Bistandsaktuelt: My project here is to hear what people think
about twenty years of democracy and freedom. After the election in 1994 my
reading was that there was euphoria, a hopefulness that now seems to have
disappeared. What is your comment?
Suttner:
There was a promise. A dream of what we wanted to see. And in some ways,
without being melodramatic the dream has become a nightmare. In one of my blogs
I wrote that one of the reasons why I was grieving prior to Mandela dying was
that Mandela represented a vision of a free SA, where leaders acted with
integrity. It has turned into a nightmare in the sense that there is a lot of
violence, and I think that some of it is fuelled by the rhetoric of the
leadership with phrases like “shoot to kill”, militaristic songs and lots of
sexual and gender based violence. And then there is the corruption and
patronage.
I
do not like working with terms like euphoria and disillusionment, because those
terms are disempowering. What I try to do is understand what has happened.
I
did work underground, but when I was out of jail in the 1980s I was very
involved in the popular struggle of the UDF. And many of us that were involved
in the popular struggle had in mind the type of democracy where people would
not just vote but be involved in politics all the time.
The
first issue for me is democracy. What happens when you institutionalize
democracy? When you negotiate for democracy you do not actually negotiate the
place of the popular, you negotiate constitutional instruments. It is not to
say that those negotiations are antagonistic to the popular, but by definition
negotiations relate to a type of constitutional order, parliament, judiciary
and voting. Now in the course of that process, prior to the first democratic
election, the masses became passive or were used as a battering ram to get
concessions from the National Party in negotiations. The object of rolling mass
action was to get the regime to see sense. That was not the same thing as in
the mid-1980 when the masses were building crèches and drove the police out of
the townships, and put their own crime control measures in place.
So
when elections came the popular really got displaced. The UDF dissolved itself.
They went into the changing rooms because the ‘A-team’ had come onto the field.
Some of us argued that the popular struggle had a value in itself. It was not
just standing in for the ANC, it was not just a holding action for the ANC, as
Rev Frank Chikane has described the UDF.
I
think the idea came into many people's mind that the ANC was the manifestation
of the popular. All national liberation movements depict themselves as
embodying the nation with slogans like ‘ANC is the nation’. The ANC displaced
the popular by depicting itself as the ‘people’s government’.
This
is the first problem. It has nothing to do with violence or corruption. It has
to do with what people see as normalization. I wanted to see continuation of
active citizens, apart from just voting.
In
the course of implementing the Constitution there were spaces for engagement
with the popular. I was in the first parliament. We introduced new rules so
that people could come and make representations to parliament.
As
the constitutional order developed we wanted it to be ‘people driven’, that it
would strengthen the hand of the legislature in so far as it was implementing
progressive legislature.
Over
the time, [the early years after 1994] the ANC-government did implement
important changes. Many people got fresh water for the first time, and
electricity for the first time. The delivery was not always adequately planned
or implemented. Maintenance was not always there. But there was a very
significant change for a large number of people. But the way it was conceived
was statist, the state ‘delivering’.
The
popular movement (of the 1980s) did not see the benefits in their lives being
solely dependent on state delivery, they wanted to be active participants.
You
have talk of service delivery protests. But the notion of services is to treat
housing, water, electricity as commodities, as opposed to basic human rights
which is what the constitution treats them as. So imperceptibly the terms in
which democratic discourse was conceived changed and democratic practices
changed.
……
On the rise of Jacob Zuma to
the position of President
Suttner:
When president Thabo Mbeki dismissed Jacob Zuma (as Vice President), people
thought Zuma was the victim of a conspiracy. The Communist Party and Cosatu had
felt themselves side-lined in the Mbeki period and they rallied behind Zuma and
depicted him as a victim of conspiracy, a man of the people and a socialist.
This was false. They said Mbeki had dismissed Zuma to prevent him from becoming
president.
