The content on this page is not written by Polity.org.za, but is supplied by third parties. This content does not constitute news reporting by Polity.org.za.

My dear friends and fellow South Africans,

Last month I participated in a delegation to Berlin, Bonn and Brussels
under the auspices of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Mr Mosiuoa Lekota
from the Congress of the People as well as leaders of centre-right
parties in Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Kenya and the
Democratic Republic of Congo were present. We held a one day
Conference in Brussels: Elections in Sub-Sahara Africa: new dynamics
in the party systems. The political context of the Conference was that
Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa have now held their
fourth general elections since their democratic transition in the 1990s.

We interrogated the key issues pertaining to the health of democracy
in sub-Saharan Africa. In all four countries, former liberation
movements continue to dominate political and social-economic life and
traditional opposition parties find it difficult to gain traction and
carve a space. In response to widening discontent with their ruling
parties, new political movements have emerged in Southern Africa. The
pertinent question is, of course, how much support will they be able
to garner?

Further away, Uganda established its multi-party system in 2005 and
held its first competitive elections in 2006. For the forthcoming
elections scheduled for the beginning of 2011, observers fear a
similar eruption of violence that marred the elections in Kenya in
2007 and 2008. We asked what lessons can be learned for the region
from the Kenyan example?

Moving eastwards, the first pluralist presidential and democratic
elections were organised in 2006, but due to a fragmented party system
and an opportunistic political culture, opposition parties are met
with substantial difficulties to gain support for their political
alternatives. We asked, will local government elections in the DRC
provide political opportunities for opposition parties'? En passant,
one should mention that though all democracies represented provide
serious challenges, we should be particularly concerned that, from a
political science perspective, the DRC is tipping perilously close to
being a collapsed state like Somalia.

The most vivid impression one took away from this superb one-day
conference was the striking similarities between our democratic
cultures. I was delighted that with the intervention of myself and
that of the Honourable Lekota's, we almost formed a unified picture of
the South African scenario. As in 2005, all party leaders reported
without exception, about the inexorable tendency of ruling-parties to
blur the dividing lines between the ruling-party and the state the
longer their incumbency stretches out. Both Mr Lekota and I expressed
the view that in South Africa we are beginning to see the green shoots
of an authentic democratic culture.

I argued that the opposition, despite the electoral preponderance of
the ruling-party, is inculcating an understanding among the citizenry
of the interconnected linkages between the burgeoning culture of
entitlement and institutional incapacity within the state as key
factors in both the enrichment of an ANC low-level kleptocracy (you
could, I think it is fair to say, insert any of ruling parties of the
countries represented here), and the failure of the public service
delivery on the other hand.

When we met in Berlin in 2005, I had opined how difficult it was to
explain a highly theoretical concept in a procedural democracy with
"solidified" voting patterns. I said that while the electorate has
started to join the dots, the electoral tree has not yet yielded much
fruit for the opposition ? apart from the Democratic Alliance's
success in the Western Cape. But I am convinced that the polar icecap,
which is South African politics, has at least begun to thaw, and on a
lighter note considering the life and death nature of the situation
that is being discussed in Copenhagen, this is one form of
geopolitical warming we can welcome.

All leaders, as I review my notes, observed that their parties have
been vulnerable to the chequebook politicking and random acts of
electoral irregularities. I informed the leaders of how here,
according to the Sunday Times, the ANC used state resources to deliver
food parcels to bribe voters in April's general election. And by way
of anecdote, According to Mr Daviz Simango, the award winning Mayor of
Beira in Mozambique, the President had seven helicopters at his
disposal for the election campaign. We all felt that we do not receive
a fair wind from our respective media houses.

On this note, I laid out what I believe are the clear challenges for
the IFP to play its full role in South African politics: in order to
attract new voters, the IFP, has to find a way to challenge the
negative view of the party in constituencies that have not previously
voted IFP. This was a recurring theme from all leaders pertaining to
their own parties. In order to do so, we must be fearless in taking on
entrenched orthodoxies in the academic establishment. We all also
agreed that we had to find new ways of getting our public policy
messages into the public domain, despite the media fixation with
personalities ? one of the banes of modern political culture. In
short, the opposition needs to be associated in the public mind with
issues like climate change and social justice.

We also attended the European People's Party Congress in Bonn which
represents the centre-right governments of the European Union. It is
the largest group within the European Parliament following the recent
elections. There were excellent contributions on how Christian
Democracy and the social market should be shaped in the twenty-first
century in order to respond to the challenges of globalisation. I had
the privilege of listening to the likes of German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Silvia Berlusconi and Prime Minister
Yulia Tymoshenko, one of the famous leaders of the Ukraine's "Orange
Revolution". One was struck in particular by the rousing passion of
the leaders from the former Communist countries in the East. They, of
course, know how precious freedom and authentic democracy is.

We were in Berlin just a few weeks after the twentieth anniversary
celebrations of the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the famous Velvet
Revolution that swept the detritus of Communism away. We were reminded
of the example of Poland's solidarity that began in the gritty
shipyards of Gdansk. Solidarity, we know, united all Poles
irrespective of creed, class and, yes, politics, in the common
endeavour to defeat the evil of totalitarianism. Solidarity won
Poland's first democratic election and the courageous Lech Walsea
became the first president. Today, Solidarity is no longer represented
in Poland, as a vibrant multi-party system has taken root. The brave
Poles are now, once again, at the heart of Europe and a member of the
EU family. The lesson is clear for us all in Africa: no party ? or
politician ? has a freehold on power. