The General Elections are less than six weeks away. The election campaign has picked up some steam. So great is the interest in this process that as many as 21 parties have registered with the IEC for the national elections. For the provincial elections the numbers range from 12 for the North West, the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga, to 19 for the Western Cape.
New names never heard of before will appear on our ballot papers. These include 'The Employment Movement of South Africa', 'The Organisation Party', the 'Pro-Death Penalty Party', 'Royal Loyal Progress', and 'The Green Party of South Africa'. 'Keep it Straight and Simple' or KISS, has reappeared, giving a lie to the belief that the people had kissed this party goodbye, some time ago. All this suggests that we are set for interesting times as these new creations challenge the better known political formations, for the votes of the electorate.
Of course, these are also times when old habits reaffirm their abiding attractiveness to some of our compatriots. One of these old habits is the use of fear to terrify the voters against supporting the ANC, to persuade them to vote for our opponents. Naturally, these opponents present themselves as nothing short of saviours without whom our country faces a bleak future.
Another of these old habits is to tell all manner of stories to convince the electorate that the ANC is divided, that our Tripartite Alliance is breaking apart, that large sections of our population have had enough of ANC government, and that many now know that to elect the ANC to govern is to condemn our country to the mother of all disasters.
Perhaps the most fashionable fear that is being peddled this time round is a fictional threat of a one- party state. In this context, some are marketing themselves as the best choice in the political supermarket, on the basis that a vote for them, and therefore a vote against the ANC, is a vote against a one-party state, and therefore a vote for democracy.
The argument goes beyond this. The charge is made that, in any case, the ANC is anti-democratic and wants to establish a one-party dictatorship. To substantiate this allegation, various stories are manufactured to frighten the electorate.
A recent one was that the ANC intends to change the Constitution to enable the President, and presumably the Premiers, to hold office for a third term, contrary to the two terms prescribed in our Constitution. So desperate are those who resort to this kind of falsification that they did not hesitate to misuse Nelson Mandela's name to lend credibility to their claims.
It did not matter to them that Madiba had said that he categorically told those who raised this question that there was no such decision and there would be no such decision by the ANC to change the Constitution. In reality, the truth does not matter to these desperate souls, except to the extent that it serves as an obstacle to the achievement of their goals.
The fear-factor has long been a feature of white politics in our country. For long periods, this section of our population has been subjected to the unimaginable terrors of "die swart gevaar" and "die rooi gevaar", the "black" and "red" dangers. At all times, they were told to choose parties that would protect them from these dangers.
The danger of an imaginary one-party state that is now being used to frighten our electorate is nothing but a variation on the same theme. The "gevaar" is cloaked in different words. It remains the same "gevaar" nevertheless.
Interestingly, the use of fear is totally alien to the liberation movement and to liberation politics. Freedom from fear is a necessary part of the range of objectives of those who fight for freedom. Rather than cultivate pessimism and fright among the people, genuine fighters for liberation always work to inspire hope among the people and confidence in a better future.
Historically, it may be that those accustomed to live in a world of fear have always found it difficult to believe that those they defined as a threat could ever see them as part of a new world of hope, enjoying freedom from fear. This is underlined by the circumstance that those defined as a threat would have been oppressed and controlled to protect the dominant from what they saw as an impending danger.
Thus, even in changed circumstances, such as ours, when time and practice have proved that the phobias of the past were mere phobias, those used to frightening themselves or being frightened by others, would not find it too difficult to revert to the accustomed world of fear of the future.
Fortunately, many of our people have outgrown these phobias. They have become more immune to the phantom terrors spread by the scaremongers desperate to win votes at any cost. The forthcoming democratic elections will demonstrate that these scaremongers are out of step with our country's evolution away from its apartheid past.
The latest fear of a one-party state is in reality fear of democracy. What is being proposed is that democracy is in danger of turning into its opposite. The assertion is made that out of democratic practice, dictatorship will be born. From this, the argument is advanced that the acid test of a democratic system is a strong opposition.
The proposition is made that the 2004 elections must produce such a strong opposition, to avert the danger of the subversion and destruction of democracy. The elections would therefore be judged as a successful democratic process only to the extent that they give an opportunity to the opposition to "cut the ANC to size".
Our Constitution says that one of its purposes is to "lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law".
To achieve this objective, it states that one of the values of our democratic state is and must be "universal adult suffrage, a national common voters roll, regular elections and a multi-party system of democratic government, to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness".
Further to emphasise the importance of the principle and practice of the exercise of "the will of the people", and a multi-party democracy, the Constitution specifies that our electoral system should result "in general, in proportional representation".
The implementation of these provisions, directed at as accurate a representation of the will of the people as possible, resulted in our current parliament having some parties represented only by one member of parliament. Whatever else anyone of us might have thought of this outcome, nobody could doubt the fact that it represented the will of the people, including the smallest political minority among these masses.
The Constitutional provisions we have quoted constitute the very core and heart of our democratic system. The defining feature of democracy is the establishment and maintenance of a system of government based on the will of the people, with the people enjoying and exercising the right freely to express this will at regular intervals.
And this is what those in our country who argue that the defining feature of democracy is the existence of a strong opposition seek to question. They would prefer that in our specific circumstances, a way could be found or something would happen, so to manage the exercise of the will of the people that it would enable them to play a role in our body politic as a strong opposition.
