I n my Letter last week, I wrote about the then impending 1 March local government elections, the third since the advent of our democracy in 1994. Among other things, I said: "Decentralisation, resulting in the consolidation of our system of local government, must lead us to the achievement of the strategic outcome identified in this year's January 8th Statement - the exercise of People's Power through Democratic Local Government. Relying on the great confidence of the masses of our people in our movement, our immediate task in this context is to go all out to achieve a decisive ANC victory in the March 1st elections!"
As we go to press, the process of counting the votes cast, as well as auditing and publishing the results of these important elections has not been completed. However, we can say most definitely, that we have achieved the decisive ANC victory we urged all our members and supporters to work for!
Once more the masses of our people have confirmed their confidence in our movement as the leading representative and repository of their hopes and aspirations. For our movement and indeed for all democrats, the days ahead of us must and will be days of celebration.
There are many things that we must celebrate. We must celebrate the fact that we have further entrenched our position as the largest political formation in our country, freely chosen by our people as the leading party of government in all three spheres of government. We must celebrate the fact that the masses of our people continue to support the ANC perspective of progressive social transformation, and unreservedly acknowledge the positive changes we have brought about since 1994.
We must celebrate the fact that, once more, we have held free, fair and largely peaceful elections, whose results reflect the will of the people. We must celebrate the reality that the principal actors in our electoral process, including the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), the contending political parties and formations, civil society and the mass media, contributed severally and collectively to the further consolidation of democracy in our country.
This celebration will be particularly joyful because of the determined attempt that was made by some in our country to project a national mood of gloom and despair ahead of, during and immediately after the elections. These Jeremiah's threw everything they could at our people, striving to convince them that the elections would be something other than the celebration of democracy that they were.
These sought to convey the message that the elections would inevitably be a bitter manifestation of mass anger, frustration and despair, especially targeted against our movement, the ANC. Symptomatic of a perverse determination to communicate nothing but negative messages, one of our leading newspapers welcomed Election Day, 1 March, with the entirely false banner headline - "Poll On Knife-Edge", and the sub-heading, "Threats of violence, power cuts, flooding".
Determined to spread gloom, this newspaper began the front page article appearing under these headlines with the words: "A country racked by cross-border disputes, flooding, power-cuts and service delivery protests goes to the polls today for its third local government elections."
To ensure that its negative message was not lost on anybody, in the same article it said: "Talk Radio 702 received an e-mail which read: "...As you are fond of electricity cut-offs on the poor and oppressed in South Africa, so taste a bit of that which they taste! And let you businesses lose out, in an economy where the poor see no benefits."
In the days before the elections, others, including the international media, allowed themselves to be infected by the determination to communicate a highly negative picture of our country. For instance, on 24 February, less than a week before our elections, one of these published a story under the headline - "South Africa: Tired of waiting - frustration mounts over promised change".
The article told a haunting tale of gloom, as a result of which it said our movement "is believed to be facing its sternest test yet as unquestioning support gives way to a degree of criticism from the poor over the pace of change."
In an article published on 2 March, the day after our elections, another foreign news medium wrote: "The ANC, despite having triumphed in every election since Nelson Mandela led it to victory in 1994, has seen its latest campaign blighted by discontent at lack of basic services, unemployment, and corruption. Tackling the thorny issue of land reform may have been seen within the ANC as a timely way of showing its traditional supporters it is still fighting their corner."
It went on to quote a white farmer, one van Zyl, as saying that by challenging the principle of 'willing seller and willing buyer' with regard to the land question, "(the ANC) is trying to ensure votes by giving the impression it is going to take a stand against the uncooperative (white) farmers."
Reading and listening to much of what was written and said before, during and immediately after our local government elections, it would be difficult to escape the conclusion that the masses of our people had lost confidence in the ANC and were in open revolt against our movement.
As part of this, a determined attempt was made to convince all and sundry that the socio-economic condition of our people 12 years after our liberation was worse than it had been during the apartheid years, and that our democracy was unravelling because of violence, power failures and natural catastrophes, among other negative impulses.
All this was intended to communicate the message that our people, our country and our movement are walking backwards into a new Age of Darkness! It was said that all this would reflect in a tellingly poor electoral showing for the ANC during the elections.
The newspaper, "Cape Times", celebrated its 120th anniversary ten years ago in 1996. I was privileged to speak at a Cape Town Banquet on 3 April 1996, organised to celebrate this anniversary. On that occasion I said:
"In the Supplement on the "Cape Times" which the "Cape Times" carried a week ago, the distinguished editor of the paper, Moegsien Williams, writes that: 'A typical South African newsroom is an unhappy place, staffed by demotivated, mainly junior reporters and frustrated sub-editors who are expected to cover and produce newspapers able to reflect accurately an increasingly complex society.'
