Business Day LIVE

SIPHO Seepe is a political analyst and Vishwas Satgar is a member of the Ronnie Kasrils ‘Vote No’ Campaign.

BUSINESS DAY TV: Veteran ANC heavyweight and former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils appears to have fired a warning shot at the ANC with the launch of the “Sidikiwe! Vukani! Vote No!” campaign. The campaign calls on disheartened ANC supporters to vote tactically for a minority party or spoil their votes if no party represents these interests.

Will this campaign make any difference? Vishwas Satgar, who is a senior lecturer at Wits University and a member of the Vukani campaign, and political analyst Sipho Seepe join us on News Leader to take this debate further.

Let’s perhaps start with you Vishwas, looking at what you’re putting on the table here … spell it out for us and what the objective is at the end of the day.

VISHWAS SATGAR: The first thing to keep in mind is that the democratic project in South Africa is young — it is in a process and the democratic project belongs to all of us as South Africans. And in that context it is bigger than any one political party and it’s in the interests of all of us as citizens to build a democratic culture and to think very carefully about how we use our vote, amongst one of many, if you like, levers of power.

The second important point that we are flagging is that there are deep concerns about the ANC’s dominance in our political system. Where we are sitting, we see a regression in our democracy, we see a rollback of democratic gains and I can catalogue various things.

I can speak to the fact that we are leaving behind 25-million African people in our country, most of them are in poverty, but yet we are called upon to vote for the ANC. In our view, it means voting for the Guptas, for example. It means voting for mine owners like Patrice Motsepe and so on, whereas you have one of the longest platinum mine strikes in this country right now. The workers are trying to strike at the heart of inequality in our country.

BDTV: The ANC, though, not your only option — so let’s bring you in here Sipho because there are alternatives.

SIPHO SEEPE: Actually this campaign undermines democracy. For one, as Vishwas says, we are a new and young democracy. One of the things that you do in a democracy is to educate people about what’s on the menu. We are now spoilt for choice. There are many parties that have actually come and parts of them are also concerned with the dominance of the ANC.

When there are elections, we are not called upon to vote for the ANC, we are called upon to vote for parties that will carry the interests of the majority and I am one person who thinks that the best way is to stand for something as opposed to stand against something.

If there is a group that wants to do us justice, it must actually educate people about what Agang provides, what COPE (Congress of the People) provides, what UDM (United Democratic Movement) provides, and all these others, EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) … and simply saying, looking at this, look at the best options so that when you do that you educate people about the issue of choice.

But when you go out there saying, yes we are opposed to the dominance of the ANC and you spoil a vote you are actually saying it will appear that there is no other party. I agree with the second part of their motion of saying, vote tactically, but I would think that the best way is to educate people about the choice that we make.

The second issue that they’re using is actually false … a notion of closing of space. The mere fact that you have the mushrooming of so many organisations and some of them formed by former members of the ANC simply means that the space is being expanded. So it’s a question of how you look at it … and I can tell you, I come from a background where Thabo Mbeki was the president, where there was the closing of space; where kids died when we called on government to provide medication that would have saved those kids, and people like Ronnie Kasrils were sitting in the government. And Cosatu put it very strongly that hundreds of thousands were being sacrificed … where was Ronnie Kasrils? We had the arms deal … where was Ronnie Kasrils?

BDTV: I’m sure we can go on and on. Vishwas, we had the ANC today saying that South Africans had paid the highest price for the right to vote. So how do you respond to Sipho’s assertion that … how can you tell people to spoil the vote when they are spoilt for choice out there?

VS: We agree that this right to vote is precious and it was borne out of struggles by millions of South Africans, but let me just say this, that in this conversation we cannot narrow a conception of democracy.

We have a constitutional democracy in South Africa and that means that we have access to various levers of power, as citizens. We have multi-party competition as one lever and the vote is crucial in that. We have rights from political to civil to socioeconomic rights and we need to claim those rights. We need to demand those rights, but we also have a space for participatory democracy and that’s one of the things we’re underlining with this intervention. We have been receiving the critique … why don’t you form a political party?

