“In our society, we have learned the hard way through the misogynistic approach of the highly educated academics that acclaimed Apartheid never existed.  It appears that Jonathan Jansen belongs to this ilk. He has insulted the Minister of Basic Education in a manner reminiscent of the utterances made by the Apartheid ideologues of the old order.  How often did we not hear, African people in particular being described as ‘lazy and stupid’  by well educated professors with internationally recognized credentials? This is a description illustrative of ignorance and prejudice.”

It is worth noting here the irony (some might say double-standard). The ANC believes Jansen should apologize for expressing his “misogynistic”, “ignorant” and “prejudiced” view that Motshekga is lazy and incompetent when the ANC did not ask (let alone demand) that Motshekga apologise for her comments that COPE defectors Terror Lekota and Mluleki George are dogs: “Now that the dogs are leaving, there will be peace and we will be stronger. The dogs arrived in the ANC and they have left.” It’s open to debate which kind of name-calling is worse or when exactly personal opinion slides into personal insult.

More importantly, Duarte’s open letter situates Jansen’s “lazy and incompetent” comment in the racist colonial and apartheid discourse of ‘lazy and stupid natives’. This is quite easy, given last year’s infamous exposé of the UFS’s Reitz men’s hostel (which has since been closed), one of many sites in this country where the long history of racist discourse still finds praxis. The association of this discourse with “well educated professors with internationally recognized credentials” also has a ring of truth about it. Duarte presumably has the likes of Charles Templeman Loram in mind, whose book The Education of the South African Native, published in 1917, was based on his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University:

“… many of our criticisms of the Native as lazy, stupid, unteachable are due to the failure to comprehend his outlook on life. We have failed to realize that the Native does not feel the need for such virtues as punctuality, application, and thoroughness, which are essential to success in our European sense of the word” (p.8).

But just because it’s easy, doesn’t mean it’s accurate. There are a few things going on which I think merit closer attention.

Firstly, Duarte strategy to deflect Jansen’s comments on commitment and competence draws attention to a key issue in the national debate about governance: How much of a factor is demonstrated commitment and proven competence in selecting candidates for top government positions? Or to put it another way, to what extent does demonstrated loyalty to the new powers at Luthuli House outweigh ability and competence in making cabinet appointments? This is a key issue that runs through much recent political controversy in the post-Mbeki era, and if widespread anxiety about the possible appointment of Judge Hlophe to the Constitutional Court is to be believed, it appears now to be overflowing into the judiciary too (though it’s worth noting that Hlophe has not done much to earn Zuma’s reward). But Duarte’s deflections draw attention to this issue on her own account, not on Jansen’s, because I don’t think this is Jansen’s primary focus. This brings us to the second issue, which is the depth of the government’s commitment to improving education. This I think is Jansen’s real concern and his record of publications, both academic and in the popular press, bears this out.

But Jansen shoots from the hip and he has previously targeted the ANC; they are afterall the governing party, with all the responsibilities that entails: Take for example his article Vital Questions for Politicians. Noting that, “Nothing dismays me more than politicians promising things when they know they have neither the will nor the capacity to deliver,” he poses his first question:

“What will your party do if an MEC for education in one of the provinces shows blatant disregard for a scheduled meeting of the minister of education to discuss the opening of the school year, and trots off to attend the court proceedings for the president of her political party?”

The MEC who prompted this question was Angie Matshekga who skipped class to be at one of Zuma’s court appearances. (Read the ANC’s mostly-spin reply here)

More shooting from the hip is Jansen’s article “Long leave, comrades, long leave” which consists of a mocking satirical dialogue in “Sadtu’s political education class 101”:

Cde Justice: “Sorry comrades, I don’t understand. Must we not choose the most competent people for the job, those who can deliver on the needs of the poor?”

Lem: “Listen, you fool, political positions are not about competence! How do you think Comrade Manto kept her job and Comrade Angie got hers? You do not have to be competent; in fact, you do not even have to go to the meetings of senior Cabinet ministers in your portfolio. All you need to do is show up at the right funerals and at the right courts and, before you can say deployment, you’re high up on the party list. Competence is a bourgeoisie word, remember. So go out there and wreck some township schools!”

