What we are voting for

President Thabo Mbeki’s announcement of this year’s election date, April 14, will have heralded the official start of a brief but intense campaign.

The brevity of the electioneering period is welcome. Two months is not too long a time to excessively test the public’s patience.

Having said that, it must be recorded that the governing African National Congress began its election campaign well before this month’s announcement. The ANC erred in deriving strategic advantage from withholding the exact election date from other parties until its own campaign was already planned, timed and underway.

While we may be confident that this year’s election, like those in 1994 and 1999, will be free and fair, the ANC’s tactics may have compromised democratic principles.

And so for the next few weeks, the electorate will be bombarded with pleas for support, mudslinging and, of course, promises.

The South African Council of Churches has rightly admonished political parties not to make unreasonable campaign pledges  or, failing that, detail exactly how they intend to accomplish these.

Of course it is tempting to make grandiose election promises, because most parties will not be tested on them. Indeed, it is only a question by what percentage the ANC will be returned to power. On national level, therefore, the only manifesto of governance that requires vigorous inspection is that of the ruling party. In that way, April 14 will see a national referendum on the ANC-led alliance’s performance in government.

This is not to say that other parties are therefore insignificant. On the contrary, South Africa’s young democracy is handicapped by the absence of an opposition that might pose an electoral threat to the ANC nationally, and enable the electorate to hold the government accountable for its failures.

In the absence of an electoral threat, the Mbeki government has felt at liberty to taint its accomplishments with abject policy failures of the kind that would assure electoral defeats in many other democracies. These include the scandalous arms deal and the attendant allegations of corruption, its bizarre and compassionless Aids policy (specifically the withholding of anti-retroviral drugs), and its increasingly enigmatic approach to the crisis in Zimbabwe.

On April 14 we will decide whether any of the parties standing for election will be capable of growing into a viable opposition party, one that may compete with the ANC at the polls in 2009.

On provincial level, the ANC will again be challenged only in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape.

The issue in the Western Cape will be whether the electorate is comfortable with the ANC running both the national and provincial governments, or whether it trusts the Democratic Alliance to govern the province efficiently.

With relations between ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party at a new post-democracy low, one must remain wary of renewed internecine strife in KwaZulu-Natal. May the leaders in both parties exercise restraint during the election campaign so as to avoid instances of violence something South Africa can ill afford.

South Africa also cannot afford voter apathy. We have two months in which to reach those who are not motivated to exercise their right to vote a right won with the blood of those who fought for a universal franchise.

The Church, even on parish level, must play its part in encouraging adult citizens to cast their vote (even if it is a spoilt one) on April 14.