The politicking has started

With the countdown to South Africa’s municipal elections underway, political parties will increasingly focus on those political issues that could either win them votes or embarrass their opponents. On some fronts the dogfight has started.

While the various political parties have yet to release their election manifestoes, they will not differ much, if at all, from their 2009 general election manifestoes and focus largely on some of the more obvious socio-political challenges and controversial political issues. Those to be watched include job creation, labour brokering, housing, land reform, education, municipal governance, service delivery, and health.

Major battle fields

Geographically the major battleground will be the Western Cape, the only place in South Africa where an opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA) – now in partnership with the Independent Democrats (ID) – is in power both at provincial and municipal levels. Municipal by-elections over the past year or more have shown that the DA has continued winning ground against the ANC in this province, while the ANC remains a party in disarray here. The trend is likely to continue.

The other major battleground will be KwaZulu-Natal, the home ground of the ANC’s president, Jacob Zuma, and his growing inner circle in the ANC and government of ethnic Zulu apparatchiks, ministers and advisers. Ever since Zuma came to power, the party that once ruled this province, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) of veteran politician Mangosuthu Buthelezi, has rapidly been losing ground to the ANC, as has been attested in by-election results over the past 20 months. The ANC would like to wrap up the remainder of this province but is likely to still find some tough pockets of IFP resistance.

In the rest of South Africa the ANC will seek to consolidate its majority ruling position, although the party itself has conceded that it could lose some support, mainly due to the negative actions and track records of many of its own politicians in local government. It will work hard in coming months to prevent any haemorrhaging. Together with the anticipated fierce battles in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, this is where contentious political issues and propaganda come into play.

The issues

With one of the most pressing problems faced by the country being the high level of unemployment – officially standing at more than 25%, but probably much higher – it is little wonder that this topic dominated the agenda of the ANC’s lekgotla this past week.

Having put his neck on the line twice – first by promising massive job creation in the 2009 elections and again recently when the government unveiled its New Growth Path – an impatient Zuma told his colleagues on the national executive committee, ministers, provincial premiers, mayors and officials that he wanted an immediate and concrete plan for the implementation of job creation in line with the New Growth Path economic strategy.

In need of something to show the voters, Zuma told his party colleagues that the plan could not be debated forever. Almost miraculously the ANC Monday morning came up with part of the job-creation plan when it convened a media conference and released the targets for the number of jobs to be created in each sector.

The rural development sector is expected to create some 500,000 jobs over the next 10 years. Broad-based manufacturing excluding agriculture must produce 350,000 jobs, the green economy 300,000 jobs, infrastructure development 250,000 jobs, the tourism sector 225,000 jobs, the mining industry 140,000 jobs, the knowledge economy, including information communication and biotechnology 140,000 and the public service is to be inflated by 10% to create additional jobs.

While these targets are all very well and will no doubt impress some voters, the real question that has not been answered is whether these jobs will fit the definition of “decent jobs” – that is, permanent, well-paid jobs with benefits - as demanded by ANC’s labour ally, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).

The highly controversial issue of labour brokering has also already entered the election picture. Quite recently the new Labour Minister, Mildred Oliphant, hastily published a new set of amendments to existing labour legislation that would effectively outlaw labour brokering and short-term contract labour practices.

She did this despite receiving a damning research report from three independent experts appointed by her department who pointed out, among other things, that the amendments would be unconstitutional and would violate international conventions to which South Africa is a signatory. Both Oliphant and her predecessor, Membathisi Mdladlana, kept the report secret until details of it were leaked this week.

Being seen to having taken a strong stance against labour brokering and going into action on the job-creation front at the same time, would not only serve to win popular support, but would also serve to appease Cosatu.

The latter, historically a major force in the ANC’s election efforts, has lately been highly critical of the ANC on these and other issues and its full support in the forthcoming elections is less than guaranteed. More Cosatu criticism could also cost the ANC votes among workers and the unemployed. Hence, for short-term gain Oliphant and the ANC appear to have chosen the lesser of two evils here, but the picture could again change after the elections.

In tandem with these issues, the Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, also last week unveiled a new skills development strategy for South Africa after all the previous such strategies had failed.

Housing is another contentious issue and one that has frequently cropped up in service delivery protests – and therefore potential dynamite in an election situation. While the government has built more than two million low-cost houses since 1994, a huge backlog remains, something that cannot be effectively addressed in the short timespan surrounding an election.( Also see article on housing )

However, following an earlier warning by Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale that a number of provinces were under-performing in respect of housing delivery, his director-general, Thabane Zulu, last week warned that the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State stood to lose their annual housing grants because of under-performance. Zulu said a final decision on which provinces will forfeit funds and how much will be transferred to other provinces would be made soon.  In the election scenario both the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal stand out due to their opposition profiles and the issue could become an election football.

In recent research done by Harvard Law School researcher and visiting fellow at the University of the Western Cape’s Community Law Centre, Hirsh Jain, it was found that the issue of housing was cited by far as the most common reason for protest action in townships across South Africa. (See separate analysis in this report).

Meanwhile President Zuma last week seemed to have placed the issue of land reform firmly on the election agenda when he delivered the ANC’s annual January 8 statement at the organisation’s 99th anniversary celebrations in Polokwane. He again revived the controversial plans to curb foreign land ownership.

In 2006 these plans were stalled after a government probe found that only about 5% of land in South Africa was foreign-owned. Foreigners also invested heavily in prime agricultural operations such as the Western Cape’s wine industry, adding much value for the country.

However, in the face of criticism and demands for nationalisation of land and other drastic steps emerging from radical political quarters aligned to the ANC following the government’s faltering land reform programme and its delayed Green Paper on land reform, the issue has now been revived with proposals for severely restricting foreign land ownership.

Following the January 8 statement political analysts have pointed out that land ownership is a soft target that is likely to be well supported by voters.

On municipal governance and service delivery, the ANC will harp on the anticipated success of its local government turn-around strategy and the decisions of its recent local and provincial government summit – neither of which have actually produced anything of substance yet – while it may again try to blame service delivery protests on sinister forces bent on derailing the ANC.

However, unable to escape the consequences of the negative actions of many of its own local councillors any longer, it is likely to adopt a come-clean approach, promising to take action against such councillors and carefully screen new candidates. This has also been demanded by Cosatu.

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Comments (1)

• |2011-01-19 12:22:10 Anonymous  - Now the lies start
  The election manifestos should make for fun reading. A lie here, another lie there, here a lie, there a lie everywhere a lie lie. The only sad part is not the lies but that fact that the masses actually believe them and vote for them despite being lied to over the last two decades so frequently. As a wise man once said - the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. South Africa deserves the poverty, the corruption, the lack of services, the dumbing down of the populous due to bad education and lack of jobs.
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