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Resist
urge to jump to conclusions on
protests Aubrey
Matshiqi,
Business Day, Lest we forget,
community after community around the country
came out in protest against poor — or lack of — service delivery for 20
months
before the 2006 local government elections. In some of these
communities there
was a lull during the election campaign period because some of the
protest leaders
either hoped to be on African National Congress (ANC) election lists,
or else
had already succeeded in their quest to be on them. Many of these
community leaders understood that developing a
leadership profile would help them realise the dream of becoming part
of the
local leadership structures of the ANC. And through this access to
political
power, they would then be able to achieve other ends, especially those
related
to enhancing their own economic positions. If such ambitions
were not harboured by others too, the
competition would be less complex for the national leadership of the
ANC to
manage. However, ambitions to win local political and economic
influence,
particularly in provinces where government employment and tenders are
the main
instruments of middle class formation, do not provide a full
explanation for
the protests. Put differently, individual and community discontent are
scavengers whose carrion is a varied diet of social, economic and
political
factors. Because of this, the reasons behind the protests are not
reducible to
a single explanation. The fact that we do
most of our analysis as outsiders, with
only an intellectual relationship to the poverty these communities
experience ,
adds to the partiality of the pictures we paint. Sometimes we treat
these
communities like lab rats and impose our pet theories on the
circumstances that
produce political instability such as we have seen in the past few
weeks. I am
not suggesting that none of our explanations is valid, but cautioning
against
being too eager to embrace the most accessible of insights or those
that ignore
the fact that some factors are unique to specific communities . As I have argued in
the past, there are three ways in which
the delivery record of the ANC should be assessed. First we must
acknowledge
what has been achieved since the advent of democracy in 1994. Second,
we must
recognise that objective factors in the global and domestic domains
still
militate against optimum levels of delivery. And third, we must not
ignore that
deficits in the scope, pace and quality of delivery have emerged since
1994. But what we need to
acknowledge more is the reality of the
growing tension between the emphasis the ruling party places on what
has been
achieved by the post-apartheid government, and the emphasis
marginalised
communities are beginning to place on the deficits. When the ANC talks
about
“continuity and change”, we must remember that conditions of
underdevelopment
continue to plague poor communities. In addition, changes in the
leadership of
the ANC do not change the fact that it is the same ruling party that
has been
failing poor communities for the past 15 years. Thus it does not help
to reduce
the service delivery protests to the Zuma factor. However, this does
not
absolve President Jacob Zuma of the responsibility of ensuring that the
current
ANC administration delivers. While it is true
that some invoke lack of leadership to
escape personal responsibility, it is inconceivable that Zuma fought a
leadership battle that almost destroyed institutional certainty in this
country
only to seek refuge in the idea of “collective leadership” when the
going gets
tough. Also, it may be the
case that factors such as the global
economic meltdown, xenophobia, crime and poverty are the drivers of
some of the
service delivery protests, but it also true that the snouts in the
post-apartheid trough is one of the problems. But more problems are
coming.
What the period leading to the 2011 local government elections will
probably
show is the extent to which the rebellion against former president
Thabo Mbeki
is robbing the current leadership of the ANC of the capacity to arrest
local-level patterns of elite capture. Ultimately, the affected
communities
must play the leading role in customising national priorities for local
conditions, and be policy initiators in determining the content of
developmental programmes.
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