To Vote or Not to Vote: Is that the question?

As the 2016 Local Government Elections approaches, the intensity of political expressions have increased and the confusion among the electorate has been multiplied tenfold. Contending parties and candidates have all kept the nation enthralled with their antics, insults and promises. Some more so than others.

But the entire circus masquerade which accompanies each election has counterintuitively tended to collude in obscuring “democracy” from a deeper analytical consideration. After all, politicians screaming insults at each other appears to conform more closely to the consumerist conceptions of  elections as a circus where brands are sold, and eligible voters “buy” a manifesto of promises, which we are asked to blindly accept as democracy.

Our media often does not provide an alternative analytical framework through which to consider our elections and instead we are bombarded with uncritical mantras of neoliberalism, obtained from the citadels of Western Colonial thought and spewed forth from lofty platforms, provided by “enlightened” and “progressive” media houses.  These same media houses, who profess to be an alternative to the white establishment media, are the same ones who build the brand of liberal commentators in the service of neoliberalism, while ignoring more radical alternative voices.

It is no wonder then that we are fed a diet of neoliberal ideas of democracy which is presented to us as enjoying a Gramscian form of hegemony in the sense of social, political and mass public acceptance. This allusion to complete hegemonic acceptance is aimed at silencing debate and in ultimately imposing a western neoliberal conception of democracy on what should be a growing and budding democratic formation.

It is in this sense that Noam Chomsky has argued that the guardians of the world (I might add and their comprador elites in the South) have sought to establish democracy in one sense of the term, while blocking it in others.  By this Chomsky refers to the efforts by liberal thinkers and commentators who seek to constitute emerging “neoliberal” polities such as South Africa, with a procedural notion of democracy and representative democracy in particular.

So what do I mean by this. Firstly, the notion of procedural democracy attempts to convey to society that democracy is ultimately and naturally about the procedure of voting. That is, we are called upon to line up before a voting booth (like the proverbial unthinking, irrational, uneducated mass) and hand over our power to a representative (comprised of two or  more parties who all affirm the very same underlying values) once every 5 years or so. This is then held up as the natural manner in which individuals consent to and therefore confer legitimacy on governments.

Secondly, the “naturalness” that is used to describe democracy by neoliberal commentators, and the manner in which the Gramscian notion of hegemony is attached to this specific form of neoliberal representative democracy implies some notion of active consent and involves the acceptance on the part of subaltern groups (the oppressed and marginalised poor), of the social logic of domination of the poor and marginalised by groups of elites.. Thus the logic affirms that power must always be located in an elite group/party and never held by the people themselves.

This orthodox neoliberal version of democracy is in actual fact highly restrictive and minimalist in character, in that it is constructed as nothing more than a “mechanism for choosing and authorising governments (and) not (as a mechanism though which people can build) a kind of society” that its participants want to work towards. In other words democracy is presented not as an active exercise of our agency where we work collectively to build our society; rather it is presented as a passive notion where others ( a small group of elites) are empowered (both politically and economically) to act on our behalf while the people remain disempowered and mired in poverty.

This model of liberal democracy which is associated with western liberal thinkers such as Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter has more recently been heavily influenced by the rise of the laissez-faire market orientation associated with the neoliberalism of Margret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and which has resulted in distinctively illiberal policies towards personal and civil liberties. In this version the markets are all knowing and all powerful and governments and society (democracy) must be left to the mercy of markets even if this means austerity and job losses. In the end the markets will decide and democracy should not be allowed to interfere with the smooth functioning (or should we say rough and tumble, survival of the fittest, anti-equalitarian Darwinian logic) of the markets.

Thus the version of democracy we are sold, and which we are told we would be “stupid not to vote” in, is miles away from the enlightenment views of early liberal thinkers such as Alexis de Tocqueville who argued that “if men are to remain civilised or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio with which the equality of condition is improved”.  This disjuncture is described by another contemporary liberal political scientist, Samuel Huntington as the “conflict between mobilisation and institutionalisation”.  That is, the conflict between participatory democracy and institutional representative democracy.

Participatory democracy encourages an equalising of power to the lowest levels and consequently the ability to hold power to account at local level, while representative democracy affirms power to a small hierarchical elite which reduces accountability and locates power away from the local level. 

According to Drury, Krieckhaus and Lusztig in their paper entitled Corruption, Democracy and Economic Growth, “democracy`s indirect benefit, is its ability to mitigate the detrimental effect of corruption on economic growth”.

Democracy is then more than a procedure we are required to undergo every couple of years in order to legitimise a government, which perpetuates the logic of hierarchy and lack of accountability and which by implication we hand our power to an elite group of people who not only earn more than us, but who also interprets our votes as a licence to Lord it over us under the mantle of a mandate.

 Democracy is also about how we associate together to improve our society, about how we limit hierarchy and the inevitable abuse of power that accompanies hierarchy. It is about claiming our power at a local level and making the connection between the local and the national in how we participate in the governance of our country.

At the heart of this debate, sits the unspoken reality that as long as people are discouraged from organising and participating in governance issues at a local level, through grassroots structures of their choice and which are not confined to party politics, the system will remain skewed in favour of a small portion of society who become the political elite. There is ample evidence to suggest that as long as elites are expected to act in the interest of the majority, while the majority are encouraged to treat democracy like a procedure to be completed every few years, then not much change will be realised.

Instead, and most likely as a response to our unresponsive procedural representative democracy, a growing trend at local level has emerged over the last few elections in South Africa. We have seen communities boycott elections, and even a national campaign at the last procedural occurrence to boycott the election through the Sidikiwe campaign and recently the #IamSpoilingMyBallotWithMyBlood campaign initiated by residents of Bontehewuel on the Cape 

Flats who are sick and tired of politicians and their promises, while living under war like conditions in the grip of gang violence.

In response those who have lost faith in the system to represent their interests are told that it doesn’t matter if you don’t vote because, “governance structures aren’t going to disappear just because voter turnout is low”.

On the one hand this is true to the extent that one is philosophically hemmed in by an education and propaganda imbued in western colonial notions of domination of the stupid masses.  But on the other hand, withholding ones vote is also the manifestation not only of the contradictions of an unjust system, but it is also the articulation of a more imposing and more inclusive notion of democracy.

To suggest that it is fruitless to act against an unjust system, and to imply that this particular system is the culmination of a natural sociological determination is to say that we have reached the end of history. Such notions are ahistorical and have no veracity or place in a considered critical analysis of any society and if anything are more indicative of the Universalist pomposity of western neoliberal commentators who prefer their own agency to that of the masses,  and who act as agents of foreign ideas of domination rather than as agents of liberation and change.

The right not to vote and the right to actively engage in politics is a legitimate act of defiance and disgruntlement and an important conduit through which a new form of democracy could emerge, one in which new forms of associations are encouraged through new institutions and through which political and economic  elites are held to account.

In short, not voting is about taking back the power which the elites have abrogated from the people. But not voting does not mean we should sit at home and complain. Instead it means if we do not vote then we should be building organs of people power at a local level so that even if some career politician is elected, that through grassroots organisations we can hold them to account. This is our power.

Power…to the People.