"Ungovernable" and democracy. Can the two co-exist?

The ANC identified as one of its weaknesses the emergence of “…a new type of ANC leader and member who sees ill-discipline, divisions and factionalism and in-fighting as normal practices and necessary forms of political survival…” Indeed, one of the greatest challenges that the movement faces is the question of ill-discipline.

Some would suggest that it is a new phenomenon in the ANC. Others would point to the Polokwane Conference and remind us of how delegates showed disrespect to the leadership at the time whilst the future leaders sat idly and allowed for the ill-discipline to continue. This ill-discipline was in the favour of the post-Polokwane leadership and therefore they did nothing to quell the unruly behaviour. Needless to mention, that that same ill-discipline has come back to bite the current leadership in its weak spots.

Yet this blog has suggested that this ill-discipline set in even earlier. When writing on Frank Chikane’s Eight Days in September it pointed to an incident in the NEC meeting of March 2002 which indicated this high level of ill-discipline. Comrade Mandela, in his ex-offcio capacity, attended the NEC meeting of the ANC and challenged the leadership collective on their stance on, what was then termed, HIV-AIDS denialism. Comrade Mandela, it is said, was ridiculed, attacked and even at one stage called a liar.

Apparently, Comrade Mandela was so shocked at the behaviour of the leadership that he retreated from the organisation only to attend special events. The Big 6 at the time, with Comrade Mbeki as president, Comrade Zuma as deputy and Mosioua Lekota as chairperson of the meeting sat by and did absolutely nothing whilst this icon of the struggle against Apartheid and one who gave 27 years of his life for our freedom was vilified by the leadership of the very organisation he had helped to build. Comrade Mandela then realised that something had gone terribly wrong with the ANC.

For his lack of leadership then, because the ill-discipline was in defence of him, Comrade Mbeki would have a taste of this and would meet it face to face in the NGC of 2005 and then finally at the 52^nd National Conference of the ANC in Polokwane. By then, the leadership at the highest level of the ANC, had become comfortable with the emergence of this “…new type of ANC leader and member who sees ill-discipline, divisions and factionalism and in-fighting as normal practices and necessary forms of political survival…” because it was working in the favour of those who sort to be elected. No doubt, this same leadership is now haunted by the very same type of ANC leader and member as the ill-discipline, divisions and factionalism and infighting continues as the normal practices and necessary forms of political survival as the movement treads towards the 53^rd National Conference in Mangaung.

This same ill-discipline, divisions and factionalism and infighting seems to be spilling over into our national politics. No longer confined to the ranks of the ANC we are told, though we must view these reports with extreme caution, that the service delivery protests are fundamentally being fuelled not by the lack of service delivery but by factions of the ANC. Again, how true this is, only the ANC can answer.

Yet whilst these may be questionable, what is not is the ANCYL in the Western Cape coming out and suggesting that they would make the province ungovernable. However legitimate the struggle of the working class, it is important to note that to all intents and purposes the National Democratic Revolution has the word “democratic” in the centre of it. We are not engaging an illegitimate provincial government here. It was legitimately elected by the people of the Western Cape and to suggest that the province be made ungovernable (which is a loaded political science term) would be to suggest that it lacks legitimacy.

We must realise that, say unlike in Tunisia and Egypt, we live in a democratic state. Despite its challenges of gross inequality, abject poverty and widespread unemployment, the gains made by South Africa in 1994 of political freedom, constitutionally enriched human rights and a political order that is democratic must be safeguarded.

Needless to mention that for the Left this raises philosophical questions of whether to recognise this democratic order albeit an order that is, for now, by and large in favour of those who have. At the same time, whilst it must use this privilege in moderation, the democratic state remains the sole entity that can legitimately employ violence. No one else may do so and certainly not the youth league of a party that is the official opposition in a province. Whilst we can understand working class violence, we may never in a democratic, and therefore legitimate, dispensation condone it.

Like ill-discipline, divisions and factionalism, the ANC leadership is allowing for this use of the word “ungovernable” in the Western Cape. Soon this campaign of declaring to make the province ungovernable would spread to other provinces and it will come to haunt the ANC leadership in the future. Ill-discipline, divisions and factionalism had to be nipped in the bud in its early stages, it wasn’t and has been able to threaten successive leaders; even leaders who used this unruly behaviour to their advantage. Just like this “make ungovernable” campaign has to be nipped in the bud, even though it is useful for the current leadership.

The easy task is to bring down a government. The more difficult one is to win democratic elections and stay in power, especially where competition is high. The more difficult task for the ANC in the Western Cape is to win an election, yet they chose rather to be bad losers and throw a tantrum.

Just like the unruly behaviour of some ANC leaders and members have come to haunt past and present ANC leaders so too will these words and actions of “ungovernable” come to haunt present and future leaders of the ANC.

