Insidious forces threaten democracy

Summary - It is important to ask how many of the democratic credentials of the present government can be taken for granted. The highly reputable American political analyst, Larry Diamond, and his colleague, Leonardo Morlino, offer a very useful framework for such analysis. They write: “There are, to be sure, several dozen ‘illiberal’ democracies in the world today where competitive elections and popular participation coexist with considerable lawlessness and abuse of power.” Hence they develop eight additional, essential criteria on which to assess the quality of democracies.

1. The rule of law

The South African Constitution upholds the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary. Until recently both have seemed secure. However the ANC has indicated very clearly that it believes that the mindset of judges is at odds with the sentiments and needs of the “masses”. The minister has drafted legislation to place herself in charge of high court administration and to restructure the continuing “education” of judges.

2. Participation

The right to participate is not under any manifest threat, but overall rates of voter participation are far from healthy. In a nation-wide opinion poll that I conducted just before the election in 2004, some 30 per cent of eligible adults felt that there were no benefits to be derived from voting and an additional 18 per cent felt that the predominance of the ruling party made voting futile. These are danger signals.

3. Political competition

The reason for the asymmetry of power is commonly considered to be racial mobilisation. Around 95 per cent of ANC supporters are African and 64 per cent of the supporters of the largest opposition party are white. Are South African voters motivated dominantly by racial loyalty or do they respond to party commitments and policy?

4, and 5. Two kinds of accountability

“Vertical” accountability is of government to the voters; “horizontal” is that of government to the monitoring institutions that are part of constitutional democracy — the judiciary, the auditor general, the ombudsman (public protector) and commissions that monitor aspects of governance. The ANC has quite unashamedly committed itself to extending its power to control precisely these institutions of horizontal accountability.

6, 7, & 8. Freedom, equality and responsiveness

Diamond and Morlino define freedom and equality in terms of basic rights that in the South African situation are entrenched and protected by the constitution. However these rights are not deemed to exclude “unequal” measures to secure the advancement of persons previously disadvantaged by apartheid.

Responsiveness is also a complex matter. The government is brimful of rhetoric about “a better life for the people”, but is increasingly concerned that many of its promises fail. Two aspects of the government’s own programme negate its desire to be responsive: a massive overload of new laws, regulations and implementation procedures; and a lack of governmental enthusiasm about retaining the services of whites in the public sector who have the experience to drive and manage the delivery process.

An illiberal political climate

The government tries to bully its opponents from the high moral ground of its claimed mandate on behalf of the “masses” and the “people”.

This mission, bolstered by the fact that the central party leadership nominates all candidates for elections, appoints insiders to most positions of influence and seems to operate in a tradition of “vanguard” leadership developed in exile, have meant a highly centralised state and a president’s office with awesome influence.

This is not a climate in which a political civil society thrives.

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are benevolent.”1

In the previous issue of Focus, David Welsh reviewed the quality of our democracy and concluded as follows: “A hollowed-out democracy?… while the outer forms of democratic constitutionalism have been maintained there are dangerous trends that could subvert it from within”. This assessment continues this vitally important discussion.

In his celebrated new book William Mervin Gumede comments on the ideological shifts that appear to have taken place in the African National Congress (ANC) government, calling it a “dramatic repositioning”, and reaching the equally dramatic conclusion that “The ANC has become a party with more liberal values than the Democratic Alliance…”2. At an address in a series to mark the Helen Suzman Exhibition at the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town, Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert echoed these sentiments, asserting that because all parties support our “liberal democratic” constitution, “we are all liberals today”.

The statements of both Gumede and Slabbert were qualified. Gumede was talking about the ANC’s oft-labelled “neo-liberal” macro-economic policy, and Slabbert went on to describe the ANC as having “co-opted” the instruments of the constitution. But the statements first quoted grab attention, and among the less informed, endow the government with an aura of tolerance and political benevolence. Most people still think that if a government is “liberal”, its democratic credentials have to be taken very seriously, if not for granted.

It is important to ask how many of the democratic credentials of the present government can be taken for granted. Many people of long-standing liberal persuasion argue that despite our huge advance from the cruder forms of control and oppression in the apartheid era, certain liberties and rights are as embattled in South Africa today as they ever were under colonialism and apartheid. Similarly, many people to the left of these liberals are equally worried about the responsiveness of our democracy. Roger Southall is rather kinder than some of his co-authors in a Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) book modelled on the progressive “South African Reviews” of the eighties, in concluding that “South Africa’s dominant party system seems embarked on the road to a low-intensity democracy… the formal requirements of democracy are met, yet under conditions of decreasing competition and declining popular participation. The ANC’s domination of the political arena is being extended increasingly, challenges to its rule being steadily overwhelmed, and its own internal democracy eroded”3.