Provocative stuff perhaps, but off the mark? Depends what you’re aiming at …

Jansen has a proven track record in education and his cv is very impressive.  It is also significant that he is black, which makes him the first black rector in the UFS’s 105 year history (hence Duarte doesn’t outright accuse him of racism). Thankfully Jansen doesn’t appear to share Xolela Mangcu’s inclination towards self-promotion, but like most of the ‘public intellectuals’ who fill our newspapers with their insight and opinion, Jansen cannot be faulted for lack of commitment nor indeed for lack of insight. Regrettably, it seems the ANC, as governing party, can, which is exactly what Jansen’s consistent critique has aimed at.

So we should understand Jansen’s frustration with Matshekga’s appointment to head-up the newly created Ministry of Basic Education, a portfolio that will require considerable commitment, hard work, management and leadership to get functioning within the government’s broad policy framework. A M&G report that Matshekga, who is also the ANCWL President, was “unimpressive” as Gauteng MEC for Education is not comforting: “Once a leading education department, Gauteng has slipped and seems unable to contain the growing education crisis, particularly in township schools.”  (Questions have also been raised about Matshekga’s failures to disclose company directorships in compliance with the provincial legislature’s regulations.)

Which raises another of Jansen’s Questions to Politicians:

“Given the acknowledged failure to deliver in the provinces on noble policies at the national level, would you appoint people to critical positions on the basis of their loyalty to the party, or on the basis of their competence?”

To this one the ANC replied: “The ANC believes that appointments should be based on competence and proven ability to execute.”

The reply continues:

“This is why we have paid increased attention to teacher development, the review of district offices and their effectiveness, and evaluation (with deans of education faculties) of initial teacher education in our universities. Further, the ANC has supported plans to upgrade teacher qualifications through the provision of bursaries. The ANC has also agreed to the establishment of a National Evaluation and Education Development Unit to review and audit education provision and quality on a regular basis. Such a unit will also have a remit to focus on skills and competence in schools, districts and provincial departments.” (emphasis mine)

All of which are noble statements of intent and commitments at the national level -which won’t be followed through unless critical positions like national minister are appointed based on competence and proven ability to execute.

Duarte’s reframing of Jansen’s critique as complicit with misogyny and the discourse on ‘lazy and incompetent natives’, by obfuscating the difference between incompetence and racist/sexist prejudice, resituates the critique from a concern with capability and capacity to discrimination. Thus Duarte establishes a false choice, as President Obama would say, between meritocracy and accountability on the one hand, and prejudice and discrimination on the other, as if aspiring to the former means sacrificing our national commitment to combating the latter. Sadly, the ANC perpetuates this false dichotomy as a quick and effective means to neutralize criticism. It does a disservice to itself, our history and our future.

But increasingly this strategy is less persuasive. Partly this is because the critique emanates from black intellectuals and professionals. They are harder to pin as racists than their white counterparts, and thus we increasingly see references to their supposed elitism and distance from the grass roots, which has the knock-on effect of giving currency to poor education and proximity to ‘the masses’, as we have seen with the rise of Julius Malema (recall his triumphalist performance at UCT on the eve of the election). But more importantly, and more sadly, the fallacity is shown up by poor pass rates, deteriorating teacher morale, and school violence, all indicators of incompetence and poor leadership, despite notable policies designed to address these challenges.

The overwhelming victory of the ANC in the April 2009 fourth democratic elections is the clearest statement by the workers and the poor of our country of their continued confidence in, and expectations from, the ANC-led government. Indeed the May Day 2009 COSATU rallies became both the rallying point for intensify working class struggles especially in the wake of the current global capitalist crisis, as well as a platform to celebrate the electoral victory of the ANC.

