Power, Democracy, and Politics in South Africa

Many people have criticized America's Republican Party for abuses of power and a refusal to work sincerely with Democrats. Curiously, something similar has been occurring in South Africa where the African National Congress has behaving in a dictatorial manner.

The Economist reports:

[There is a] growing suspicion that the ANC is not truly committed to a pluralistic, liberal democracy. It increasingly gives the impression that opposition is tantamount to undermining the government's efforts to build a just society—and that people who do not accommodate themselves to the reality of ANC power should somehow be penalised.

[C]onsequently, is the growing sense of racial polarisation in politics that now threatens to seep into other walks of life. In contrast to his predecessor, Nelson Mandela, who softened the hearts of the harshest Afrikaner racist with his magnanimity and humility, Mr Mbeki has shaken the confidence of many whites with his bitter, racially loaded attacks on those he deems to be critical of him or his government. In particular, his attacks on the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA)—now backed by some three-quarters of South Africa's whites and maybe half of its coloureds—and on its white leader, Tony Leon, have been virulent. In the minds of many whites, this virulence departs from the norms of civility in a liberal democracy.

The similarities between the behavior of the ANC and America's Republican Party are eerie. In First Democracy, Paul Woodruff writes about civil war in Athens in order to get rid of the Thirty Tyrants. After the war, one orator said about the victors "They shared their freedom with those who had wanted to be slaves," indicating that political freedoms were distributed equally, even to former enemies, in order to ensure the existence of harmony. Without political harmony, democracy cannot survive. It doesn't sound like Mbeki believes in political harmony.

[T]he party's deepest instincts still derive from its many years as a liberation movement in exile. “Unity is all,” says a former activist. The ANC's party discipline is still often ferociously enforced, as it was during those long years of conspiratorial politics, when Leninist centralism prevailed and the Soviet Union was the movement's chief ally.

With its recent strong popular endorsement at the polls, the ANC, which looks set to hold power for the foreseeable future, is gradually conflating, in its collective mind, the interests of party and state. As elsewhere in Africa in the past, there is little concept of a loyal opposition. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said, “a culture of sycophancy” has grown up around the president, who scolded the prelate in vitriolic terms for his temerity in speaking out.

Mr Netshitenzhe, writing in an ANC journal during the party's first term in office, declared that “the transformation of the state entails, first and foremost, extending the power of the National Liberation Movement over all the levers of power: the army, the police, the bureaucracy, intelligence structures, the judiciary, parastatals, and agencies such as regulatory bodies, the public broadcaster, the central bank, and so on.”

The Economist explains that whenever the ANC is criticized, they respond with charges of racism. In America, whenever the Republican Party is criticized, the response is often a charge of religious bigotry. There appears to be little tolerance for the existence of a "loyal opposition" when it comes to the Christian Right — they possess Absolute Truth from which they can be no deviation.

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