P.S. Two days after my last post on The Question of Violence, dealing with violence in South Africa, the Marikana Massacre took place. Whilst our thoughts and prayers must be first and foremost with those who lost loved-ones and those who were injured, it is important that we take time too to reflect on this terrible tragedy. No doubt, we shall be putting fingers to keys in the future about this event when we have sobered a bit. 

The Question of Violence: Part II

South Africa and violence

Apartheid was subjectively and objectively violent. While all of the subjective violence, the deaths, the torturing, the disappearing, the army shooting in our townships, the dompass, have all been done away with the blatant reality of Apartheid’s objective violence remains. It is an objective violence that is real in its symbolic, systemic forms as well as having been normalised.

Even those who continue to suffer from racism, sexism, poverty, exclusion and lack of opportunity have been made to believe, by the pacifists within our country, that things are better now or, even worse still, that things were better under Apartheid. Don’t bring up the past, these pacifist exclaim. We have had freedom for 18 years, they remind us; whilst all along the objective violence remains intact.

Recently, on the occasion of his birthday, Comrade Mandela was criticised by some for being a “sell-out”. No doubt, many continue to believe that the decision to negotiate a settlement with the Apartheid regime was an incorrect one. Given that as early as the 1980’s “the talks about talks” were initially facilitated by big (White, Western) business in South Africa, one can understand why then already a distinction was made between political and economic emancipation. Are we surprised then as to who those were who led the Class Project of 1996?

Economic emancipation of the majority of people in South Africa, despite the gross injustices of the past and the twins of capitalism and Apartheid, was sacrificed on the altar of majority rule, human rights (excluding economic ones of course) and democracy. Then already political freedom was separated from economic emancipation in South Africa. To have separated these two would have been like negotiating a peace settlement in the Middle East, allowing for Palestinians to have East Jerusalem as their capital but not allowing Palestinian refugees to return to Palestine. Political and economic freedoms are intertwined and both remain at the heart of objective violence in South Africa today.

Egyptians, after the toppling of Hosni al-Mubarak, soon realised that their challenge was not just the toppling of one man. It had to be a toppling of the entire system. Most of those who participated at the forefront of the revolution in Tahrir Square would today question whether participating in a political system that had at its centre a state that was fundamentally designed to exclude and serve only the interests of the ruling elite, including the military.

In the early 1990’s, we thought that if we simply overthrew White minority rule, introduced democracy and replaced the Broederbond’s cadre deployment with our own that we would be able to use this Apartheid state apparatus; a state designed to exclude the majority of our people. We thought that if we transformed this state that it would miraculously act in the majority’s interest, especially the favour of poor people. As Marx and Engels warned, we had to replace the entire sinking ship all together.

As a result, the objective violent Apartheid state remains intact. It is a state that serves the minority, now who can afford it, Black and White. It is a state that excludes the majority in how it operates and prescribes rather than involves people in every single step of decision making. It is not a socialist state and it is not a democratic one. As before 1994, the Apartheid state apparatus remains a breeding ground today for corruption, inefficiency, ineptness and non-accountability.  

The response therefore to this continued state of objective, bourgeois violence is the subjective violence of the proletariat. Whether it is workers at Impala mine, students protesting on the campus of Walter Sisulu University, scuffles between DA marchers and Cosatu affiliated workers, crime in general or more importantly the on-going protests within townships and locations, thus far been term as “service-delivery protests”, these are all forms of the violence of the proletariat in response to the objective violence.

This subjective violence is in our language when we engage each other and hurl insults or when we make demands in the Western Cape, attaching words such as “ungovernable”. Whoever initiates these acts of subjective violence are primarily those who suffer from the objective violence of our society and are therefore only responding to it in the form of subjective violence.

A violent future?

As members of the Mass Democratic Movement it is therefore important that we be hesitant is simply condemning (subjective) violence. We must understand that these are justifiably the reaction to an objective, bourgeois violence that continues to persist in our society, even after nearly two decades of freedom. We must be vigilant not to separate ourselves from those who are so frustrated that the only voice they have is subjective, physical violence. Sadly, those who suffer the most from objective violence are often those who bear the brunt of subjective violence as well.

It is not important to decide whether Comrade Mandela sold us out or not. It is not important whether one condones violence, in either form, or not. What is important is that we realize that we need a fundamentally different way of thinking of the state, other than just to be happy with that which we inherited from Apartheid. We must realise that it is not just about implementing policies but that we radically need to change policies to ensure that the objective violence that persists in our society in tackled.

It is important that we be vigilant about not too liberally condemning acts of subjective violence committed by those who remain on the margins of our society. To condemn them would be to condemn the very poor we struggle to emancipate.

