Liberal Vision

Is South Africa doomed to stagnant politics?

In 2012 the African National Congress (ANC) celebrates its centenary, a hundred years of, eventually triumphant, struggle that commenced in a small Church in Free State province. The ANC will have another celebration this year; that of eighteen years of dominance and rule over post-apartheid South Africa. This figure is symbolic as it means for the first time, South Africa will have people of voting age who have known nothing but ANC, a matter especially crucial in the ‘African’ communities, where children will be raised with the legend of the fight against apartheid, and heroes such as Nelson Mandela and his ANC. Can such a generation be expected to view this party with the objective eye of a normal voter?

Since 1994 and the first free elections, the ANC has maintained a majority of around two thirds in the National Assembly and consequently every post-apartheid president has belonged to their party. The two thirds figure is important in South African politics as it allows the governing party to alter the constitution, a significant ability, if only by virtue of the dominance this denotes. This established dominance raises the spectre of stagnant politics when one looks at the election reports from the period: since being legitimized the ANC has held somewhat of a monopoly over the ‘African’ vote maintaining a vote share in the general election of between 62.7% (1994) and 69.7% (2004). These numbers become significant when you consider two other statistics; the percentage of the South African population described as African has been around 80% and voting turnout of registered voters has been between 76.7% (2004) and 87.9% (1999), multiplying these two statistics together to give us a rough estimate of the African turnout returns a range between 61.3% and 70.3% which is remarkably close to the range in ANC vote share over the same time period. This potential coincidence is backed up by the similar correlation between white turnout and vote share of the former apartheid parties that make up the majority of remaining votes.

Now I am not suggesting anything sinister in this observation; merely that a monopoly seems to be held over the African community’s vote. I suggest this is due to the fact that after the hate and oppression of Apartheid and the joy of its overthrow, which is mainly attributed to ANC members, the African community has taken the ANC to be part of their identity. In fact the only occasions when the ANC has lost significant votes to another black group (other than the Zulu nationalist party IFP, which attains around 90% of its total votes in the Kwazulu-Natal province)has been when a splinter of the ANC has stood, as in 1999 with the UDM and in 2009 with the Mbeki faction COPE.

This internalisation of a political group as part of an identity leads towards the stagnation of society, a situation where ideas become so accepted and widespread that they cease to be challenged. This is a danger John Stuart Mill warned about, claiming that one of the critical reasons for free speech and the encouragement of unconventional ideas, is to challenge our views; to keep pushing us onwards in development. In politics, the stagnation found when a party can rely on a dominant vote removes many of the incentives for that party to toil in the interests of the people, as they are under no pressure to fight for votes. The controversial stance President Mbeki took on the AIDs problem in South Africa (essentially denying a crisis which has reportedly infected 1 in 10) was a worrying sign of this potential loss of touch with the ANC’s voters and aims. If South African politics does indeed stagnate, it is unlikely we will ever see the ANC push on with its aim of empowering the weakest in society, with anything like the determination evident in its great history of struggle against apartheid. The principles inherent in which, provide the emancipating positive-liberty view that is needed to help the majority of South Africans who still live in poverty, beset by a growing AIDS crisis. It may be that the split of the COPE faction will offer an acceptable alternative to some of the ANC voters, but until another party can present a legitimate challenge to the ANC, the marketplace of South African politics will be devoid of the competition needed to ensure that this fine organisation (or its opposition) sees 2012 as the beginning of a new century of struggle for liberation, rather than the end of an old one.

Ben Waistell is a second year politics and philosophy student at University College, Durham. He was a member of the youth parliament for a term when he was 15, during which time he chaired the transport committee. He has worked with the local council and on behalf of his local MP and spoken on transport, health issues and drug legalisation.

Nick Clegg wishes Lib Dem rallies looked a bit like this.

A little Christmas fun

Here is one minute of Christmas fun. Hope you enjoy….

A Labour Party we could work with

If there is no outright winner of the next general election, who should the Liberal Democrats form a coalition with in 2015? Is the deal sealed with the Conservatives, or can the hatchet be buried with Labour? That is a question that will trouble strategists of all three parties as the next year, and the two following, develop.

John Kampfner has explained why he thinks that the Lib Dem’s future lies with the Labour Party, while  Labour Leader Ed Miliband has indulged in petty personality politics in refusing to even consider an alliance as long as Nick Clegg remains leader. So could the Lib Dems  really work with Labour?

