TESSA DOOMS | A failed government a reminder of need to restore real people's power

There are ongoing debates about whether SA is a failed state. Some argue that SA is at risk of failing but still has hope of diverting calamity, while other more pessimistic views are that we have already failed at project SA but are yet to come to terms with it.

As more basic aspects like access to water, electricity, food and safety become a crisis, I argue that we may not be a failed state yet, but we certainly are experiencing the impact of a failed government. When a government cannot guarantee the basic rights of the majority of its citizens, and the elite minority buy their way out of any reliance on the state, the state has failed.

The problem with government and public institutions failing is that it affects our everyday lives in very personal ways. When parents sit in darkness trying to keep their children safe during load shedding, it is personal. It is personal when your minimum wage job can hardly get you to work, let alone adequately serve in feeding yourself or your family.

Politics is not only about the fanfare of grand speeches under bright lights. It’s not limited to factional battles and corruption scandals. When politics is broken, governance fails and society suffers real and direct consequences. In my work at the Rivonia Circle, I am often reminded that too many people in SA and around the world think of politics as being far removed from their lives.

Whether urban or rural, across class and race differences, when people in local communities describe politics they talk about campaigning, false promises, the character of politicians, corruption, greed and rallies. Politics is presumed to be for “politicians”, who are the stars of what feels like the longest reality show we watch through our fingers, too scared to look as the farce of political spectacle unfolds.

Even our measure of what makes a good politician is more about the bravado in their voices and the level of shine on their suits. Factors that have no bearing on whether they understand our daily struggles or have an interest in solving problems beyond their own.

In the 1960s and 1970s, as the second wave of feminism was sweeping across countries, feminist activists began popularising the idea that the personal lives and daily struggles of women in patriarchal societies could not be seen as separate from the broader need for changing political systems.

In SA today, it is incumbent on us to make the issues we care about, the daily struggles of joblessness, crime, water, sanitation and electricity the real political agenda. While it is tempting to personalise these issues, we must remember that in a country with 33% unemployment, joblessness is not simply a personal issue, it is political. It is a product of decisions that are being made by people with economic power and those with state power.

For many in SA who are not involved in party politics, the idea of having political power seems fantastical. This is partly because we narrowly define politics as a career for an elite few, and partly because we have been so disempowered by our systems of politics and governance that we dare not imagine that when we say Amanda ngawethu, we are talking about the power that we, the people, have to create a better society, daily.

This sense of disempowerment and helpless is exactly what those who walk the corridors of power rely on to maintain the status quo.

As bell hooks reminds us, “cultures of domination attack self-esteem, replacing it with a notion that we derive our sense of being from dominion over another”.

Reclaiming people’s power as a core part of our politics is a reminder that when the Freedom Charter said “the people shall govern”, it did not limit that governance to those in parliament and the Union Buildings – it was a call to daily co-governance in our families, communities and workplaces, where we make the personal political and demand that the political always be about creating a SA we all deserve.