In
between all of this Zuma was charged with rape. He was acquitted, but the
judgement is open to question. The way Zuma conducted himself during the rape
trial was disturbing. Everyday after the court case he would go out to his
supporters and sing a song “bring me my machine gun”. A machine gun is a
powerful phallic symbol. Bullets can represent ejaculation, so it was really
militaristic and very disrespectful of the type of case it was. It was very
Zulu chauvinistic, with Zuma being called “100% Zulu” and he never said a word
to dissociate himself from his supporters.
Anyway
in the next year in 2007 was the ANC Polokwane Conference where Zuma defeated
Mbeki for the ANC presidency. The people who came into the coalition behind
Zuma were first of all the Communists and Cosatu, depicting him as a left
candidate. Secondly there were sections of the emerging bourgeoisie who where
wanting to secure contracts and other economic benefits, and there were
criminal types. Immediately it was an unstable alliance. If he did not ensure
job security and better wages Cosatu would be disappointed, at the same time if
he was to satisfy the left, big business would be unhappy, people who wanted
tenders etc.
So
the way Zuma governs is like a ship half sinking and half sailing, half
governing and half not governing, about to fall and staying in power.
So
what has characterized his period in office has been a lot of violence. There
has been massive violence by the police, by the ANC in the 2009 elections
against COPE (a party formed by people who broke away from the ANC), when it
was formed. There has been a lot of violende in the KwaZulu Natal area.
Bistandsaktuelt: Aften Zuma’s
rape trial you broke with the ANC. How did the ANC react to your criticism and
breaking away?
Suttner:
One time my wife found the wheels on her car were loosened. Once our gate was
lifted. Another time they came and stole computers. When I came on the scene I
was hit on the head with an aluminium ladder. Now when these people came into
the house we had electronic beams and they neutralized the beams, so obviously
they must have been people with specialized training. We are on now on
the margins. It has an effect on one’s income. When applying for funding for
research it is difficult to get funding from the state or institutions that do
not want to antagonise the ANC leadership.
Bistandsaktuelt: Do you have a
sense that the good people have left the party, or are just waiting for a new
leader?
Suttner:
There are some people who were very brave, with whom I have faced danger. The
problem is: When you get tempted do you succumb or do you not succumb? I do not
know who is there who has not succumbed. I do not know what you can do to
change the ANC from within. The problem has become serious and systemic.
How much of what ones sees in
ANC today of corruption, violence is a continuation of things that where
accepted in the liberation struggle?
Suttner:
Even before I fell out with the ANC I tried to understand if I had been an
‘innocent’ who had not understood what the struggle was about. Because when I
got involved I was ready to die in the struggle. I did not look for positions.
A lot of others came to understand that there would be lucrative things in the
offing. In exile if you were connected to X or Y you may have got a scholarship
to Oxford rather than to Soviet Union. Also on the communist side people wanted
to get special training. If you were a member you were more likely to go to the
Lenin School. Inside the country there were some aspects of that.
For
example in the 1980s when I came out of jail and they were starting up popular
organisations it was difficult to do much without funding. Some people knew how
to get funding from Norad or Idaf and those people gave money to start an
organisation and would have some control over what they did. Thinking
back on it, some of the divisions we had in the 1980, was related to the
funding, and also related to people inside the country having connections to
say Thabo Mbeki or Joe Slovo. And we did not understand that they could be in
disagreement with one another. So those divisions may have been transferred
into the country.
In
1985 two years after I came out of jail for the first time I was given a
passport and when I was in England I thought let me find out who is getting
funds from this, that and the other place. I somehow got to see the list of the
people who were receiving funds and they represented a particular faction. The
person through whom the funds were channelled may not have intended to play a
factional role, but de facto these funds he had control over actually went to
one group.
