On Monday, as I sat on stage at the South End Museum in Gqeberha, participating in a community dialogue about the state of our democracy, organised jointly by Nelson Mandela University and The Herald, I was moved by a poignant story told by a fellow panellist.
Lorenzo Davids, Urban Issues Consulting CEO, recalled giving a lift to a 68-year-old woman he had met while driving around the Western Cape on one of his many fascinating travels. She had been hitchhiking, and he had obliged her, even though her destination was off the beaten track.
Davids, who has a deep passion for social development, drove the woman to where she needed to go. They struck up a conversation about politics.
When he probed her feelings about participating in elections, and democratic processes and institutions more generally, she expressed a familiar disappointment in the performance of our politicians. But it was the very precise expression of her discontent that had never left him, “Politicians want my vote but they do not want my voice!”
This was a damning indictment of careerists within the political landscape who rock up on our doorsteps during election times, seeking our votes to help them ascend to political power, before abandoning us the morning after taking office.
They repeat this malicious game every five years. And, as this elderly voter's words and feelings indicate, this lays an unfortunate foundation for voter cynicism, and ultimately reduced participation in political processes, including voting.
The distance between people in power and people in communities has grown way too wide. That gap is the very meaning of “unresponsive government” that many academics and commentators often refer to.
Nelson Mandela Bay deputy mayor Mkhuseli Jack had tried to articulate a more hopeful politics in response to the story told by Davids, a story which had complemented my own thesis in the opening address in the community dialogue, that our democracy, properly analysed, has started to show signs of a mafia state or a gangster state.
Jack has impressive oratorical prowess, and an affable smile that gives way to an infectiously raucous laugh, that he then used to claim that smaller party leaders like himself, who could have joined the big parties but had chosen not to, were the hopeful antidote to weak opposition to a sinking ANC ship.
The glib appeal to hope in political rhetoric is a particularly cruel and callous insult to voters.
The problem, however, is that the hope motif has run its course in political discourse in South Africa.
Residents of Gqeberha cannot rely on hope when their taps are dry or when toxic sludge rather than safe drinking water comes out of the taps.
Residents cannot rely on hope when they are dodging bullets in gang-infested townships in the metro.
Residents cannot rely on hope when they are unable to put food on the table because the manufacturing sector in the region is a shadow of its former self, and unemployment and poverty levels have increased sharply as a result of the regional economy stagnating.
This is both true of the Eastern Cape and also every other part of our country. The glib appeal to hope in political rhetoric is a particularly cruel and callous insult to voters who have seen that movie more often than e.tv viewers have seen Anaconda.
Besides, the coalitions formed after the last local elections have simply demonstrated that even very small parties who claim to be a response to the weaknesses of the DA and the EFF are themselves riven with divisive internal politics, careerism, and no sincere interest in the voice of the 68-year-old woman Davids had met on his travels.
As Jack was asserting the case of hopeful opposition politics, ActionSA was using polygraph tests to determine which councillors should be punished for not following party instructions on how to vote in Tshwane, and in both Johannesburg and Tshwane, very small parties allowed themselves to be used as pawns by the EFF and the ANC in ongoing political warfare between the ANC, EFF and the DA in our metros.
There is no truth to the claim that businessmen setting up parties do so motivated by a deep commitment to responsive governance. The political pantomime on show at local level is decisive proof to the contrary. Sadly.
The culture that had set in isn't difficult to name. It is vicious greediness, and a deep level of dangerous egoism, that attract too many thieves and thugs.
The culture that had set in isn't difficult to name. It is vicious greediness, and a deep level of dangerous egoism, that attract too many thieves and thugs to the feeding troughs of the state.
Some of these people look and sound suspiciously everyday, and could confuse an unsuspecting voter to imagine they are honest servant leaders wanting to help change our communities for the better.
The crux of our political reality is that our political culture is not strong enough to weed out corrupt charlatans masquerading as leaders.
In fact, it wouldn't be unkind to say that in some of our political parties, thuggery and dangerous egoism are the default modes of leadership, such that the few ethically minded comrades get cliffed as soon as they dare speak truth to powerful incumbency sins.
If this were not the case, then the 68-year-old hitchhiking voter would know that she could vote regularly, and participate in our key institutions of democracy, secure in the knowledge that those she had voted for would listen to her between elections and not just on the eve of an election.
She would know that, even while it is OK to be a career politician with an ego, elected officials would know the difference between competitive careerist politics and viciously unresponsive governance.
Right now in South Africa, however, we have a critical shortage of political parties that are genuinely committed to servant leadership, responsive governance, and the opinions and feedback of a 68-year-old woman hitching a ride to a destination off the beaten track.
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