Politics and the social movements

ABOUT FLOOR CROSSING, THE POLITICAL SYSTEM AND 
THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

1

Politicians had 15 days until 5 April to change parties
without losing their seats in parliament. Many have done
so. Some have even formed new parties. The people were
looking on as a few hundred parliamentarians and members of
provincial legislatures decided which parties would rule. 
These politicians all swear that they are great democrats.

But this floor crossing robbed the people of the democratic
right to decide who would rule the country and how. All who
took part in it – including the constitutional court
– were stealing a right people have been fighting for
with lots of valuable time, energy and even lives. These
robbers are not democrats. They are anti-democrats.

The people are seemingly ignoring this robbery. There are
no demonstrations or marches or strikes over this issue.
Nobody was even anxiously watching which parties would gain
and which lose. As if nothing is happening people were
continuing their struggles against poverty wages,
unemployment, the war on Iraq, evictions, service cut-offs,
sexism, racism, landlessness and inadequate welfare, health
care and education.  

This is not a mystery. Whichever of the parliamentary
parties gained or lost through floor crossing it was not
going to change anything important for the workers, the
unemployed, the homeless, the landless, the mass of the
oppressed. 

On the things that matter to the masses these parties are
so much the same that it really does not matter which one
governs. All of them support the current state system where
the state president and the judges of the constitutional
court rule with near absolute power over the people instead
of the people ruling over them. All of them support
capital. All of them support property rights over human
rights. All of them support Gear, although some may want to
change it a little. And as long as the state, capital and
Gear govern us poverty and oppression will continue.

2

The ANC was the big winner through floor crossing. They won
a two-thirds majority in national parliament and a majority
in those provincial legislatures not under their control.

They immediately announced that they would
change…NOTHING. They merely wanted some cabinet posts
for some deserving and desperate comrades in Kwazulu/Natal.
The whole exercise reminded us of some very ugly things
regarding politicians and our political system.

Professional politicians are rights robbers. No matter how
much they quarrel with each other, they share the fact of
life that their job can only exist if society is split into
ruling and ruled groups. Whatever else their intentions,
they all rule or want to rule a group of people whose right
to self-rule they want to take. 

As long as professional politicians exist and this social
division between decision makers and decision sufferers
continue, the mass of the people will not be able to
enforce their interests and overcome the many social crises
and problems bearing them down. Instances of rights robbery
such as this floor crossing will happen again and again.
As much as we despise the selfish opportunism of the
professional politicians we must say that our political
system is the fundamental problem. It bases itself on the
rulers/ruled division and takes the power and right to
govern away from the people. The people did not make this
system. It was made for them by the very minority who
wields power under it. 

These politicians, civil servants and judges claimed for
themselves the right to decide the political setup in South
Africa. They did it in close alliance with the governments
of the USA, Britain and the other leading capitalist powers
of the world. No wonder it turned out a setup that promotes
their power and priviledges. 

When they went to Kempton Park for Codesa and the
Multi-Party Negotiations Forum they did not go there as
mandated, elected and recallable delegates of the masses.
They elected themselves, they mandated themselves and they
made their recall as difficult as possible. 

When they agreed on the constitutional principles to which
every subsequent law of South Africa must conform, they did
not ask for the people’s opinion or approval. They
themselves came up with these principles and approved it
themselves. They only asked the people to vote once the
state system and its functioning were already decided
– by them.  

Is the kind of system we got then a surprise?

Those who designed the constitution are also its greatest
praise-singers. We are always told how lucky we are to live
in a land overflowing with democracy and freedom. But who
really has the power? Who controls the power organisation
called the state?

A minority wields power over the majority. Parliament (500
people) makes laws that govern the lives of the entire
society (40 million people). The 500 can and do make laws
that the 40 million do not approve or even know of. The
system gives power over the 40 million to the 400.

The 500 parliamentarians cannot make a law that the state
president (one person) does not approve. This state
president is the leader of the majority party in
parliament. He can sack any member of this majority who
wants to pass a law that offends him. And he will and does
find no shortage of politicians unwilling to disagree with
him for fear of losing their positions.

The state president controls the day to day exercise of
state power. Parliament can influence this even less than
law making. The ministers must answer to the president. The
executive (the president and the ministers) must answer to
parliament. The executive answers to people the majority of
whom they directly control. They answer very little if at
all.
The actions of the president, his departments and
parliament must carry the approval of the unelected judges
of the constitutional court (12 people). But the state
president and parliament appoint these judges and they will
not appoint people that make too much trouble for them. In
any case, should one of these judges undergo a change of
heart and become a raging revolutionary his judicial
findings will still be governed by the constitutional
principles fixed during the negotiations that led to the
1994 elections.  

Sure, there are limits to the power of the state,
president, parliament and the constitutional court. But
between them they very much exercise a dictatorship of
their own making. The people have rights under the
constitution. But between them these 513 overlords even
have the right to suspend the constitution. And if the
rights of the people depend on the approval of the 513 are
they really rights at all? 

Of course the people get to vote for parliament every 5
years. But the overlords have effective (legal and illegal)
ways to restrict the choice of candidates to supporters of
their system. Despite countless revolutionary crises and
movements no revolutionary movement have won power in a
capitalist democracy through elections. It is in fact
illegal in South Africa to change the system even if all
500 MPs and all 12 constitutional court judges belong to
your party. The self-appointed constitution designers made
sure of that. 

And finally, is this what freedom is about?

The right to vote for whom will oppress you?

The people need freedom and control over their own lives in
order to solve the many social problems facing them. Having
some say over who will wield power over them is not enough.
For the workers, the unemployed, the oppressed women and
children the necessary freedom is having no one wield power
over them.

3.

The oppressed masses cannot free themselves by forcing the
politicians and the system to act in a certain way. Nor can
we do so by placing other people into the same system. 
Are we aware of this? The workers? The unemployed? The
HIV/AIDS sufferers? The oppressed women and children? The
landless? Especially as we are organised into social
movements and struggle organisations?

If we do not make this awareness part of our practice we
will waste our energy trying to reform the politicians and
the state system into agents of our liberation. Is this
happening?

The people who lead the APFs, AECs, CCFs and other social
movements and struggle organisations for the most do not
support the present system. Most of them see themselves as
socialists and communists. These people are certainly aware
of the nature and limitations of the system. 

Have they made this awareness part of their practice?
How would people who have done so be acting?

They would start with the fact that fighting to force the
system and its supervisors to serve our interests cannot
free us. It can only maybe relieve our suffering somewhat
for a while. This does not mean that opponents of the
system would not take part in the fight to reform the
system. But unless our aim is to maybe relieve our
suffering for a while we would not restrict our struggles
to what the system could and should give us. 

We would fight very hard for what is due to us under the
system. We would fight for a better deal under it. And we
would combine this with an ongoing critique of the state
system, an ongoing clarification of the new system we need,
and an ongoing struggle to achieve the rights, powers and
social relations that would make up the new system. 
Are we doing these things in our social movements and
struggles? Are we doing them effectively and consistently?

Are we building our capacity to do so?