New South African Review 2. Paul Hoffman
2009). While much of this support came from organised workers, it is safe to assume that the 11.7 million also included a large number of unorganised workers and the unemployed in urban and rural areas.
However, while voter support generally correlated with increased satisfaction regarding ‘national economic’ and ‘overall conditions’ (Schulz-Herzenberg, 2009: 33), 6.8 million of the 30 million entitled to vote in 2009 did not register, while a further 5.3 million who did register did not vote, making a total of 12.1 million voters (40.3 per cent of eligible voters) who did not vote. This indicates significant alienation from the political process among a large section of the population who see little return from voting, particularly within the context of rising ‘service delivery’ protests. Indeed, while the percentage of valid votes for the ANC remained stable at sixty-six per cent, the percentage of eligible voters voting for the ANC declined from 53.8 per cent in 1994 to 38.8 per cent in 2009 (Schulz-Herzenberg, 2009).
While the ANC received sixty-two per cent of all votes cast in the 2011 municipal elections, according to Hassen (2011b), using Statistics South Africa’s 2010 Mid-Year Population Estimates, 15.6 million eligible voters over the age of twenty did not vote, compared to the 13.7 million voters who did. If eighteen- to twenty-year-olds are included, the ‘silent majority’ increases, indicating a significant and potentially increasing degree of voter alienation (taking into account that municipal elections normally attract lower voter turnouts).
Does this mixed picture nevertheless give hope to those seeking to build an alternative pole of attraction to that of the ANC?
CONTESTATION FROM THE OUTSIDE
The formation of the Congress of the People (Cope), after the ousting of Thabo Mbeki as president in September 2008, raised expectations that ANC dominance would be challenged, and a realistic opposition would emerge. Cope was led by former ANC chair-person and UDF leader Mosiua Lekota as president, with former Cosatu general secretary and premier of the Gauteng province Mbhazima Shilowa as vice-president. It scored seven per cent of the national vote in the 2009 elections, less than the twelve to twenty per cent predicted before polling started, but a reasonable return for a party that was only a few months old. However, severe internecine squabbles between the Lekota and the Shilowa factions hobbled the party. Repeated attempts in 2010 to hold a congress to resolve the leadership issue failed, leaving the party in complete disarray. In addition, attempts to form an alternative labour movement to Cosatu, led by former Cosatu president, Willie Madisha, proved moribund. By 2011, Cope was clearly not a viable alternative to the ANC Alliance, and the party performed miserably in the municipal elections.
The 2010 public sector strikes, and Cosatu’s flirtation with civil society groups, raised hopes among some that the labour federation might leave the alliance earlier than expected. While that hope remains, it was too early for Cosatu to accept an invitation to attend the democratic left conference in January 2011,17 which launched the Democratic Left Front (DLF), a broad coalition of left formations representing small groups of community activists and intellectuals from around the country. Cosatu had just come out of an ugly spat with its alliance partners over the civil society conference, and the DLF’s intention to build an alternative left pole of attraction was too risky politically.18
The DLF includes NGOs and social movements that emerged in the late 1990s to fight water and electricity privatisation, home evictions, environmental degradation, and lesbian and gay discrimination, among other social issues – and also includes prominent individuals who had left the SACP.19 It places emphasis on eco-socialism, participatory-democracy, feminism, gay rights, and a nondogmatic approach to Marxism (DLF, 2011).
However, it is clear that any alternative to the alliance is fraught with difficulty in the absence of a Cosatu breakaway. Whether Cosatu’s membership will continue to offer support to the ANC Alliance in the future depends mainly on whether it continues to see benefits accruing from an ANC government – mainly to itself as organised, employed workers in permanent jobs, but also to the larger working communities within which it lives.
CONCLUSION
Is this the same dance as always – fierce quarrels between the battered wife (Cosatu) and abusive husband (the ANC) only to be followed by reconciliation before the next flare-up? Can the battered wife ever leave her husband, despite neglect and abuse, as long as he periodically gives her flowers and a few trinkets? Does she dare blink at the new suitors in civil society, urging her to seek a divorce and ride into the sunset with them? What role does the SACP play in this ménage a trois? Is it the older first wife, deeply bonded to the marriage and, despite abuses from time to time, still intent on placating the ANC (and convincing the younger bride that things will get better)?
Whatever view is adopted, recent research among Cosatu members underlines the continued, if declining, popularity of the ANC and the alliance and this seems to reinforce the view that the ANC knows that its partners will continue to line up behind it. However, the argument that this is due to the politics of patronage (Buhlungu, 2010), seems only partially true. Community uprisings involving marginalised, often unemployed residents against ANC councillors and the lack of ‘service delivery’ also do not seem, ultimately, to question the ANC’s legitimacy.
The ANC Alliance has a long history, which is cemented by a powerful NDR ideological discourse that secures its legitimacy among the working class. This has given the ANC, like many other liberation movements, almost mythical (and mystical) status akin to that of a religious authority. It is therefore no surprise that ANC president Jacob Zuma once said that the ANC will rule ‘until Jesus comes back’ (Mkhwanazi, 2008). In some senses, for many South Africans, the ANC itself can do no wrong – only its leaders can fail the movement.
Unless liberation movements address challenges of underdevelopment, they often start to lose their legitimacy after about twenty years in power, as the cases of India and Zimbabwe illustrate. The Institutional Revolutionary Party in Mexico, however, absorbed the labour movement, and ruled (through corruption and authoritarian practices) for most of the twentieth century. In a different context, the Swedish Labour Party, in close alliance with the labour movement, ruled for most of the twentieth century through free and fair elections – but built a powerful welfare system that has given the working class a ‘middle class’ lifestyle.
In South Africa there are no signs that the ANC’s mystical status as the party of liberation is under immediate threat. Despite some ominous authoritarian tendencies, the movement remains remarkably transparent and internally democratic compared to other liberation movements, allowing dissent from below – whether from the youth or organised workers – to continuously pose a threat to elite aspirations. Indeed, ANC veteran Ben Turok feels that the ANC’s 2010 National General Council was the ‘most democratic’ he had ever attended (2010b). As long as this continues, challenges from the left outside the alliance are likely to remain isolated and parochial.
Although the Alliance will remain in place for as long as the state can manage to appease the aspirations of the working class with relatively protective labour legislation and social grants, ANC support among the broader working class is slowly declining, as is shown by recent surveys as well as election results. Moeletsi Mbeki (Business Day, 21 February 2011) is correct to warn that, as long as South Africa remains beholden to the minerals-energy complex (and, I would add, the financial sector) and does not develop secondary industries on a sustainable basis, the point will come when it will be unable to generate sufficient revenue from mining and