The highly reputable American political analyst, Larry Diamond and his colleague, Leonardo Morlino, offer a very useful framework for such analysis4. Like the South Africans quoted above, they are not disarmed by formalities: “There are, to be sure, several dozen ‘illiberal’ democracies in the world today where competitive elections and popular participation coexist with considerable lawlessness and abuse of power.” Hence they proceed to develop additional criteria.

Criteria of democratic quality

After reviewing a series of contributions, they arrive at eight essential criteria on which to assess the quality of democracies. The following appraisal of each of these criteria will, regrettably, have to be all too brief.

1. The rule of law

The South African Constitution upholds the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary. Until recently both have seemed secure, and various careful evaluations have shown that Constitutional Court rulings have tended not to side with the wishes of the ANC executive more than with plaintiffs. The judiciary’s complete about-face in condoning ANC-endorsed floor-crossing by members of parliament elected after nomination to party lists, however, has led some observers to believe, rightly or wrongly, that when the stakes are very high for the ANC, the Constitutional Court will know where its loyalties lie.

Any ambiguity on whether the government respects the independence of the judiciary seems to have been dispelled by recent events. The ANC has indicated very clearly that it believes that the mindset of judges is at odds with the sentiments and needs of the “masses” (dominantly its supporters?), and the minister has drafted legislation to place herself in charge of high court administration, to restructure the continuing “education” of judges and to formulate a complaints mechanism to deal with alleged racism and other dissatisfactions with the judiciary. The outgoing chief justice and his successor, along with most others judges, believe that aspects of these bills prejudice the independence of the judiciary. The government obviously disagrees. At the time of writing, discussions are underway and the outcome cannot be predicted. But even if the legislation does not proceed, some judges have said that they see the whole process as intended to intimidate them.

Diamond and Morlino point out that no constitution in itself can protect the independence of the judiciary if political leaders do not have the “political will and appropriate self restraint”. It is precisely the political will and the restraint of the ANC government that now seems very uncertain. On this vital issue the jury is out.

2. Participation

Democratic South Africa has held three successful elections and the right to participate is not under any manifest threat. There are serious published allegations that “inefficient” procedures in dealing with voting outside of voter registration districts in the intensely contested province of KwaZulu-Natal might even have decided the outcome of the 2004 election in the province, but these allegations have not been tested in the courts.

What is very clear, however, is that overall rates of voter participation are far from healthy. The proportions of the officially estimated voting age populations that actually registered and voted fell from 72 per cent in 1999 to 57 per cent in 2004. Both these figures are in fact slight underestimates because the official population estimates include non-South African citizens, but the declining trend in voter participation is valid, and alarming.

Apathy associated with low voter turnout is sometimes an indication of complacency and a lack of basic dissatisfactions, but it can also be due to a perception that participation has little effect on government performance, and is therefore irrelevant to the concerns of voters. In a nation-wide opinion poll that I conducted just before the election in 2004 (fieldwork by MarkData, sample circa 2250), some 30 per cent of eligible adults felt that the reason for disinterest in the election was that there were no benefits to be derived from voting and an additional 18 per cent felt that the predominance of the ruling party made voting futile.

These are danger signals. The electoral system may well be “hollowing-out”, to use the phrase of David Welsh.

3. Political competition

If the effectiveness of political competition depends on, among other things, the possibility of alternations of power occurring, then this must be the single most salient weakness in the South African democracy. The fact that the ruling ANC has increased its majority over three elections to a massive 70 per cent can be regarded as a very salient threat to accountability, quite aside from the fact that it is a commonplace observation that huge and sustained power advantages can encourage political arrogance and the misuse of power.

The reason for the asymmetry of power is commonly considered to be racial mobilisation. The opinion poll quoted above shows that around 95 per cent of ANC supporters are African and 64 per cent of the supporters of the largest opposition party are white. Given the immutable reality of racial demographics, the domination of the ANC would appear to be set in stone. If this is so it makes a competitive multi-party system meaningless, because outcomes are little more than a racial census.

However, it is not quite as simple as this, and one has to take an alternative argument seriously. This argument would be that the ANC has done no more than “compete” very successfully, capitalising on its familiarity with the needs and expectations of the masses. If the dominance of a party genuinely reflects a superior appeal to the largest constituencies, it is difficult to regard the outcome as illegitimate. Are South African voters motivated dominantly by racial loyalty or do they respond to party commitments and policy? Here again, opinion polls can shed some light on this crucial issue.