But
I did not do much about it because as I was to about to return to South Africa
a State of Emergency was declared. I was at the airport and Gill Marcus was
there and rolled her eyes to indicate the bookshop. Joe Slovo was there. I went
over and stood next to him. He said to me: ‘Do you think you should go back,
there is a State of Emergency?’ I said: ‘Look I am one of the few whites who
are in the leadership, I think I must go back, because it would be a bad
example not to.’ Then I went back, and all the issues of funding became
academic because there was a State of Emergency until 1990.
The
patterns that were established in exile may have partly been patronage and
corruption, but now it is over much higher stakes. Now people are becoming
billionaires.
Bistandsaktuelt: Looking back
on 20 years that have gone. There have been 1200 service delivery protests the
last five years. Do you see that as the start of new grassroots movements? Or
just an expression of frustration?
Suttner: It is an interesting question. When we had
popular power movements in the 1980s we hadcommunities despite apartheid. In most cases that
was the basis for having street committees. Now many of these so-called service
delivery protests are in areas where you cannot really speak of communities
because they are living in squalid conditions where the sewage is running in
the streets, they do not have clean water to wash themselves, they are living
in shacks and there is huge unemployment.
In
the failure to ever establish communities, it is not easy to establish
organization. Many of these people will possibly vote for Malema’s EFF, but
except for the Shackdwellers Movement in KZN and one or two others, you do not
have well developed organizations. Apart from them you have a situation where
the most effective action seem to be taken by NGOs and they sometimes
substitute themselves for the people. In some cases NGOs will operate with the
communities and involve them in what they do and together try to arrive at a
solution.
Funding
is being given to NGOs and sometimes they can get lawyers and present the
communities with a solution, but the communities themselves are not involved.
Bistandsaktuelt: If you look at
democracy in period from 1994 to now, what achievements are there?
Suttner:
We have a constitution in place. We have had four free and fair elections and
are soon to have our fifth. We have our Constitutional Court in place whose
decisions are generally abided by. And there are a lot more people with their
basic needs provided. They have houses and water etc.
There
are problems with it. Sometimes they have been built by people who got shady
contracts and they break down. In general some people who have not had
electricity have got that for the first time but it is uneven.
The
problem is now that under Zuma leadership the Constitution is being undermined.
You see it with the Nkandla Report. But there are also lots of cases of
corruption that the police do not investigate properly or the prosecution loses
the dockets, and things like that.
What
they are also doing is interfering in the appointment of judges. In appointing
the Judicial Service Commission, which appoints judges, they are it packing
with Zuma-supporters. So the last Chief Justice had made statements that were
homophobic and he is a bit eccentric , he said he accepted the nomination
because he had received a message from God that he should be appointed.
You
have this situation that the constitution is being undermined by corruption, by
violence, by patronage. The way 240 million Rands of public money has been
spent on the private home of the president is an extreme example, but it is not
the only example of undermining the law and the constitution.
So
on the one hand you have the institutions. But people actually have to fight to
secure their rights under the constitution.
The
institutions are surviving. We are enfranchised by the fact that we vote. But
what we vote for does not happen. So we are simultaneously disenfranchised.
Bistandsaktuelt: Is there a
danger that the armed struggle has been made too heroic. Zuma still
sings the same liberation struggle songs 20 years later. Is there an aspect of
violence in SA society that is just being perpetuated?
Suttner:
Mandela went to jail at the commander of MK and came out as a peacemaker. There
is a time to fight and there is a time to make peace. A time for war songs and
a time to make peace. One of the problems we have is that we have not
entrenched non-violence. People do not see non-violence as a value. This is not
peculiar to South Africa.
I
think the aftermath of the struggle is quite complicated. You must remember
that in 1990 the apartheid regime attacked the ANC. There were massacres, and
it was hard to preach peace. We had to set up self-defence units. So that peace
was not really inaugurated. It was a situation of no peace, yet not war.
I cannot say the ANC was to blame for that, though more could have been
done later.
I
think there is now a conscious attempt to use violence to threaten people. It
is a legacy of the struggle. But some of us who were in struggle do not use it.
So it is not how things have to be.