The words of Marx, Engels, Caudwell and even Dr King continue to ring out: “Since a dispossessed class will fight to the last ditch, while there is hope, how can the transition be affected other than violently…?” (Caudwell, 1938, Pacifism and Violence)

The Question of Violence: Part I

“Violence begets violence.”

These were words used by the American civil rights activist, Martin Luther King Jr. One could argue that though a pacifist, Dr King, believed in these words not only as a reaction to the War in Vietnam but also in relation to the unjust system that was (and continues to this day) to oppress people of colour in the United States.  

In their conclusion of The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, articulate, what some have termed as, a call to violence. They conclude the work by particularly using the following words:

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” (Marx and Engels, 1848, The Communist Manifesto)

Some scholars have interpreted this as a call to violently overthrow the state. Yet without going into a hermeneutical or exegetical interpretation of the text, it is important, at least in this translation, to note that there exists an abhorrence for “…all existing social conditions…” and that the only way to defeat these unacceptable social conditions would be to “…openly declare that [Communist] ends can be attained only by forcible overthrow…” In other words, as Dr King would articulate, the violent system that exists, through abhorrent existing social conditions, can only beget a violent reaction.  

A violence that calls for more violence

In dismissing bourgeois pacifism, Christopher Caudwell writes in his work, Pacifism and Violence, that:

“…the only way to secure peace is by a revolutionary change in the social system, and that ruling classes resist revolution violently and must therefore be overthrown by force.” (Christopher Caudwell, 1938, Pacifism and Violence)

Yet again, in the tradition of Marx and Engels, Caudwell makes sure to distinguish between bourgeois violence and the violence employed by the proletariat. He defines bourgeois violence as that which: “…arises, just as does feudal or despotic violence, from the characteristic economy of the system.” He continues:

“…the whole bourgeois economy is built on the violent domination of men by men through the private possession of social capital. It is always there, waiting ready at any moment to flame out in a Peterloo or an Amritzar within the bourgeois State, or a Boer War or Great War outside it. As long as the bourgeois economy remains a positive constructive force, that violence is hidden.” (Christopher Caudwell, 1938, Pacifism and Violence)

Put differently, Caudwell states that the violence perpetrated by the bourgeois, the ruling class, is one that is primarily about the private possession of that which is supposed to be owned in common but more importantly that this violence is often systemic and therefore subliminal.

By dismissing bourgeois pacifism, Caudwell notes that time and again it is the pacifist who would oppose proletariat violence but at the same time “…refrain from opposing bourgeois violence, [because] he generates it, by helping on the development of bourgeois economy.” Could Dr King have been described as such a pacifist? A discussion we could have on another occasion.

Two types of violence

We are therefore to understand that there are two types of violence. The systemic and subliminal violence, as perpetuated by the existing social conditions of our neo-liberal and capitalist times, on the one hand, and the violence of the oppressed that comes in response to that ruling class violence, on the other.

To clarify this distinction better, we could employ the work of the Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic, Slovaj Žižek. In his work Violence (2008), Žižek makes a clear distinction between subjective violence and objective violence. Subjective violence describes the empirical violence that we might experience e.g. the suicide bomber, assault, murder, rape and war. It is physical violence, as it were, and often we are most fixated with this violence. We believe that peace is the absence of violence i.e. subjective violence.

However, objective violence is the violence that exists through an unjust system. It is symbolic and systemic; symbolic in language and in form, such as racism and sexism whereas it could also be systemic through economic and political systems, such as capitalism and its twin neo-liberalism. These causes of gross inequality and poverty, the exclusion of the vast majority of citizens in the operations of the state (or the market?) and the opportunity to reach their potential given only to a few, and not others, are only three examples of the systemic objective violence that exists in our current social conditions.

Hence Žižek’s thesis, like Marx, Engels and Caudwell, is that subjective violence is but only a response to objective violence. To give a current example, the subjective violence experienced by Syrians today are only in response to the objective violence that exists in the Middle East region: the question of Palestine, Western interests in the Middle East, among others.

At the same time, it is important to note that coupled with this understanding of violence, as subjective and objective, goes the comprehension of the process of ‘normalisation’. Given the subliminal, systemic and symbolic nature of objective violence it is easy for these to be ‘normalised’, i.e. it becomes part of the system, part of life. Why care about race or sexism, people ask these days, when minority rights, homophobia and environmental rights are much more threatened than the life or dignity of a person of colour? It’s much “cooler”, “in” or “fashionable” to fight against nuclear power stations, be a vegetarian and support gay marriage than it is to stand up against racism in Europe or the US.

Poverty, racism and sexism have become normal. People are told to live with it and get on with their lives. These objective violent acts are normalised i.e. made ‘acceptable’ just as the violent act of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is made normal. If we do it long enough, people will just not care any longer, think the Israelis. Given the subjective violent response to this objective violence, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims are then characterised as terrorists, intolerant and fundamentalists; this profiling being an act of objective violence in itself.