24 June 2003 - International Convention Centre, Durban
1. Introduction
Chairperson, honoured guests and participants, ladies and gentlemen, comrades and friends. Thank you for the invitation extended to me to give a keynote address to your conference this year. The role, place and objectives of your Centre in general, and this conference in particular cannot be overemphasised. The question of public participation is central in any democratic order, and it is something we dare not take for granted but must ensure that we constantly work on it all the time.
Your conference is taking place against the background of very significant, and dare we say, dangerous developments on the international stage. You are gathering after the unilateral invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain, clearly defining global public opinion and the United Nations itself. This poses a threat to the united nations system and thus posing a serious threat to peace in the world. We are seeing the emergence of a US security doctrine which defines all that is global as US, and all that is US in the interests of the global community of nations. Fundamentally this doctrine gives the United States the licence to intervene in any part of the world whenever it sees its interests, and not the interests of the global community, but its own interests, as being under threat. It introduces into the world stage something that is completely new, pre-emptive war.
We should therefore locate this conference within the global challenge of strengthen mass and public participation as the only way to stop the downward slide of the world into a politics and an order of "might is right". The issue of public participation assumes an even more added and urgent dimension in world politics judging by the way millions of people took to the streets in major capitals of the world to oppose the invasion of Iraq. Though this huge demonstration of mass power and a particular form of "public participation" did not succeed in stopping the invasion of Iraq, but its aftermath is being felt now. The fact that there are now public hearings both the US and UK legislatures on whether there was any rational or legal basis to invade Iraq is directly as a result of this mass pressure. Perhaps the one lesson from the anti-war mobilisation is that mobilisation of public opinion and the mass of ordinary people against the US security doctrine might as well be the only saviour for humanity not to descend into modern barbarism. For this reason, the work of this centre and this conference assume an even added significance.
Against this background, my input today will also cover the following issues:
2. Representative and participatory democracy
Perhaps I do not have to say this to most of you here, hence I may be accused of patronising you. But because of the important question of public participation in any society it is important to restate some of these propositions. Our point of departure in building democratic societies is that representative democracy (elections, etc) is an important and necessary, but not sufficient, condition to building a vibrant democratic order. I need to make myself clear in this. I am not supporting those who want to define multi-party democratic elections as only democratic if interests of minorities are sought to be imposed on the majority. Nor am I speaking for those who regard repeated electoral victories by one party as necessarily meaning a one-party dictatorship.
In the South African context we have made major strides since our democratic breakthrough in 1994. Not only have we strengthened our institutions of representative democracy, but we have also built many institutions that support public participation in decision making. These would include institutions like the NEDLAC, school governing bodies, ward committees, institutional forums at institutions of higher education, water committees, and many other institutions catering for effective public participation.
However an issue we are not consistently canvassing within the discourse and practice of public participation is that of socio-economic rights and the need to build redistributive economies. This is one of the most critical challenges facing a continent like ours. We cannot restrict effective public participation only to matters relating to government, but have to strongly factor in the question of redistribution of resources, financial, human and economic.
For instance one would argue that the most critical challenge or contradiction facing South African society today is that much as we have made much headway in stabilising our democracy, economic power still resides with the same class forces as under apartheid. Our economy is still in the hands of a few white male elite, and stubbornly refusing to be redistributive. Instead we are seeing deepening poverty, widening of incomes gap, extensive job losses and high levels of unemployment. In essence we have political democracy but without economic democracy.
One would argue that this is perhaps ;a perennial post-colonial problem in the continent. But in South Africa this contradiction is much more exercebated by the fact that we are a relatively well developed capitalist economy in a sea of poverty. In fact this might as well be the biggest threat to building both our representative and participatory democracy as starving and illiterate people cannot participate effectively in any democracy no matter how good its democratic institutions might be. This is an issue that needs to be confronted by this organisation and conference as we look into issues of challenges of public participation. In fact any further qualitative advance to South Africa's democracy principally depend on what breakthroughs are we going to make on the economic terrain, and consequently advances in the struggle for basic socio-economic rights for all.
In many ways the current global discourse reinforces the myth that democracy, representative and participatory, is only limited to voting regularly, whilst the economic and major institutions of society are controlled by a few. This is the fundamental challenge we have to confront. We need to develop theoretical and empirical methodologies - in essence a new paradigm of public participation - that essentially includes the all important question of socio-economic rights and economic participation and benefit. The question of the distribution and redistribution of a country's or an economy's resources is fundamental to effective public participation, as I will further illustrate later.
3. A proper definition of public participation
If we are to grapple and properly contextualise public participation, we also need to seek proper definitions of concepts and measures against which we assess public participation. I am not by any means suggesting that this has not or is not continously being done. But we must always be raising these issues as part of deepening and contextualising our understanding and the nature of the challenge at hand.
