served as his Prime Minister. Mandela was as head of state for a five year term before fellow party member Thabo Mbeki succeeded him.

The ANC this has ruled the modern South Africa for thirty years, dominating the presidency which results from elections within the country’s Parliament. The overwhelming majority of South Africans of any ethnic background know only ANC rule which has increasingly taken the same path as far too many political parties: focusing on its future and the aggrandizement of its leaders rather than the nation it leads or the people who voted that party to represent their interests. The ANC became the end rather than a means to improving the lives of South Africans who voted it into office.

Parties who retain power for prolonged periods become self-satisfied and almost uniformly unable to recognise fundamental evolving priorities of their voters. Democrats, when they held the House between 1956 and the 1990s, suffered this problem here at home. Certainly Labour did poorly after the extended Tony Blair-Gordon Brown rule prior to 2010. Tories now mark fourteen years in Downing Street but seem to face what polls are calling a wipe out election; time will tell on the 4th of July.

Almost unique was Angela Merkel’s incredible run as Chancellor in Germany between 2005 and 2021 when she stepped down voluntarily. She faced challenges, of course, but perhaps her unique history growing up in East Germany led her to value accountability and connection more than too many. Or, it may have been her particular personality but questions still exist in the post-Merkel era as opposition parties and her Chrstian Democrats appear (to me) still struggling with how both to connect effectively to voters but also how to function in different roles. It turns out that being in the opposition is a skill as well but that is another column.

The ANC, much like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, has become the party of known for its corrupt politicians and a failure, more importantly,poor to deliver for South Africans. Water scarcity is a problem the ANC is not addressing. Infrastructure in this nation is primitive, even though Johannesburg is known as perhaps the greatest city in the continent. Poor wealth distribution and unemployment plague the society. Crime in South Africa is abysmal.

It’s not as if any of this is new but obviously South African voters are exhausted by the list of failures. The ANC won 57% of the vote as recently as five years ago yet did not win an outright majority this year (the last update I saw gave them 41% of the popular vote). Corruption scandals aand questionable behaviour for Jacob Zuma and other ANC luminaries are sucking energy out of a movement built on providing a decent living for blacks to control their own destiny. Instead, the Party is unable to provide the most basic services or safety for South Africans across the board.

How does this happen? Governance requires dialogue, interplay and accountability; parties with sustained, seemingly invulnerable positions become too accustomed to believing they will police themselves to assure responsiveness while cutting out opposition. Occasionally parties long in power do engage with other political groups but far too often humans fall into navel-gazing and repudiation tactics when asked for accountability rather than outward constituent responsivity. Actions create consequences.

I will go so far as to opine that it’s especially hard for movements overturning long-standing abusive regimes which completely marginalised whole segments of society over decades. A sense of retribution or ‘getting my share’ to ‘make up’ for the past can tragically result. Those same revolutionary forces often refuse to surrender power when voted out of office. By doing so, they lose even more focus on the public needs, falling instead into traps of seeing anyone outside the movement as a danger to the movement’s future. They are not keeping their eyes on the prize of why they successfully managed to achieve power. The resulting spiral far too often leads to oppression, as we see with the CCP in China or the Sandinistas today.

Under no circumstances am I arguing this path for long-ruling elected regimes is inevitable or universal as I do not accuse British or U.S. politicians of this type of oppression. Mercifully, voters become assured of transition and accountability, given the chance to support or oust a long-running government, because of the long-developed strength of institutions and processes. There remains, however, a danger to states with shorter histories of genuinely participatory systems—and the risk for deterioration towards oppression is always there in any country as Venezuela so tragically illustrates. Democracy gets stronger with practice if citizens feel empowered through the system. If not, it voting is merely a façade, then danger lurks.

In the United States, where violence is increasingly raised to redress political or social differences, trends are most worrying as too many citizens profess distrust of institutions, dialogue, and accountability. We are not immune to downward spirals far harder to stop than we ever thought possible. Yet I definitely view a difference Nicaragua or South Africa as still struggling to inculcate the fullness of democratic norms.

South Africa’s democracy is only three decades’ old but the people of that nation have suffered for generations. There were disappointments upon Mandela’s death in 2013 about his successors’ actions but this week’s vote indicates an appreciation that change is both possible and necessary. Whether the action of putting the ANC on notice of public frustration will result in behaviour improvement and whether alternate parties can provide what the ANC is failing to do remains an open question for which I have no clear sense.

The South Africans have a hard road ahead but they are addressing it with democratic processes and encouragement to raise their concerns through the ballot box. That alone is something to celebrate in this age of disdain and darkness.

How would you read what we’re seeing with the ANC decline in South Africa? Are there applicable lessons for elsewhere? Have I got it all wrong?

I welcome your thoughts on any of this: please let me know. If you see it of value, please feel free to circulate the column. I appreciate your time today and every day you read ACC. I also deeply thank those who commit financially to my work by subscribing, even monthly much less for longer, as it inspires me more than you know.

It was the most amazing sunrise with purples, pinks, and clouds lit for miles but operator error only allowed me a couple of shots.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Lynsey Chutel, “‘A.N.C. Has been Humbled: a Couple’s Vote Explains Why”, NewYorkTimes.com 2 June 2024, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/02/world/africa/south-africa-election-anc-voters.html

Lydia Polgreen, ‘Disappointment in Successors to Nelson Mandela, a Revered Father of Nation’, NewYorkTimes.com, 6 December 2013, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/07/world/africa/disappointment-in-successors-to-revered-father-of-a-nation.html