Siyabonga Hadebe
Elections are not about party agents, presiding officers or the people (citizens) but the system itself.
The big system maintains itself; voting is just another sideshow to legitimise it in the eyes of the people it purports to serve. The narrative is that next year’s elections must be about removing the ANC to see change. No one has asked: What change exactly?
Voting is nonsensical and should not be allowed to exist in the ordinary world because it holds no real meaning besides foiling the “will of the people” it claims to express. People themselves do not even realise how much of their free will and rights they give away in the name of democracy.
In South Africa, the focus is on democracy and voting rather than on reversing the continuities of apartheid and colonialism that have kept the black majority at the bottom without land, food, freedoms and rights, security and access to economic opportunities. The playing field has not been equalised, yet the talk about democracy, rights to property and everything else. This line of thinking pretends that apartheid never existed or that its impact is no longer visible.
All the time, we are constantly focused on low-level, unimportant issues in our understanding of what democracy is and what it is not. Democracy is often described as a “government by the people, for the people”. But things become rather interesting when the people get placed at the bottom of the pile when resources are shared or distributed. This goes on to show that political systems only exist to serve themselves and their owners rather than the people.
The philosophical foundation of a political system has nothing to do with serving the people, who carry many names in neo-liberal societies: voters, citizens, taxpayers, consumers and so on. The system has much bigger aims that are above the knowledge of those who participate in the voting process in whatever form.
Maybe funders know better than Sipho or Dikeledi in the streets, who is being asked “to have their voice heard” through elections.
In his base-superstructure argument, German philosopher Karl Marx alluded that society is divided into two clearly identifiable strata. The first and crucial level is made up of those who own the means of production and are custodians of the political system. The second level consists of social institutions: legal, political and cultural, as well as ideologies and forms of consciousness such as law, religion and politics.
It is therefore important to simplify political theory for many people to understand how this works in real life. Practically, the base (capital) shapes the superstructure (our everyday life – beliefs and perceptions) in terms of how society should think and behave. On its part, the superstructure is there to maintain and legitimise the base and once there is a misalignment, problems would arise.
Again, in practice, the whole arrangement means that the nature of politics or economic policies that are made available to us to partake in are not there for the sweetness of it. They are there to serve a specific purpose, that is, to advance the interests of those in the base (primarily owners of capital and oligarchs).
Elections are not about transforming the base but to protect it.
Noises about lack of service delivery, though necessary, are a mere sideshow: rich people in Steyn City or uMhlanga have separate systems that cater to their exclusive needs, which are different to those found in Ndwedwe or Olievenhoutbosch.
To put everything in its rightful context, large companies generally complain about everything under the sun and pay workers peanuts. But when it comes to politics (which is not their primary business), they go out of their way to fund political parties and individuals and dictate what policies should be adopted. Controversial corporate political spending in the US is estimated to be running into billions of dollars. But the information is heavily vaulted in South Africa.
Nonetheless, MarketWatch explains that this situation is more like the fairy tale about a wolf in sheep’s clothing guarding the hen house. This simply means that the much-vaunted democracy is a tool for maintaining the asymmetrical power relations rather than to create advantages for all and sundry.
Many people complain that the presence of large sums in politics is an anti-democracy ploy which unnecessarily disrupts or undermines democracy “by tilting the power to influence policy in favour of those with unlimited financial resources”. That is true, especially in neo-liberal societies like South Africa that thrive on inequalities and exploitation.
All over the world, elections are a hype of activity but no one really knows why there is excitement, and sometimes compulsion. In this regard, ordinary people are required to vote with the belief that they are electing a government, political parties and/or individuals of their “choice”. In places like Australia and Belgium, voting is mandatory and failure to vote attracts penalties.
The truth is that those who own capital have a louder voice than the herd with a stupid vote.
As a matter of fact, a vote can be manipulated or discarded if it contradicts and threatens the interests of the base. It is a greatest fallacy for elections to be “free and fair”. In 2000, for example, Austria paid a heavy price for electing Jörg Haider’s far-right Freedom party. As a result, states in Europe and beyond announced punitive measures as a way of telling Austrians that their exercise of choice was not just wrong but also bad. The people’s choice was disregarded and Haider was forced to step down.