The first issue we have to constantly interrogate is who is the public? If we accept that South Africa's democracy is encumbered by the very same problems it seeks to resolve, then we have to carefully examine and define the content of public in our discourse, methodologies and practical work. South Africa's democracy - and indeed the whole legacy of settler colonialism in our region - is encumbered by three interrelated contradictions or challenges. These are the national (principally racial), class and gender contradictions. None of these can be resolved without tackling the others. This means that as we define and give meaning to concept "public" we must be informed by this reality.
What does this mean? This means that the overwhelming majority of the public are women, black, workers and the poor. Whilst we should understand that the public does include the rich, but if the overwhelming majority are those who come from a particular class, racial and gendered background, then our focus should principally be on this majority. In addition, if more than 70% of the unemployed are youth, and South Africa has more than 4 million disabled people, then it should be who forms the core of this public we talk about. This therefore means that strengthening public participation should principally be directed at this, and it should aim to also assist in tackling these fundamental contradictions of our societies.
The second and fundamental concept we need to clarify is what do we mean by "civil society"? Whilst this term is useful in a descriptive sense, it also tends to obscure the fundamental lines of (class, racial and gender) divisions and inequalities within what we call civil society. We talk of stakeholders as if they happen to be equal players in society, when in fact because of huge socio-economic inequalities not all of civil society is able to advance its own interests. There are disproportionately powerful forces in "civil society" who are able to advance their narrow interests in the name of "civil society" as a whole, using the very same goal of public participation. Enhancing effective public participation again means focusing our attention on the workers and poor of society. Sometimes I worry that the concept of "civil society" tends to obscure these realities, both in theory and in practice.
In other instances "civil society" has come to be projected as new and more diverse forms of permanent opposition to governments, irrespective of the nature of those governments. In essence it has sometimes been a cover for permanent hostility to government thus ruling out any possibility of cooperation with governments. This is very problematic if we are to advance the struggle for democracy, good governance and public participation in its totality.
Another concept we need to be clearer about is that of good governance. Frankly most of the discourse of good governance is heavily influenced, in our continent and the rest of the developing world, by the discourse of the World Bank and the IMF. Good governance has come to mean "multi-party democracy" irrespective of the content of such dispensations. Usually such multi-party democracies are dominated by a multiplicity of parties that represent competing elites, with no substantive representation of the mass of the ordinary people. I am by no means arguing for single party rule, but recycling political parties merely representing the elite does not come any closer to addressing the issues we are concerned with here. And by definition such multi-party dispensations tend to be very hostile to public participation, where this might bring the mass of ordinary people closer to centres of power and influence.
Furthermore good governance has come to mean, privatisation, liberalisation and weakening of the post-colonial states. In essence good governance has meant the transformation of nation-states to serve the interests of the globally powerful at the expense of the mass of their ordinary people. One of the key challenges that face all those concerned about genuine public participation is to invert this discourse and practice, such that good governance come to mean measures to eradicate poverty, effective public participation and to confront the challenge of underdevelopment.
4. The challenge of NEPAD, good governance and public participation: New terrains for transformation
It might seem that I have rather taken long to come to the substance of the topic given to me. However, I do not think that one can grapple with this issue without this otherwise necessary detour above. This is important in order to deploy our concepts with a greater measure of understanding and facilitate grappling with the topic in hand.
In grappling with the question of NEPAD we should avoid the two problematic extremes. The one extreme is that of rejectionism. This stance is usually informed by the fact that just because there are some weaknesses in NEPAD as it stands it should therefore be rejected as a new begging bowl by Africans in the West and therefore no different from the current neo-colonial and neo-liberal global regime. This is wrong. NEPAD is an important vision and a platform to seek to confront underdevelopment in our continent. Whatever its weaknesses might be now, our approach should be seek to impact on it positively, without overlooking whatever might be its weaknesses at the moment.
The other extreme is that of voluntaristic perfectionism of NEPAD. This stance is completely intolerant and hostile to any criticism of NEPAD. It rejects anything that seeks critical reflection and engagement as inherently hostile, sponsored by forces hostile to Africa, and sometimes characterise any criticism as being informed by "enemy agents". This stance is wrong, paranoic and not in the best interests of seeking to persuade, engage and harness the widest possible social and political forces behind the vision of NEPAD. It presents the vision and objective of NEPAD not as a site of struggle, but as a priori a pre-ordained success, not requiring any further or ongoing critical engagement.
NEPAD is an important basis for action, that despite some of its current weaknesses, we should seek to engage an impact on it. It should also be understood that much as it is an African initiative, it will however be contested by a whole variety of class, social and political forces to advance their own interests. For instance, already the imperialist forces are constantly seeking to transform the NEPAD vision into a kind of voluntary African submission to new forms of neo-colonial arrangement. Every imaginable problem in the continent is being projected as "failure" or lack of commitment to NEPAD, whether it is Zimbabwe or Burundi.
There are many challenges to NEPAD, but would like to highlight only a few, as a basis of posing some challenges for an organisation like yours and a conference like this. In this regard I would like to be very concrete:
Your work is important provided it is based on some of the principles outlined above . With these words we wish you a very successful conference.