Political violence threatens economy and democracy

AS A society, we must all resist the temptation to accept that the violent protests and political killings that seem to occur during local election years is the new normal.

The time has come to take responsibility, show leadership and engage through all our stakeholder structures to understand the underlying causes and find collective and sustainable solutions. Intervention is urgent to ensure this horrible practice does not entrench itself as a culture that undermines our nascent democracy. What we have is a crisis and it demands extraordinary leadership and political will, more than ever before.

Knowledge and experience gained from how organisational systems function may help us understand the problems and reveal the real causes.

Organisations tend to achieve their objective successes when their energies and efforts coalesce around a principle called common purpose.

The task of defining the common purpose has been carefully and elegantly articulated in Chapter 7, section 152 of the Constitution and the enabling legislation that forms the foundation of local government structures and governance architecture.

In summary, the legislative package aims to introduce two paradigms and objectives. First, the implementation of developmental municipalities that are designed to provide social services efficiently. Second, to ensure that communities participate effectively in the decision-making processes that affect their lives.

This was not going to be an easy task given the dispensation before 1994. Much success has been achieved through the cycles of transformation interventions that have been pursued up to now.

However, the protests that have organically erupted during the years of local elections point to a deeper malaise. The reports by the auditor-general on municipalities have identified many fault lines and point to the need for serious introspection.

Research aimed at measuring community perceptions and the real causes of the violent protests is thin, but the academic work that has been done identifies as the main causes a lack of effective and democratic participation and a weak or nonexistent framework for accountability. This clearly undermines the intent of the common purpose as stipulated in Chapter 7 of the Constitution.

Perceived corruption, sudden enrichment and conspicuous consumption by municipal and elected officials take a close second. There is also a perception that the composition of the municipal councils ignores the will of the communities and that the proportional list candidates are considered more important than constituency candidates.

What these observations reveal is that the real challenge and nexus of the problem is one of balance of power. The power is now tilted in favour of political parties in the municipalities they govern. There is sufficient anecdotal evidence that points to serious and even violent contestation within the parties and their branches for who should rightfully be on the candidates lists for the elections.

This is not a new phenomenon. It has just assumed alarming proportions and violence. Naturally, the parties fight hard to retain their decision-making powers and privileges, and on the other hand, the determination by the communities to demand their rights and powers has become intense and violent. This tension points to serious fault lines in the governance architecture and decision-making processes and protocols.

The lack of political will to tackle this issue is understandable, given the obvious possibility that the outcome will not favour the parties. However, the political landscape has changed and become more competitive with the entry of the EFF. Communities are beginning to have a different perspective about their rights, powers and responsibilities and this will only exert more pressure to review the balance of power issue.

For the ANC, this development has an interesting dynamic. The party considers itself to be a national movement whose influence and leverage must go beyond the government and its agencies into all the civil society structures of influence. The doctrine of "democratic centralism" has become a dominant paradigm and this is evident in its organisational culture. The balance of power tensions at the local government level will put this culture to a serious disruptive test.

The reality is that the ANC is the dominant party at present, and how it manages the transformation and fractious succession issues confronting it internally has an important bearing on how the balance of power issues will be resolved at the local sphere of government. Under the low-growth and low-employment trajectory and given the pressure on household incomes, a position on the candidates list can mean a foot on the ladder to escape from poverty. Contestation and the determination to succeed can, therefore, assume violent proportions.

The rating agencies have correctly pointed to political risk as inherently worrying because it affects investor-confidence directly. The balance of power at the local government level is a critical driver. Unless it is resolved, the country is set for a certain downgrade and descent into a recession.

Selfless and visionary leadership is required urgently.

• Motsohi (@MotsohiThabang) is organisational strategist at Lenomo Strategic Advistory.