STEVEN FRIEDMAN: ANC closes its ears to 12-million voices

Around 12-million South Africans badly need politicians who understand election results. The signs for them are not promising.

The 12-million have featured here before. They live in areas controlled by traditional leaders which were once apartheid’s Bantustans.

They are angry because the government has given chiefs greater power over land which they use not only to take it from small farmers but to enrich themselves at rural people’s expense. They have been voicing their anger by voting against the ANC.

Until last week, the ANC seemed to have heard them. It announced it was pressing ahead with a bill, published in 2017, which would transfer control of the land from chiefs to the people. Last week, the ANC seemed to have blotted the message from its mind.

Traditional leaders, the Zulu king in particular, are angry because the high-level panel chaired by former president Kgalema Motlanthe criticised the way they use their land powers. The ANC has been hurrying to assure them that it has no intention of interfering with their control over land.

Traditional leaders, the Zulu king in particular, are angry because the high-level panel chaired by former president Kgalema Motlanthe criticised the way they use their land powers. The ANC has been hurrying to assure them that it has no intention of interfering with their control over land.

But then what is the bill meant to achieve? Either the ANC plans to transfer land control from chiefs to their "subjects" or it does not. Of course, it could be trying to soothe traditional leaders in the hope that they will accept a change which reduces their power. But the comforting messages which it is sending to the chiefs strongly suggest that it is afraid to take them on, despite the evidence that the people for whom they claim to speak are very angry with them. (The king’s threat to take KwaZulu-Natal out of SA can be taken with a load of salt. When Mangosuthu Buthelezi threatened to do this in the 1990s, he back-tracked because many of his supporters wanted to continue working in Gauteng).

They may have decided to ensure that the bill will not upset traditional leaders, whatever voters think and even though it is ANC policy to transfer control of land from chiefs to "communities".

The ANC is not the only party which seems eager to cosy up to traditional leaders even if that means alienating rural voters. The EFF spent last week sending friendly messages to chiefs. It went further – it "persuaded" the Congress of Traditional Leaders (Contralesa) to back its demand for state control of land. Some traditional leaders claim this means that it has convinced Contralesa that land should be controlled by the state rather than chiefs. This is, to say the least, unlikely. Since Contralesa continues to denounce Motlanthe and his panel’s report, it is far more likely that it believes that state control of the land means continued control by chiefs. In which case, the fact that it endorsed the EFF’s position is about as interesting as a business chamber endorsing the profit motive.

So both the ANC and EFF seem intent on ignoring the messages voters in former Bantustan provinces are sending. Why?

In democracies, the vote always sends only a limited signal. It tells us which party people support but not why they support it. To send a clearer message, people need to organise, to get together with others who feel as they do and to demand change. There are organisations which speak for rural people; they are, however, not nearly as powerful as traditional leaders and so are not as easily heard.

But, while the vote might not send the clearest signals, it does give people the power to remove parties and politicians who are not hearing them. If politicians continue to close their ears to the signals which rural people are sending, voters may well send them a much clearer message next year by depriving them of jobs.

• Friedman is research professor with the humanities faculty of the University of Johannesburg.