"Further on (Moegsien Williams) says: 'We want to redefine the news. We sense it can't be 'journalism as usual' in the new South Africa... In practical terms, redefining the news means getting closer to the readership by engagement, new contacts, new story ideas and a move away from stereotypes...While we will expose society's ills and wrongs, we will be its cheerleaders when things go right and there are successes. While we will be opposed to many things, we are able for the first time to be passionately and uncompromisingly in favour of some things, especially our new-born democracy.' "
However, with regard to the recent local government elections, many in our media, and some others flatteringly described as "analysts", wrote and spoke "passionately and uncompromisingly" to ensure that there were no "cheerleaders when things go right and there are successes". 'Demotivated' and 'frustrated' people communicated in a determined manner that seemed intended to mock all those 'in favour of our new-born democracy'.
This gave birth to the manufactured sense of unmitigated despair that was projected and fervently propagated specifically to create an atmosphere in which the population would be encouraged to reduce its support for our movement. In terms of this strategy, everybody had to be convinced that our movement had failed the people and that it constitutes a threat to the achievement of the goal of a better life for all!
The 2006 local government elections have now taken place. In the practice they have communicated the message that many of the negative pre-election predictions were nothing more than ill-intentioned wishes that were father to the thought that gave birth to such headlines as the one that said "Poll On Knife-Edge"!
At no point were the elections ever on a "knife-edge". They were never threatened by a scale of violence that would render them neither free nor fair. No power failures took place to disrupt the electoral process. Neither the persistent rain nor the resultant floods had a major impact on the people's determination to exercise their democratic right to vote.
There was no voter abstention, relative to the previous local government elections. Indeed the number of people who voted increased. Of great significance, whatever the concern about the 'pace of service delivery', this had no impact on popular support for the ANC!
Regularly during the election campaign we communicated a number of messages that have proved to be correct, as we knew they were. We said that more of our people had come to understand the importance of local government and would therefore participate in the elections.
We said that the masses of our people were optimistic about their future and understood that government in general and local government in particular would play an important role in achieving this outcome. We said this would reflect itself in significant voter participation.
We said that the masses of our people had direct experience of what our movement had done as a governing party to change their lives for the better. This would reflect itself in the electoral re-affirmation of the confidence of the people in our movement.
We expressed our confidence that the local government elections would be free and fair. In this regard we said that we were certain that the IEC and the state security organs would create the conditions for our people freely to express their will in all parts of our country.
All these predictions, born of an intimate understanding of our national reality, have come true. Almost completely, the elections took place with no violence, intimidation, attempted fraud and serious administrative weaknesses. All physical material obstacles to free and fair elections were removed on time, including those related to the weather and power supplies.
Our movement has emerged from the elections stronger than ever before, having increased its support within our system of local government. There are now much fewer "no-go areas" than ever before, especially in KwaZulu Natal.
More minority political formations have entered the political scene, beyond the major parties, especially in the Western Cape, thus strengthening the representative nature of our democracy. Simultaneously, the remaining "Bantustan" parties, a carry-over from the apartheid years, have continued to lose support.
Millions of our people heard, understood and accepted the message of hope contained in our Local Government Election Manifesto. In this regard we must thank the hundreds of thousands of ANC members and volunteers who took this message to the people and succeeded to encourage millions to vote.
We must also thank the masses of our people who continued to demonstrate both their commitment to the success of our democracy and their confidence in our movement as the leading national force in the continuing struggle to build a people-centred society that would provide a better life for all.
In our Manifesto we said: "The ANC is determined to make local government work better. We have a plan to achieve this...We will intervene to ensure that councils work better, and are accountable to the community...We will resolutely fight laziness, arrogance and corruption. The ANC is best placed to build partnerships between national and provincial governments and municipal councils, and thus make things happen faster, more effectively and in the interest of the people...We are committed to building a non-sexist South Africa. Half of the candidates standing for the ANC are women...
"All of us want better service in our schools, community clinics and government offices. We all want better opportunities to improve the lives of our families. Every community deserves decent sanitation, good roads, clean neighbourhoods and street lighting. Together, if we join in a People's Contract, we can achieve these goals, so that each one of us can experience a better life under the South African sky."
The masses of our people heard and welcomed these messages of hope and therefore voted for the ANC. The task ahead of us is to do everything in our power to honour the commitment we made to the people to implement our Plan to make local government work better for all our people. In this regard, the ANC will not disappoint the expectations of the people or in any way betray the confidence of these masses in our movement.