The significance and some lessons from the elections

The ANC electoral victory underlines other important things:

a.    It is a continuation and consolidation of the democratic advances
made at the Polokwane conference, and an affirmation of the popularity of the key decisions taken at that historic conference by the overwhelming majority of South Africans
b.    The electoral victory marks a significant rolling back of the huge
ideological offensive waged by sections of the elites against the ANC and its allies. The electoral victory has thus significantly exposed both the bankruptcy and the distance between these elites from the concerns of ordinary workers and the poor of our country. In many ways these election results are an expression of the growing class cleavage in wider society between the haves (including now a small black group of tycoons as represented by Cope) and the have-nots
c.    The huge defeat of the IFP, including a massive ANC victory in many
of its former strongholds in KwaZulu-Natal, may as well herald the beginning of the end of the last of the Bantustan parties in particular, and generally the final defeat of all what the former Bantustan parties stood for and their legacy. This confirms what we had always argued since the 1980s that all of these Bantustan parties and their regimes were extensions of the apartheid state that would not survive for long without being propped up by the apartheid regime
d.    The electoral victory was also a massive failure of collaboration
by sections of the elite, almost wholly supported by all of mainstream media, including the public broadcaster, to use the ‘rooi gevaar’, the ‘two-thirds gevaar’, and the ‘threat to the constitution gevaar’ to try and dislodge the ANC electorally.

However a deeper reflection on the ideological and class struggles on the electoral terrain also brings out into the open the extent of collusion by these elites against the ANC. Their main plank was that our constitution was under threat from an ANC government.

There is a serious attempt by these elites to use the constitution and other institutions of democracy to try and defend and advance their narrow class interests. There are increasing attempts to assert democratic rights (freedom of expression, of the press, independence of the judiciary, etc), without at the same time saying much about the need to transform, for instance, both the South African media and the judiciary. This is because an independent, but untransformed, judiciary will continue to protect the interests of the rich and propertied classes at the direct expense of the workers and the poor.

Whilst these elites make a lot of noise about alleged threats to the judiciary by an ANC government, they are completely silent about how the criminal justice system continues to fail farmworkers brutalized on white owned farms, and working class women who are victims of rape.

In fact, it can be argued that, the manner in which the media positioned itself during the election campaign, for instance throwing everything into building and supporting the image of Cope is precisely a reflection of the class orientation of mainstream media in South Africa.

These elite ideological struggles to push our institutions of democracy to serve their interests are taking place on a whole variety of fronts in South African society. Another instance is that of an increasing and strident voice on asserting of academic freedom in institutions of higher education, but silent on the need to transform the colonial type production and reproduction of knowledge in those institutions. Even worse, as the study on racism recently released by the Minister of Education shows, not only have we not been able to defeat the racial and patriarchal regimes in many of our higher education institutions, but instead these continue to be reproduced daily in these institutions. In such situations academic freedom, in practice, means the continuation of a racialised, patriarchal and elite forms of knowledge production; that is, academic freedom in favour of the continued reproduction of a colonial-type intellectual landscape. Unfortunately it still happens that at the head of this project are minorities who have continued to dominate our academia and intelligentsia.

Add to the above a South African media that has played more of an oppositional role to the ANC than a source of information for the population, the elite agenda has major weapons in its hands.

The above points to the need for the SACP, our alliance and the working class to intensify the ideological struggle on all fronts and, as our own South African Road to Socialism directs us, in all spheres of power and influence in South African society.

What is to be done?

We have highlighted the above issues not to argue for a reactive and defensive approach to this class offensive, but to underline the importance of building upon the mass energies unleashed during the election campaign to deepen a principled working class led national democratic revolution.

The overall challenge is that we dare not demobilize, but we need to redirect the energies unleashed by this election campaign towards building working class and people’s power in all spheres of society.

As the SACP we can proudly claim that we have achieved the main objectives of our main pillar in our 2009 Programme of Action, that of working for an ANC’s overwhelming electoral victory. Indeed thousands of communists and all our structures were mobilized in this effort.

However, it must also be understood that the vote for the ANC was not a blank cheque, but a well informed choice based on the expectation that indeed the ANC government still needs to do much more.

For a start, in line with the other pillars of our 2009 PoA – at the heart of which is the building of people’s power and ensuring public participation at local level – all our structures, leaders and cadres need to re-do the election trail, by going back to as many of the areas in which we campaigned as possible. The key task here would be to ensure that the many problems and challenges we identified are being attended to, whether it is lack of sanitation, housing, clean drinking water or existence of rampant corruption. In addition communities will need to be mobilized to attend to these problems and challenges, in line with the ANC’s own manifesto ‘Working Together, We Can Do More’!