No, we want to demonstrate to South African citizens that there is another way of intervening in democratic and political life and you can do it from below and it can be important. The other point to make is that we are trying to service a debate. We are coming out of 20 years of democracy where you’ve seen blind allegiances ... you’ve seen, if you like, the reproducing of a particular kind of dominance in our political system. Now we don’t want to take big leaps. We are saying let’s service a conversation that does two things … that helps us think about the electoral moment and choices that brings us. In other words, if you spoil your ballot that’s counted in South Africa and it does signal something. So for example, this is a very little-known fact … more than 600,000 people spoilt their ballots in local government elections in 2011. There’s an average of about 1.3% that runs through all of our elections of about 200,000 people spoiling their ballots. If there is a spike in that, going into this election, it’s going to tell us something.

BDTV: It tells us something but doesn’t necessarily trigger changes, so to what extent do you really just want to issue a warning but not necessarily take the ruling party out of power?

VS: The merit and the power of debate and having democratic conversation is crucial in what we’re trying to achieve here. Now whether there are going to be material impacts, we’re all realists in this campaign, is another story. But, if we want to build a democratic culture in South Africa, we’ve got to have these debates. Now the responses we’ve elicited and have received are very interesting.

On the one hand you’ve had pure intolerance. We’ve been labelled treasonists, etcetera. On the other hand you’ve had an argument that says we’re destabilising the democracy. On another hand you’ve had views that say, we welcome this discussion. It is important for the South African debate … in that context what we’re registering in this conversation with the aid of the media, is that we can have differences in our young democracy but they don’t have to be antagonistic.

BDTV: Sipho, let’s bring you back into the conversation and on the discussion … do you think a spoilt ballot is an effective message to the ANC?

SS: I don’t think there’s an assumption that it will be effective, and there’s no way of measuring that ... but what it does is that if you do not participate in the process or if you do not want to influence it and you want to influence it this way, then you cannot make claims on a government that comes in because they can simply say that you’re the people who never wanted to participate and influence.

So I do think there’s an issue of responsibility where you’re simply saying, I want to influence and you should not influence at the level of only voting … But to simply jump just on the eve of elections, I find that to be irresponsible because what is most important is to educate people and to enter into these conversations about what democracy means. But for people who are frustrated by certain individuals or certain parties to simply spring out on the eve, that is for me … especially people who are educated and I do think that even members of the ANC and I agree with him, that the whole notion of allegiance is something that we must address.

But I do think the best way of addressing it is when key leaders begin to say, I hear what Agang says, I hear what those guys … and I see a possibility so that the notion of the monopoly of correctness and what is right is not OK in that one space.

BDTV: Sipho, the party won nearly two-thirds of the vote in the last elections in 2009 … is that out of the question this time around?

SS: I don’t think they will get it … there have been a number of mistakes, lapses of judgment and also they have not been able to consolidate the gains that they’ve made … and also what normally happens in a democracy is that as we move away from the day of freedom and democracy people … almost hunker for the past … they simply want to move on and you’ll see all liberation movements as time goes on, they lose track of the people on the ground, and the ANC is no different.

So I do think that the failures will happen and for me that is a natural progression that ultimately even empires do collapse and the ANC is in the state that shows that it needs to be jacked up and that’s why you have members of the ANC forming parties simply to say that they’re unhappy. But I don’t want to undermine their project … but I would rather have them educate people and say this is the lesser evil than this evil that you are looking at.

VS: Can I just come in very briefly … just to say that the national conversation that has been animated by this … it is a process of collective deliberation, discussion, learning and education and hence we welcome the role the media has played in this journey. It’s not over … we are going to the grassroots. We have the grassroots inside the campaign as well.

BDTV: I suppose we’ll only know on May 7 how it all turns out.