Because they cannot decree that the people will exercise their will in a manner that produces this result, they manufacture new democratic rules intended to bind the party mandated by the people to govern to do this in consultation with the Opposition. And yet the only privilege of the Opposition recognised by the Constitution is that "the rules and orders of the National Assembly must provide for.the recognition of the leader of the largest opposition party in the Assembly as the Leader of the Opposition".
With regard to the forthcoming elections, all political parties and formations, as well as our people as a whole, have a collective responsibility to create the necessary conditions to ensure the free expression of the will of the people, regardless of what will result from this free expression of the will of the people.
It may be that such free expression of the will of the people will result in the ANC being elected by the people as by far the strongest political formation in the country. This cannot serve as justification for an argument that the result of this free expression of the will of the people is at the same time a threat to democracy.
Those who advance this argument must be exposed for what they are, people who mouth the principles of democracy but fear the very democracy they pretend to espouse. The truth must be told openly that these are people who are convinced that the free expression of the will of the people, even in an electoral system based on proportional representation, is inimical to their interests.
To hide this reality, they create all manner of scarecrows intended to terrify the people about the prospect of a decisive ANC victory. They denounce the exercise of power by the ANC, mandated by the will of the people, as something they call "majoritarianism".
Thus does the will of the people get represented as a threat to democracy, a threat to the very freedom that enables the people freely to express their will. Undoubtedly, once again, the people will decisively defeat the attempt to suggest that by voting for the ANC, they are foolishly expressing their will in a manner that will result in them losing the freedom for which they fought a long and bitter struggle, led by the ANC.
In the event that the people refuse to be frightened by imaginary dangers, the scaremongers would still rely on other fabrications intended to convince the people that the ANC is set to slump into a deep crisis. The aim in this regard is to convince as many people as possible that there is no point in boarding or staying on a sinking ship.
Recently, some in our country discovered an absurd and non-existent ANC plan to appoint three Deputy Presidents after the April elections. The assertion was boldly made that this is necessitated by projected future "political infighting" in the ANC.
And then to add to the supposed woes of the ANC, the bold assertion has been made that "at least 5,5 million trade union members and non-subscribing supporters are willing to support the formation of a workers' party to challenge the ANC, an independent survey says". According to this scenario, we must expect that the ANC will lose the support of members of COSATU and other trade union federations, plunging us into deep crisis. Of course, this will not happen.
Earlier the story had been broadcast that "corporate South Africa believes a second term in office for President Thabo Mbeki will not result in better living standards, according to a new poll - a telling indictment of government's failure to reduce unemployment and accelerate economic growth".
However the organisers of the "new poll" spoke out against these fabrications. They said "we cannot agree with the conclusion by the author that a belief that living standards would remain the same is a 'telling indictment of government's failure'.We therefore record our view that the provocative title of the article and some of the conclusions reached are unjustified and not an accurate report of the views of the (surveyed) audience mentioned above, let alone those of corporate South Africa."
Another commentator, keen to advance the cause of the opposition parties, made bold to say that the ANC "has missed all the time frames for delivery established in the reconstruction and development programme", whatever this means in the context of what is actually said in the RDP and our experience in implementing it.
Thus in one fell swoop, the ANC, presumably already in negative territory because of its failure to meet its commitments with regard to the RDP "time frames", will be torn apart by intense internal conflicts, abandoned by the workers and spurned by business. Who would blame our people if indeed they abandon such a sinking ship!
The reality however is that this will not happen. The scarecrows will not frighten the people. Neither will these masses allow themselves to be led astray by the fabrications of those whose interests dictate that they try everything they can to defeat the ANC, with no holds barred.
The election campaign has started in earnest. We must work among the people to convince them to renew the mandate of the ANC to lead our country as we implement the People's Contract to Create Jobs and Fight Poverty.
In doing this work we must focus on what we have said in our Election Manifesto and not be diverted either by the antics that some of our opponents use to draw attention to themselves, or the fabrications they concoct to win votes.
What we have to do is quite simple and straightforward. We must inform the people what we intend to do, working with them in a people's contract, further to accelerate the advance towards the achievement of the goal of a better life for all. This includes attending to the urgent tasks of job creation and fighting poverty.
We must continue to draw the attention of the people to the progress we have made in the last 10 years to change their lives for the better, bearing in mind that these masses are themselves acutely aware and appreciative of what has been achieved.
As the premier party of democracy in our country, we must continue to work with all our people and our law enforcement authorities to ensure that we hold peaceful, free and fair elections. We have an obligation to do everything we can so that these elections live up to the constitutional requirement that they must truly reflect the will of the people.
Further to prepare for the accelerated reconstruction and development of our country that must characterise our Second Decade of Liberation, and the new victories we must achieve in building a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, united and prosperous country, we must emphasise the need for all of us to join in a people's contract for the building of a people-centred society.
We will leave the scaremongers and the tellers of false stories to define themselves as actors that have excluded themselves from this people's contract, destined to be the permanent professional Opposition. Two weeks after the elections, we will all convene in Pretoria and in our Provinces, brought together by the joyful celebration of our First Decade of Democracy, to confirm our common commitment to this people's contract.
The April Elections, the last of this decade, must stand out as an unequivocal confirmation of the vitality of our democracy and our determination to ensure that the people continue freely to express their will. At the same time, we must work with the people to ensure that the outcome of these elections confirms the place of the ANC in our country as the tried and tested representative of the best interests of all our people.