The ANC Manifesto and our Medium Term Vision

Let us take this opportunity to thank all our Party cadres for the major contribution they made towards the ANC’s electoral victory. We also wish to congratulate all those communists who have made it into the legislatures, including those who have been appointed to additional positions of responsibility. However, we need to remind ourselves of the very clear directives given by our February Central Committee on communists deployed in government. This time around, the CC said, there must be a change in the manner in which communists relate and account to the SACP, much as they are deployed in the first instance as ANC cadres. In particular the SACP will not allow itself to be used as a stepping stone to positions in the ANC and govern
ment only to be abandoned by some of those cadres once they occupy such positions. Working together with our allies, the SACP shall seek ways to enforce its own right to recall in such instances.

Our cadres must be guided by both the SACP’s medium term vision as well as the ANC’s Election Manifesto. Whilst the two are distinct, there is no contradiction between the perspectives contained in these two documents. Instead there is a great deal of complementarity and dialectical inter-connections. For instance the MTV places emphasis on building working class hegemony in key sites of power and influence.
Indeed many of the commitments contained in the ANC’s Election Manifesto will not be realized unless the working class is organized to lead a struggle to build a stronger COSATU for decent work; people’s education committees for free, quality education; local health committees for quality health care for all; street committees to fight crime; and people’s land committees for rural development, land and agrarian transformation. In other words, the working class, using its organized muscle, must stamp its authority as the leading motive force in the national democratic revolution.

Similarly, the working class stands to benefit immensely from the most thorough and consistent implementation of the commitments contained in the ANC’s Election Manifesto, thus creating fertile conditions to realize some of the key objectives in our MTV.

Indeed the consolidation of the April 22 victory is a task being carried out on a terrain that is not of our own choosing, especially given the current global capitalist crisis and the emerging destabilizing threat of ‘Swine Flu’. But we must refuse to be cowed down by neo-liberal ideological blackmail about what is to be done about this crisis. We believe that the only sustainable solutions that can effectively deal with the current capitalist crisis are leftist solutions, not more of the same liberal dogma whose failures are the direct cause of the current crisis. At no stage in the history of our democracy have we needed a developmental state, buttressed by popular power, than at this point in time.

Communist Cadres to the Front, to build a better South Africa!

Asikhulume!!

It was not like any other for many reasons. When I reached the voting station in Rondebosch East, the contrast from previous elections struck me. There was something banal about the voting station. We walked past chattering cops sipping on their coffee. A dog licked the legs of voters waiting in line (a short line). There was no party memorabilia. No shout of ‘Amandla!’ No local campaigners standing outside the gates, excitedly debating RDP vs. GEAR. Even the ink mark on my thumb was more like a trickle than the impressive, bruise-like patterns on my friends’ nails. My dad exited the voting booth looking relieved. “I nearly voted for CAPE!” he said, “I bet they will get inflated results because people think they are voting COPE!” He may have been right.

It was the first time I have ever voted in a national election. In 1994, I was seven years old and in my first year of school. I remember the teacher asking the class what day it was. A few of us in class excitedly replied that it was the first ever democratic elections. My mom had taken me to a rally a year earlier where Mandela had been speaking. She had hoisted me up over the heads of the singing, dancing crowd to see him. My brother (three at the time) and I had covered our doors and pencil cases with ‘Mandela for President’ stickers. I didn’t fully understand what this first election was about but I understood the excitement. I remember having a sense of being part of a broader movement. I grasped that my parents’ excitement came not only from anticipation of a better era to come, but also from their interactions with other people who shared their hope and engagement in building the country.

In 1999, again there was excitement. At the polling station, my parents greeted old friends, handing out ANC stickers and flyers, wearing political t-shirts. In 2003, as signs of Mbeki’s autocratic leadership style were showing and his AIDS policy was having damaging effects, there was some uncertainty. But not enough to shake my parents’ will to vote ANC.