The 2004 pre-election opinion poll of MarkData showed that the voting pattern was not simply a matter of racial solidarity. Table one offers a summary of relevant findings among Africans — note the questions asked are severely shortened and paraphrased.

The results shown in table one do not sustain the notion that voting is nothing more than an act of racial solidarity, but at the same time they do reflect a very substantial level of racial consciousness among the African majority. They show that:

The performance of the ANC, after a period of declining popularity up to 2002, was approved by clear majorities of Africans and was able to generate optimism about the future;

Most Africans, in principle at any rate, approve of vigorous opposition, feel free to hold opinions at variance to those of their communities and some 30 per cent even give the DA a positive rating;

At the same time, some 36 per cent of Africans clearly have deep reservations about a critical and forthright opposition;

Although only a minority support discrimination in favour of Africans, a consistent half of African voters give responses that suggest that, among other voting motivations, racial solidarity is a factor in their support for a party. There are also high levels of unquestioning party loyalty — 50 per cent.

In other words, voting may be only partly a “racial census” — racial solidarity and party loyalty combine with approval of policy and performance to secure the competitive success of the ANC. The only consolation for opposition (and for democracy) is that most Africans do not believe in a one-party state in principle, but the majority is slender. Nearly 40 per cent would prefer no critical opposition at all.

Hence although the huge electoral advantage of the ruling party is a critical problem, in that it negates the principle of open competition, it would be over-simple to ascribe it only to a democratically inappropriate manipulation of racial identity. There is a correspondence of identity, interests and party programmes that renders the outcome both fairly “legitimate” and inevitable.

4, and 5. Two kinds of accountability

“Vertical” accountability, of government to the voters, is obviously weakened by the huge political comfort zone of easy victories for the ANC. Another aspect of accountability is “horizontal”, that of government to the monitoring and “watchdog” institutions that are part of constitutional democracy — the judiciary, the auditor general, the ombudsman (public protector) and all the various commissions that monitor specific aspects of governance. The requirement of accountability assumes that these officials and institutions are independent of government. But David Welsh has already pointed out that the ANC, by its own admission in its 1998 document: “The state, property relations and transformation” quite unashamedly committed itself to extending its power to control precisely these institutions of horizontal accountability. In other documents the ANC has actively endorsed the principle of “hegemony”, so much so that a former editor and earlier ANC cadre, Howard Barrell, once called the ANC “democratic Leninists”.

6, 7, & 8. Freedom, equality and responsiveness

Diamond and Morlino define freedom and equality in terms of basic rights that in the South African situation are entrenched and protected by the constitution. There is, however, a keynote qualification to many of these rights in the constitution, this being that they are not deemed to exclude “unequal” measures to secure the advancement of persons previously disadvantaged by apartheid. The only way this potentially contradictory qualification can be resolved is through an accumulation of case law and legal precedent. In practice, however, most of the preferential activity to ensure special treatment of formerly disadvantaged persons occurs without reference to the courts. I have heard the chief justice appealing for more cases to be brought to court to facilitate a reconciliation of these contradictions, but this will take a great deal of time and money.

Responsiveness is also a complex matter. The government is brimful of rhetoric about “a better life for the people”, of a people-friendly administration and of the effective delivery of services and benefits for the needy. The government itself is increasingly concerned, however, that many of its promises fail, and diverse and extensive measures are being taken to try to improve delivery. However, aside from the fact that poverty, under-provision and consequent issues like high crime rates are a massive challenge that would severely test any administration in the world, there are two aspects of the government’s own programme that negate its own desire to be responsive.

The first is that the government has tackled legislative reform with such well-intentioned enthusiasm that it has given itself a massive overload of new laws, regulations and implementation procedures to administer. Secondly, it has been unenthusiastic, to say the least, about retaining the services of whites in the public sector with the experience to drive and manage the delivery process. Even those who do remain in the service are often so de-motivated, if not alienated, by the fact that affirmative action shrinks their prospects for promotion, that they are not very effective anyway. The net result has been that various local areas in the country have seen the reappearance of the same kind of protests about conditions, services and rampant unemployment that marked the period of late apartheid.

