Where is Mluleki George, someone asked the other day. For those who don’t follow Eastern Cape politics much and don’t remember the crazy politics of the ANC in the late 2000s, George, together with Mbhazima Shilowa and Mosiuoa Lekota, was one of the main founders of COPE. The party, launched in December 2008, managed to rattle the Jacob Zuma-led ANC enough for it to act responsibly for a short while.
Instead of the wanton triumphalist actions it had threatened, the Zuma faction was forced to include ANC leaders it detested — Trevor Manuel and others — in the cabinet and other structures. The administration became consensual within its own divided structures. It knew that otherwise it would have no credibility internationally or at home.
The questioner was right to ask after George and his fellow travellers. The party attracted a sizeable portion of the electorate in the 2009 national and provincial elections and had no hang-ups about its legitimacy or struggle credentials. With the DA also enthused, the SA of 2009 seemed to have birthed a strong and growing opposition. Bantu Holomisa’s UDM was chugging along, though after 10 years in the opposition benches it was losing steam.
But COPE imploded spectacularly. Lekota and Shilowa, both highly respected ANC leaders, allowed themselves and their party to be ripped apart by leadership battles. It is now no longer a viable political party. Lekota and a few others cling to it for dear life, but it is over, kaput. Its demise is assured.
This week the EFF of Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu turned seven. It has done exceptionally well. It has rattled the ANC, become a central player, stepped into the left-leaning, pan-Africanist niche vacated by the political deaths of the PAC and Azapo — and it has stayed united.
The detritus of failed opposition parties litters the political streets of SA like beer bottles
That last point cannot be emphasised enough. The post-1994 political scene is littered with start-up parties that have succumbed to infighting and cabals. The New National Party split between liberals and hardcore conservatives. The DA has swallowed up several smaller parties but is now haemorrhaging support and birthing new parties around Herman Mashaba and possibly Mmusi Maimane. The hope built up around the DA’s short-lived hook-up with one of the most impressive people in SA, Mamphela Ramphele, and her Agang party, was crushed by poor strategy, greed and infighting. The Agang that exists today is such an embarrassment it is hardly believable that it has any connection to as impressive a mind as Ramphele’s.
The detritus of failed opposition parties litters the political streets of SA like beer bottles after a New Year’s Eve party at Joburg’s Zoo Lake. With every failed attempt the people of SA are deprived of an alternative and, crucially, lose faith in the system.
Voter turnout in last year’s national elections tells us this very clearly. We know that 35.9-million people were eligible to vote. Only 26.7-million registered to do so. A mere 17.6-million actually turned up to vote on the day. Fully half the people eligible to vote did not bother to exercise their democratic right to choose who leads them.
That should worry us all. We have an opposition problem. The ANC has stolen, lied and fumbled its way through the coronavirus crisis. The corruption emerging from across the government around Covid-19 personal protective equipment tenders is eye-watering. All the brazenness in looting points to one thing: the ANC has no fear that it will be kicked out by voters. Yet no opposition party has really rattled the ANC. Why is that? Surely the liberation mythology of the ANC cannot cast that long a shadow?
The 2024 national elections will mark 30 years of ANC rule. If the party continues on the corrupt route it is currently on — and which it has been following for 13 years — then an ANC victory will propel SA into becoming a country with no hope.
This is urgent. We need more Herman Mashabas and more Mluleki Georges and more Julius Malemas — but with stamina and new ideas.
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