It’s not as crazy as it might sound. It’s not as if the Tories are a natural fit for a party that likes to see itself as “of the Left”. Admittedly, the Conservatives may be far more sensible than the borrow-and-be-damned Labour Party when it comes to deficit reduction, but the Labour Party are in opposition; in government, we all know Labour would have introduced cuts deeper than those introduced under Margaret Thatcher. In opposition, the Conservatives made many loud and populist noises that they knew they would have to ditch once they were in power.

So, can the Lib Dems work with Labour? It depends very much upon which Labour you are talking about. The tax-and-spend, borrow-and-spend, ignore-falling-productivity-and-spend Labour Party can never be allowed to reign again. They were a menace to the British Public and left the UK in no position to face a global recession.

Neither can we willingly join forces with a Labour Party that is willing to keep interest rates artificially low just to achieve unsustainable short-term growth. But then, we should say the same about the Conservatives, who created the Lawson Boom that turned into the recession of 1990-92 and are again hoping to fuel the UK economy with a bout of cheap credit.

But the Labour Party’s legacy was not all bad. This was the party that stood against prejudice and allowed the hard-working, entrepreneurial people of Eastern Europe to come to our country, “steal” jobs nobody wanted, create lots of jobs they people <i>did</i> want and pay a bucket load of tax in the process. The Tories, by comparison, are poisoning the UK economy with their anti-immigration bias.

This was also the party that, famously, was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.” That may seem an unpopular sentiment now, but one should remember the words of the Liberal Prime Minster and leading light of New (now irritatingly re-labelled “social”) Liberalism, Herbert Asquith, who observed that:

“Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests … Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks, and shall seek more in the future, to build up a minimum standard for the mass…”

There is nothing wrong with extreme wealth. There is something wrong with hopeless poverty. A Labour Party that was more interested in social mobility and wealth creation and less interested in envy and wealth destruction, that was willing to adopt fiscal prudence and spend within its means, that was willing to put petty personality politics aside and work for the good of the country… That is a Labour Party that we could work with.

The draft National Planning Policy Framework: Hold course; then go further

The government’s proposals to reform Britain’s planning laws have been a welcome island of deregulation in a sea of disappointment.

Both coalition partners went into the 2010 election promising a bonfire of regulation, but by February 2011 Ed Davey, the Better Regulation minister, was admitting in the Commons that not much had actually happened.

In that light, the Draft National Planning Policy Framework is genuinely a step in the right direction. It reduces planning policy from an eye-watering 1,000 pages to a perfectly accessible 52 pages. This is no small matter: irrespective of the content of any regulatory framework, a thousand pages is beyond the ability of anybody to read, comprehend and apply, unless they are a professional with the time and resources to devote to the task. 52 pages, by comparison, is easily managed by an amateur who needs to understand what the national planning rules are – which includes very large numbers of people, including very possibly you, if you or one of your neighbours decides they want to build an extension or develop a piece of land.

But the government should go further….

…and if you want to read further, please visit the Adam Smith Institute website, where you may also leave comments.

The horror of development in the era before the Town and Country Planning Acts.

Government confirms time travel has been cracked!

In a written statement issued issued yesterday the Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, announced that he will “publish a consultation on tobacco products in Spring 2012″. He also says that the Government has commissioned an “independent academic review of the existing evidence relevant to the effects of tobacco packaging” that will be made available at the same time.

We can’t help but scratch our heads over here and wonder if the government has not only discovered time travel – but has a Time Lord doing this evidence review. FANTASTIC!

After all, the UK review of the evidence will be completed by Spring 2012…. and the first country in the world to experiment nationally with plain packaging, Australia, is not set to see plain packaged tobacco products reach the shelves until ….December 2012. What “evidence” can there be right now to review? If they have not mastered time travel it must mean…….oh…..  they are looking at lots of focus groups and lab tests, modelling and hypothecations that various organisations  have made up. Yes we can hear one huge collective groan out there at the very thought.

How very odd really, given that genuine evidence will start coming on stream from Australia  just six months or so after this Government review on plain packs is done – why do a trawl of all the made up stuff now?  What a monumental waste of money and – given the wider problems facing the NHS right now, what a waste of time and effort.We thought they were trying to save money ????

Still, it is nearly Christmas – and with the Dr Who Christmas special just round the corner- we’re hanging on to the hope that it’s the time travel explanation after all.