TESSA DOOMS | Many losing faith in democratic promise of a better South Africa

In post-apartheid SA, it has become commonplace for people to assert that in 1994 we attained political freedom but what remains is to get economic freedom in our lifetime.

Political freedom, particularly the right to vote, was never going to be a sufficient form of structural change in a society burdened with the oppression of the majority of people through hundreds of years of colonial rule and apartheid.

While the mantra to get economic freedom has become synonymous with the Economic Freedom Fighters, it was the ANC who in the early 2000s coined the idea of a second, economic transition as the next frontier of the struggle. I too used to accept it as true that political freedom is won, and economic freedom is what is outstanding.

That as Lenin famously said: “No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.”

Or more crudely put, people cannot eat the vote. In a context of high unemployment, growing inequality and poverty, it is easy to believe that the greatest mission for this generation is economic freedom alone, but I have slowly begun to reflect critically on this idea.

What if our problems are more fundamental and bigger than needing to pursue economic freedom? What if the political freedom attained in 1994 was insufficient and even the little that was gained is now eroded? What if the proposed fight for economic freedom is being set up on the foundations of a broken, if not mythical, democracy that is not delivering on any substantive freedoms for the majority of people in SA?

People are losing faith in the democratic promise, not only because many are hungry, but because for millions of people there are no frontiers of freedom they can point to. Rich or poor, we do not feel safe in our homes. We have little guarantees that basic services will be available daily.

What is the point of political freedom when even the most basic political right, the vote, has been reduced to an instrument that takes power from the people rather than gives it to us?

Having a government that fails to deliver services that secure water, sanitation, safety, healthcare, good infrastructure and our basic human rights, makes the fight for economic freedom moot. In fact, I argue that part of what fuels our zest for economic freedom is that we too want to be counted among people with enough money to buy their way out of the failings of the state into private services.

Bad political outcomes enable bad economic outcomes. So desperate are South Africans fighting for a decent basic life that we have replaced the political fight for freedom with an economic fight for the money to buy access to basic services. We have tacitly accepted that democracy and government are not delivering. That the money we pour into the constitutionally empowered state and its democratically elected leaders is a bottomless pit. It will not deliver for the majority, and we must thus turn to a fight for capital to be in our own hands to build our lives for ourselves.

What is worse is that we have watered down the economic struggle to jobs. To mere inclusions into systems of economic oppression rather than a fight to build new economies and systems. We, the people of SA have given up on the state. We have given up on political power because it is being squandered by those who have it. This is dangerous. If we abandon political power, we set back the fight for true radical and substantive economic freedom significantly.

You cannot win a systemic fight against a hegemonic system without amassing political power.

The apartheid government knew this better than most. What drove Afrikaner nationalist to take power in 1948 was not their underlying racism alone. They were motivated to change the economic plight of their people, to solve the “poor urban white” problem.

They took political power and in 20 years used it to make and change hundreds of laws to not only oppress the black majority but to fundamentally entrench an insidious for of racial capital that we still live with today. They knew, even in the negotiations toward democracy, that political power was a key tool for economic change.

So too, we, a new generation of South Africa people concerned about our economic future must not minimise the impact of bad politics on the fight for economic freedom. In a time of multiple and growing crises it is not a question of political or economic freedom, it is necessarily both.