The 09 Elections and the Christian

by Chris Chatteris SJ · March 13, 2009

During the struggle against apartheid many Christians saw themselves as companions-in-arms with the progressive political forces in the country, in particular with the ANC. It was assumed, perhaps a little naively, that since the churches had supported the politicians in their time of need, the politicians would reciprocate later and address their issues. The disillusionment here has been fairly swift, amounting almost to a sense of betrayal.

For Catholics this was probably most keenly felt in the way the ANC handled the abortion legislation, not only tabling it enthusiastically against the general opinion in the country, but also imposing a three-line whip on its MPs to force them to vote for it. Other disappointments were the failure to support church schools and health institutions as much as was hoped. Religious and laypeople working in church-run health institutions, especially those for people living with HIV/AIDS, also experienced a sense of being let-down by the new government. However, it is not only our own institutions for which Christians feel concern. Many would consider the failure of the ANC to bring the majority of government schools out of their third-rate, apartheid status, to be their most egregious fault.

Another serious issue is morally tainted politicians. The fact is that the ruling party (and some members of opposition parties), have fallen quite considerably from grace since the struggle days. With power has come a sense of entitlement which has led many morally weaker politicians astray. The arms deal, the so-called Travelgate scandal and other disedifying episodes have left many wondering whether this is the same group that was so self-sacrificing in the period before 1994. The carrying of Tony Yengeni to prison as if he were a hero symbolised the scandal all too graphically.

Added to this is the failure to nip the rot in the bud. The leadership periodically makes statements about how it will not tolerate corruption but then ‘re-deploys’ those who are guilty of it. The cloud hanging over Jacob Zuma sums up the problem. But it is also true that some of the new Cope leadership, though ‘refugees’ from the ANC, stand accused in the court of public opinion of having been complicit in the its moral decline.

A sub-theme to the corruption issue is a sense, not so much of Afro-pessimism, but Afro-fatalism. This is the notion that all sub-Saharan African states are doomed to go the way of Zimbabwe, Somalia or Congo because of the entitled clinging to power of what William Mervyn Gumede calls ‘liberation aristocrats’.� Afro-fatalism makes one ask gloomily what is the point of fighting our historically and/or culturally determined fate.

A final issue is a general sense of disempowerment, which is shared by other religious groups, and which will almost inevitably afflict believers when a state goes secular. For Catholics, who are in a small minority, this feeling can be particularly acute, especially since in the past we felt that we punched above our weight because of our respected Catholic institutions, which have now been weakened. So we now have an extremely dominant party in power with a secular – and in some areas – a secularist agenda.

Two possible reactions can flow from the above. One is to withdraw into a denominational ghetto, concentrate on our ‘own affairs’ and not bother to vote. Another version of the same is to completely compartmentalise our politics and our Christianity that we do not let the teaching of the Church touch our politics or vice-versa, and we mechanically vote as we have always done. We ‘split’ ourselves into religious and political animals and refuse to allow the two to meet. Such ‘splitting’ is said to be psychologically unhealthy because it blocks the integration which is so important in the maturation of the adult human person. It is also theologically inappropriate because although Christianity can never be reduced to a political ideology, it has to be lived out in a particular socio-political reality and must always recall its founder’s concern for the poor, the sick and the abandoned. In other words, it must enable its message to engage with the reality of the public life of the day.

Perhaps the first thing to do about our disillusionment and disempowerment is to acknowledge them. Yes, we do feel let down, many of us. Yes, we do feel far less relevant in the body politic than we felt in the past. Yes, we sense that our faith has been effectively marginalised in the new secular regime. However just withdrawing into our local pastoral/spiritual concerns and our personal shells is no solution. The less we engage, the less we make our voices heard, the more likely the government will ride even rougher shod over our concerns and become even more neglectful of our institutions. We will end up counting for even less.

It seems clear that we need to find new modes of engagement in the political process other than vaguely hoping to be of influence on the coat tails of the ruling party. These new approaches will take time to develop. In the meantime there is the urgency of the upcoming election. Suffice to say here that opting out and failing to vote is more likely to weaken democracy than to strengthen it. One of the crucial factors in the collapse of real democracy in Zimbabwe was the high rate of emigration � the ultimate geographical opting out. Had those millions who left not done so, things might have been very different. Sometimes South Africans predict fatalistically that we are headed towards ‘Zimbabwefication’ or ‘Zanufication’, but such prophecies become self-fulfilling when democrats withdraw from democracies. So things might not be all that rosy in our democracy, but one of the basic functions of voting is to keep the democratic process alive for the future. We vote for our children’s sake, not just for our own.

It is worth reminding ourselves of the practicalities of our electoral system, which has its critics but nonetheless has features which are designed to limit political power. When we cast our vote for the national assembly that vote goes towards the election of 200 MPs in that body. When we cast our provincial vote, this gets counted twice, first towards the election of the provincial assembly and secondly towards the election of the other 200 MPs in the national assembly. The weighting of our provincial vote for the purpose of voting in�� representatives in the national assembly depends on the population of our province. This is one reason why KZN, the Eastern and Western Cape and Gauteng are being so hotly contested. This is important to remember because it puts a considerable measure of strategic power in the hands of voters, power to send signals to our politicians and even ultimately to affect the political balance in the land.

A practical process of voter-discernment for Christians would look something like this. Firstly to deepen our awareness of the breadth and wisdom of Christian social teaching. Secondly to familiarise ourselves with the different party political manifestos. Finally to make a prayerful and prudent judgement about which party (or indeed configuration of parties in Parliament) will most serve the common good of South Africa. This will always involve choosing lesser evils, since all politicians and all parties are flawed because they share the human condition and in that sense simply mirror us, the electorate.

However by voting in numbers, Christian South Africans have a chance to participate in a renewal and revitalisation of our young democracy which has been made prematurely jaded by a mixture of stale ideology and greedy entitlement. The long-term hope should be that this election will be a wake-up call for complacent politicians also provide some ‘political space’ for the Church to develop a viable way of engaging more effectively with the new political reality of a secular South Africa in the future.