In recent years, elections in places like Kenya, Zimbabwe, the US, the UK (Brexit) and Greece also demonstrated how voting is generally bad for the people. Greece, for example, wanted to sever ties with the EU but a heavy hand was deployed to keep Athens in line. The election of Donald Trump as the US president too in 2016 attracted more opposition than applause.
In all the incidences, the famed democracy was portrayed as if it was cornered and breathing under endless punches of a heavyweight boxer. This is where democracy and voting become a useless exercise that if people were to know what is at play, they would reject elections with all the contempt they deserve.
Elections have nothing to do with transparency or fairness. They are a tool to legitimise a system that, in all likelihood, doesn’t work in the interests of those who vote.
Elections also take place in conflict-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Venezuela, South Africa and Afghanistan, as well as in Haiti, Togo and Zimbabwe. The question is: For what really?
In the case of South Africa, there have been exactly five elections and so many people have voted in all of them. When they started voting, they were poor. To this day, they are poor. Tomorrow does not promise that they are likely to escape poverty any time soon. In comparison, Stellenbosch oligarchs who own Capitec Bank and Naspers, have multiplied their wealth threefold in the past 26 years in a political system that favours them.
Capitalists have never had it so good in an economy that has never showed any care for its people. The likes of Johann Rupert know and understand the power they hold over the South African society: nobody dares touch them for who they are and what they are capable of doing. They run the show with their seemingly endless rand. Former president Jacob Zuma told the Zondo Commission that billionaire Rupert had reportedly “threatened to collapse the country’s economy ”if he fired the then-finance minister Pravin Gordhan.
The untouchables decide what is good or bad for South Africa, not the vote which is worth as much as the useless cross that appears on a cheap ballot paper. The silence concerning big banks that are alleged to have manipulated the currency is telling.
Furthermore, the Oppenheimer family, which has always controlled the South African society since the early days of white dominance, has a private Fireblade terminal at OR Tambo Airport. This is just but one illustration to show that the Base does not need a vote to be a leader in society.
Not even politicians have the kind of power that the monied class in South African society wield. Who votes for them? Do they care about democracy or not? Probably not, for as long as their interests are not disturbed. To hedge the possible losses, South Africa is heavily capitalised and no longer reliant on resources as a sole source of wealth. Capital flights and manipulation of the currency are among the strategies that the powerful big capital use to weaken states other than war.
People often talk about South Africa becoming the next Zimbabwe; it can only happen if those in the Base want it to happen. But, in all likelihood, that cannot happen if they feel their interests are well cushioned.
The reality is that things like land reform and nationalisation will never happen in our lifetime due to obvious reasons. The EFF and ANC know this.
South Africa was, and continues to be, a settler-colony supreme, ahead of Zimbabwe and Kenya, so it cannot be treated like other extractive colonies – its roots stretch to Europe, the US and further afield.
As previously stated, it sometimes happens that the Base and Superstructure get misaligned. Incidences like Brexit, Trump, Haider and Zuma must be avoided at all costs. On the other hand, instances of revolutions in places like Cuba (1959) and Iran (1979) could be interpreted as a forceful way of reshaping the Base in order to achieve different societal outcomes.
Calls for land expropriation without compensation and the nationalisation of the central bank also seek to restructure the Base.
All that cannot happen through elections and voting that exist under the big eye of Capital, which easily launches its defence force in politicians and others to cushion its ill-gotten gains. Lesetja Kganyago exclaimed: “Barbarians at the gate of the SARB!”
The Base has power to exert its influence to correct any unwanted situation. In the case of Cuba and Iran, economic sanctions are a potent tool to restore the power of the original Base. Closer to home, the happenings at Nasrec in 2017 also proved how far the Base was willing to go in order to avert the repeat of Polokwane more than a decade ago.
Few individuals have accumulated so much wealth while using their tag as “representatives of the people” while the people they claim to represent swim in a cesspool of extreme poverty. Not only that, but they also come back again and again to ask the same people to vote for them because they know what is right for the masses. The elections do not bring political goods but only despair and desperation.
Voting destroys the revolutionary spirit in humans since they bequeath their will and rights to a dark hole that does not care a thing about them and their aspirations. This, unfortunately, happens even in the so-called advanced democracies as proof that political systems exist only to serve themselves and their creators in the Base.
Assuming that Marx base-superstructure model is correct, then the question that remains unanswered is: What are people voting for and why?
Hadebe is an independent commentator on socio-economic, political and global matters.
The Star