Albeit telegraphically, this covers the eight criteria that Diamond and Morlino identify as tests of the quality of democracy. The account is not complete, however, because these authors emphasise at least two rather obvious further dimensions. One is the “diffusion of liberal and democratic values at both popular and elite levels.” The other is taken from Benjamin Franklin’s warning that “If vigilance is the eternal price of liberty,” then citizens themselves — organised outside of the state in civil society, and assisted by institutions such as the media — “must care about and stand ready to defend rights, liberties and the integrity of the electoral process.” It is in these less formal and overarching dimensions that our democracy is often most lacking. Taking the two together, the problem is in our “political climate”.

An illiberal political climate

Perhaps because of the legacy of apartheid or the psychological damage it wrought, the government clearly believes that the struggle for liberation is far from over. At times when ideological blood rushes to the head, ANC intellectuals have proclaimed the mission of a “social revolution” to follow the first liberation (the “national revolution”), although the content of this “revolution” seems to have veered sharply to include the promotion of a black middle class. Notwithstanding this shift, the government still tries to bully its opponents from the high moral ground of its claimed mandate on behalf of the “masses” and the “people”. Perhaps it has never read Oscar Wilde on “the bludgeoning of the people, for the people, by the people”.

This mission, bolstered by the fact that the central party leadership nominates all candidates for elections, appoints insiders to most positions of influence and seems to operate in a tradition of “vanguard” leadership developed in exile, have all meant that we have a highly centralised state and a president’s office with rather awesome influence.

Sociologist David Apter5 labelled this kind of system as “pre-democratic”, because the society at large is the “dependent variable” and the state is the “independent variable”. This is unlike advanced pluralist democracies where civil society (rather than easily manipulated formless “masses”) calls the shots, and the state attempts as best it can to co-ordinate the process. In other words, the pervasiveness and intrusiveness of government influence in all matters from place names and the composition of sports teams to what universities teach, the proliferation of new obscure acronyms and terminology, the administration of schools and so forth, brings us close to what is normally referred to as a “state-broken” society.

This passion for intervention is no doubt intensified by the frustrating fact that many important aspects of society are partly or substantially beyond the control of the state — crime, corruption, unemployment, illegal cross-border migration, an attenuated culture of learning at schools and perhaps most irritating of all, the intensely private lifestyles of the old white middle classes that always disappoint the earnest organisers of patriotic events where flags are waved, songs are sung and complicated speeches made.

This is not a climate in which a political civil society thrives. To some extent it is crowded out or pulverised by the pervasive and deeply virtuous project of transformation with its increasingly legislated penalties and sanctions, or by the regime of political correctness that it has spawned. Confronting the power of political “virtue” is the toughest call of all. Among many white and Indian citizens there is also an underlying fear that prominent activism on their part could spark a racial backlash. The result is that the most effective examples of civil society are not directly focused on politics. While there is a growing civil and trade union movement for the white working class, the more established middle classes simply withdraw into philosophical or sullen silence and use their resources to limit the damage. In other words, the political climate is at war with the freedom and tolerance of diversity that is supposed to be the hallmark of democratic systems.

In summary, while the government leads the emerging world in international best practice in the formalities of democratic governance, disturbing tendencies have appeared. The super-dominant position of the ANC may become increasingly secured by sullen voter indifference, dependence on state welfare and, however necessary, an almost desperate proliferation of black empowerment at the cost of basic rights for formerly advantaged people whose skills are vital for the economy. Many observers who note the early signs of discomfort with the judiciary, the independence of institutional watchdogs and other hegemonic tendencies are worried by what might happen if the ANC were to begin to suffer electoral setbacks. Opinion poll results show that many rank and file voters are perceptive enough to become powerfully disillusioned. Most importantly, perhaps, the climate of political correctness could stifle warnings that should come from civil society. To its credit, however, the non-government media, while cautious and critically under-resourced, keeps the flag of advocacy and constructive criticism flying.

If dynamic economic growth brings with it a proliferation of new interests and socio-economic checks and balances, South Africa’s democracy will outgrow its current impediments. If growth is sluggish and our already intrusive government feels that it has to fill the space, democratic freedoms of quality may not survive. This will not require crude authoritarianism — as a very perceptive American writer once put it, “when liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default, it can never be recovered”6.

Endnotes
1 US Justice Louis Brandeis, 1927.
2 Thabo Mbeki and the battle for the soul of the ANC, page 128.
3 John Daniel, Adam Habib and Roger Southall, State of the Nation: South Africa 2003-2004, HSRC, page 74-75.
4 The quality of democracy: an overview, Journal of Democracy, volume 15, October 2004.
5 Rethinking Development, 1987.
6 Dorothy Thompson, 1958.