Induction, Part 9b
SA Government
Ward Committees, CPFs, SGBs, IDPs, LED
The Communist University
course on “Induction” is one of the most voluminous to date by the number of texts
used, and in this item today there are four, which come on top of the three
texts already used in this 9th part of the course.
In part 7 we have already
looked at the problematic question of the Communes and the Communal Councils of
Venezuela, asking, in effect, who exercises agency in such structures? Is it
the people who are co-opted into them? Or is it the government department “of the
People’s Power” that co-opts them, and funds them, that calls the shots?
We then looked at the
specifically South African mass democratic organisations, the ANC, the Leagues,
COSATU, SANCO, the YCL and others, and in the following Part 8 we introduced
the South African “Local State” and the mechanisms of voting for the state
democracy, organised by the Demarcations Board and by the Independent Electoral
Commission (the IEC).
In this part, so far, we have
looked at the Party (SACP) and the Liberation Movement (ANC) as components of
an alliance and of a broader local network, held together by the cadres of the
SACP and the ANC. Both SACP and ANC express such a vision, in the documents we
shared.
Minister of the People's Power
Now we return to the
problematic that was set out in the first item of Part 7, in connection with
the interview of Reinaldo Iturriza, Venezuelan Minister of the People's Power
for the Communes and Social Protection. But this time we look at it in terms of
South Africa, and South African politicians and intellectuals. We begin with
Professor Steven Friedman, who wrote, among other things in the attached
article (see attached), prior to the 2011 municipal elections, the following:
“... [Ward] committees
were established to enable ward councillors to discover what local voters want.
They have never done that... they remain part of the problem, because
committees chosen by politicians or small groups will never give grassroots
citizens a voice... there is only one way of asking everyone in a ward which
candidate they want ‐ it is called an election.” (Business Day, 4 May 2011)
Friedman was responding to a
radio discussion featuring the then Deputy Co‐operative Governance and Traditional
Affairs Minister Yunus Carrim, who, Friedman said, “made it clear he
understands the problem”, but who was nevertheless determined to persist with
the ward committees.
We, too, can see that Carrim
understands the problem, from the lecture that Carrim gave the following day (5
May 2011). It is the second attached document. It concludes with a section
headed ‘Towards a Dialectic of “Invited” and “Invented” Spaces’ (see page 19 of
the booklet). Yunus Carrim in this section is reacting to a publication of the
NGO-sponsored “GGLN”, which, in 135 pages of ostensible examination of the
“community voice”, treats “party-political” voting democracy as an alien
intrusion. “Vote” is just another word for “voice”, by the way, but the GGLN is
not concerned about that. For them, the second guess is always better.
The GGLN document sets up an
argument between “invitation” (i.e. co-option) and “invention” (i.e. agency)
that is an echo of John Turner’s question, “Who Decides?” Carrim suggests
being “dialectical”, not so as to resolve the contradiction, or go forward with
it, but only to evade it. He says that dialectical means complementary. It’s a
pity that our comrade would want to sacrifice such a profound concept for the
sake of making such a small gain, over so trivial an opposition.
Actually, Yunus Carrim, in
this moment at least, was more similar to the NGOs of the GGLN than Friedman was,
because Friedman is committed to democratic elections. Friedman is not
behaving, like the “GGLN” is, as if 1994 means nothing, and as if the vote is now
something contemptible, to be second-guessed by all possible means.
Yunus Carrim says he
understands that 1994 was a product of mass popular agency, but that for him it
could just as well mean that the “invited” space of co-option, such as ward
committees, was the fitting outcome of the liberation struggle. See if you can
follow his argument.
A week later, Yunus Carrim responded
to Friedman’s article, but only managed to dig himself deeper into the hole he
was digging before (see the third attached document).
Minister’s Power
Carrim kept pressing on after
that, and he did manage, as he indicated he would in this May, 2011 article (“The ANC’s 2012 Conference will provide
guidelines on improving ward committees and other forms of community
participation”) to get an endorsement of ward committees inserted into the
ANC resolution on Legislature and Governance passed at the 53rd ANC
National Conference in Mangaung, in December 2012 (fourth attachment).
There it remains. As
political and mass democratic organisations, locally, we have to live with this
incubus, this cuckoo in the nest, called the ward committee. It takes away our
cadres, and it creates a track of decision-making that is beyond the reach and
out of sight of the voter, and of the mass organisations.
What about Community-Police
Forums (CPFs), School Governing Bodies (SGBs), and Integrated Development Plans
(IDPs)? What about “Local Economic Development” (LED)? The Party should try to
know what all of these bodies are doing, and what the Ward Committee is doing.
What is dangerous to
political life is the removal of any part of it to a secluded area where it is
no longer part of the common polity. It is not the fact that these actors are
in the field that is wrong. But if they do their business in secret, over the
heads of the common people, that is wrong. That is one thing that makes people
very angry.
“Nothing about us without us”
is a good slogan, with South African characteristics.
The Party in the localities
must be an agent of transparency, including with its own activities. Trust the
people; “The masses can never be wrong,” said Oliver Reginald Tambo, meaning
that if we are standing outside the people, accusing them, then right as we may
think ourselves to be, but we are out of the game.
Thusong Service Centres are one-stop municipal service access points dotted
around a municipality or a metro. This model is how government can usefully be
present in the localities, with open access and practical rights available on
demand.
·
The above is to
introduce these original reading-texts:
