DAVID LEWIS: ‘All politics is local’ — lessons for SA from Tip O’Neill

The legendary late speaker of the US House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill, was fond of reminding his less experienced colleagues that “all politics is local”. He used the phrase to underline a simple electoral truth: politicians who want to be re-elected must stay close to their voters and their everyday concerns.

In South Africa, the application of this bedrock democratic principle is constrained, even though each voter does have a local representative elected from a ward, with access to a municipality’s executive structures.

In theory, this gives ward councillors the means to take up their electors’ problems and represent their party’s positions in council. In practice, their influence is diluted by the proportional representation (PR) system, which accounts for 50% of municipal councils.

Half of councillors are directly elected by voters in wards; the other half are drawn from party lists compiled by party leaderships. The former are strongly incentivised to stay close to their voters, the latter to stay close to their party bosses.

I vacillate on the merits of PR. That there are no directly elected representatives in the national and provincial legislatures is clearly a democratic deficit. But I’m also disturbed by the apparent practice, particularly in large metros, of PR councillors dominating mayoral committees.

Yet, the theory behind PR is not without logic. Party list councillors are supposed to bring greater political experience and institutional knowledge, enabling them to deal with city-wide issues while ward councillors focus on local concerns.

A more sensible approach across all three tiers of government would be to increase the proportion of directly elected representatives to strengthen the principle of direct accountability. It would also be salutary to require parties to disclose how they vet prospective councillors for ward elections and party lists.

In darker moments I occasionally fantasise about scrapping PR and even barring political parties from participating directly in local government elections, thus reinforcing the principle of direct accountability of individual councillors to the electorate.

With local elections looming, it’s worth recalling how our experience of state capture hollowed out local government. The Zuma–Gupta syndicate initially focused its capture strategy on two sets of institutions. The first comprised the criminal justice agencies, including the South African Revenue Service (Sars), which had access to potentially dangerous intelligence. This process is well documented, and many of these institutions have not fully recovered.

With local elections looming, it’s worth recalling how our experience of state capture hollowed out local government. The Zuma–Gupta syndicate initially focused its capture strategy on two sets of institutions.

As state capture deepened and disquiet grew, even within the ANC, former president Jacob Zuma and his allies extended their reach to oversight bodies. Parliament became a prime target. The second focus was on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) earmarked for looting: Eskom, Transnet, SAA and Denel chief among them.

The capture of both sets of institutions, including parliament, was achieved largely through appointments. Zuma used his extensive powers and influence to ensure the wrong people were placed in the right positions. The heads of key crime-fighting bodies and Sars, the boards and executives of targeted SOEs and the most compliant members of the ANC leadership in critical ministries.

Particular care was taken with party lists for national elections, and with leadership positions in parliament. For example, the speaker of the National Assembly was a senior ANC leader and an unabashedly partisan figure.

With these institutions neutralised, the looting of SOEs proceeded with impunity. The only remaining threat to the Zuma–Gupta project was the electorate. Elections themselves were not seen as an immediate danger; after all, as Zuma liked to remind us, the ANC was destined to rule until Jesus returned.

The real risk lay inside the ANC. Zuma could only continue as syndicate leader while he remained president of the republic, which in turn required that he retain the presidency of the ANC. To secure that office, the party itself had to be captured.

ANC branches play a decisive role in electing the party’s leadership. Branches send delegates to provincial conferences, which elect provincial leaders, and to national conferences, which elect the national leadership. To ensure his survival Zuma had to secure the branches’ loyalty.

That loyalty was bought through cascading patronage. Provincial barons were given a free hand over vast education and health budgets, provided they did not encroach on the national leadership’s looting terrain. Provincial leaders replicated this arrangement with their regions and branches, which were allowed to use access to jobs and municipal budgets as sources of patronage. Votes and loyalty flowed upwards, resources flowed downwards.

This dynamic explains the obsessive interest provincial leaders take in the leadership of key regions and branches, and the fierce resistance to any notion of “two centres of power”. The system only works if party leaders at every level control access to public resources, the primary currency of patronage. Hence the ANC president being made president of the republic, provincial leaders becoming premiers, and local party bosses occupying mayoral offices.

The system only works if party leaders at every level control access to public resources, the primary currency of patronage.

The ANC has, in effect, become a patronage machine, with service delivery as its principal casualty. Eskom and Transnet failed because the then-national leadership looted them. Provinces struggle to deliver education and healthcare because those budgets are treated as patronage pools. Towns and cities falter because municipal budgets sustain local party bosses.

This edifice is under strain. ANC fragmentation, looming local elections and an impending leadership contest have intensified internal battles over access to patronage. The resulting squeeze has further eroded fragile service delivery, especially at provincial and local level.

Gauteng, and Johannesburg in particular, illustrates the problem. Mayor Dada Morero has lost the battle for ANC regional leadership but retains the mayoralty, and with it access to substantial patronage resources. His rival, Loyiso Masuku, regional leader of the ANC and member of the mayor committee for finance, also commands significant resources.

Both must reward supporters after a closely fought contest, including allies in the provincial and national leadership who will soon need funding for their own campaigns. The nakedly partisan intervention of the ambitious ANC secretary-general in Johannesburg’s politics speaks volumes.

Meanwhile, Johannesburg continues to decline. Affluent suburbs privatise what they can, but water, refuse removal and road maintenance can’t be outsourced. Poor communities bear the brunt. Rich and poor increasingly take to the streets. Soon they’ll take to the ballot box. The stakes have rarely been higher. Buckle up, Johannesburg.

• Lewis, a former trade unionist, academic, policymaker, regulator and company board member, was a cofounder and director of Corruption Watch.