South African Elections

"The party leaders behave like common sergeant majors, frequently reminding the people of the need for 'silence n the ranks.' The party that used to call itself the servant of . . . the people will, as soon as the colonial power puts the country into its control, hasten to send the people back to their caves."

- Franz Fanon, 1968

Less than two weeks after South Africans go to the polls to vote in the coming federal elections, the international community will be fed images and narratives from massive ANC-sponsored (and publicly funded) "10 years of democracy" celebrations. The twinning of these celebrations with the release of the election results will obscure an international visibility of radical on-the-ground mobilisations against the ANC by South Africa's most marginalised people. They will also serve to see the South African neo-liberal project and reinforce the ANC government's international reputation as a government that is truly loved by its people. What must be made clear is that from underneath the continued reign of the ANC government, community groups across South Africa are encouraging election boycotts and non-participation in the electoral process.

At the same time that the national and international propaganda machine of the ANC remains seemingly invincible, a strong resistance to their politics is building. It is from community-based social movements within South Africa that resistance to the ANC is being generated, even though these groups are separate from unions, non-governmental organisations, or institutional structures, and thus, lack basic financial support and resources. Due to the inflated and highly undemocratic R200,000 ($40,000 CDN) fee to run for office, this opposition is being forced to organise outside of the electoral framework.

The reasons for organising a campaign against voting for the ANC becomes obvious when the "transition" that has occurred since 1994 is viewed through the lens of the nation's poor majority. University of Kwa Zulu Natal researcher Ashwin Desai explains that after 1994, "Although the black elite rapidly became richer and the white poor rapidly became poorer, in general terms whites got richer and blacks got poorer." This phenomenon has been labeled "economic apartheid," and has been reinforced by the ANC government through their economic policies. According to American scholar Nigel Gibson, the ANC's ideological stance began to shift in the mid 1990s, as "[Mandela] slowly moved from his declaration, when he was released from prison in 1990, that it was 'inconceivable' for the ANC to modify the Freedom Charter to uncoupling these principles from the negotiation talks."

Many people, and especially the poor, are fed up with the ANC's false promises since 1994. Although the right to water is enshrined in the constitution, the ANC's privatisation of municipal water services has resulted in the implementation of pre-paid water meters in poor communities. As well, they have failed to fulfill their promises of free basic services. And, despite that they were promised free education, youth are still expelled from schools for not paying their school fees. In addition, the average life expectancy in South Africa has fallen from 64 years in 1996 to 50.7 years in 2002, and the national AIDS rate sits at 20.1 per cent. Last September, current ANC South African president Thabo Mbeki told a reporter from The New York Times, "Personally, [I don't] know anybody who has died of AIDS."

A hard look at the statistics, or a visit to an informal settlement, would be enough to convince anyone that the state needs to take an active role in building the future of South Africa. In interaction with community groups that are struggling today, one realises that the ANC government has not only left large sections of the population in substandard housing with no access to basic services, but that they have actively persecuted the poor in order to meet neo-liberal ideals. Desai calls the ANC's policies an "armed assault on the poor," by which the ANC uses cost recovery as a measure of success, and it reserves the right to use force and arms, as well as the justice system, against communities who resist water and electricity cutoffs and evictions that occur in the name of "economic development."

One of the better known of South Africa's social movements resisting the continued reign of the ANC is the Gauteng Province-based Anti-Privatization Forum, whose platform on the elections calls for "no vote for the ANC under any circumstances." Instead, the APF advocates that citizens "vote with [their] feet through mass action," positioning grassroots organising as the alternative to the process of voting. In Soweto, the APF-affiliated Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee has asked its members to register to vote, but on election day to spoil their ballots and write their demands to the government on the reverse. There are also plans for street activities to take place throughout Soweto on elections day.

Other community-based organisations have taken more radical positions of non-participation. The Mandelaville Crisis Committee (MCC) represents a community 40 minutes from Johannesburg whose residents were forcibly removed from the Mandelaville informal settlement in Soweto in 2002 by security forces known as the "Red Ants." According to MCC member Thulani Skhosana, their forced removal was part of the ANC government's plan to "clean up Soweto for the World Summit on Sustainable Development [held in Johannesburg in 2002], and hide what it couldn't clean up." Today, the community is in an area known as Durban Roodeport Deep, living five or more to a room in abandoned miner's hostels and shacks without electricity or a proper sewage system. Graffiti in the area reads "no housing, no vote!" calling on community members to boycott elections until they receive the housing they were promised by the government before their removal.

As community-based organisations and new social movements in South Africa struggle to respond to what Desai calls "a permanent state of emergency" for the poor, election day and celebrations of democracy will be just two more days of repression and resistance. Let us, looking in from the outside, remember that the struggles continue in South Africa, even as the world media encourages us to believe that neo-liberal capitalism has brought happiness and freedom to its people.

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