This election was not like the others. Growing up, I was always so sure that I would have no doubts when I voted, so secure was my faith in the ANC. But here I was, a few days before the election, questioning that certainty. For years, I have been looking forward to the time when I could vote. There was no question of not voting. From a young age, my parents have spoken about the importance of voting in order to have a say in government and the significance of having the opportunity to vote, when so many fought so hard during the struggle against apartheid to win this right.

My parents, who have always voted ANC, and who, together with many others, at home and in exile, sacrificed a great deal during the struggle against apartheid, were questioning seriously for the first time whether to vote ANC or not. One of my parents’ friends burst into tears as she recounted what they had struggled for from within the ANC. Another who had been imprisoned for a long stretch during the struggle responded with words: “I can’t stand COPE. But I want to say ‘up yours’ to the ANC”.

At the threshold of our passage, on the way out the door to leave for the voting station, my parents and I were still discussing voting, still wracked by feelings of disbelief and uncertainty that we had reason not to vote ANC. In the weeks and days leading up to the elections, my friends and I had been agonising over voting. We spent an afternoon before the elections scrutinising parties’ policies. We discussed the gains government had made and dissected why we needed to be critical of government despite these gains. We questioned issues of service delivery. We debated economic policy. We wondered how the rest of the South Africa would vote. We wondered whether government was committed to equity, “to each according to their needs”, and we wondered whether this could ever be achieved. We questioned Jacob Zuma’s statements on various public platforms – for example, about bringing back Christian education or the death penalty, or questioning the rights of gay people – statements which contradicted ANC policy as well as the constitution. Could we dismiss these statements as a political game? Should we take these contradictions seriously? There was no doubt that we wanted the ANC in government. There was no doubt that most of us were ANC supporters, in the broad sense of the term. But was it possible not to vote ANC and to remain an ANC supporter? Was that a betrayal? Many of us left the meeting sure we would vote ANC, or was it Cope, or was it ID, or even AZAPO (there were one or two muted and very embarrassed mutterings about the DA). Many entered the voting booth undecided. Throughout Wednesday morning, I received text messages from people about to vote. “About to go to the booth. Democracy!” wrote one friend. “Here I go. Doesn’t feel good,” wrote another. He too was holding his nose.

Now that the election results are in, I am cautiously optimistic. This means recognising all the merits of our government. But it also means continuing to be critical. We should continue to debate, discuss, agonise, lobby and take action. And we should not do this only every five years. The democracy 1994 brought us can be deeper than that, but only we can make it so.

PAC Policy Documents (July 2002)

And what of us South Africa?

I was chatting to a member of local ANC branch in my area (he happens to be a friend, I happen to be mainly a DA/COPE supporter) and he – as a white South African male – was commenting on the fact that SO many people complain about the ANC, the government, the blah blah blah whatever but hardly anyone makes their way to their local ANC office to find out about branch meetings or local ANC leaders who they can voice their complaints to.

I don’t count myself out of this group, I complain too, but I try as far as possible not to make claims about ‘the state of democracy in South Africa’ (South Africans’ newest complaint phrase) without actually knowing a little bit about what I’m talking about. This same ANC friend of mine, an activist who’s confronted the government and SAPS a couple of times, also mentioned how if you actually call up the people in office (like, for a completely random example, Michael Kagiso of the ANC Tigane branch) and talk to them instead of just accepting what the media has to say about them you might be pleasantly surprised.

Voter education does require some hard work and some effort on the part of voters, but then this is the cost of democracy. So please, get educated. If you have access, Google it. If you’ve got a phone, call them. If you don’t have much, keep your ear to the ground – the campaign trail is hot and the politicans are, at least for this period, interested in you.

Get educated: History Matters Elections 2009 section

*Also, see my comment on ‘Political Parties in SA’.

Click here to read a summary of the ID’s policies.

Click here to read all of the policies that were adopted in July 2008 at the ID’s national conference.

The ANC is also however welcoming and encouraging public participation in creating their election manifesto, click here for more information.

Poverty

Education

Housing

Public Services

To view the complete list of all the Democratic Alliance’s policy documents, click here.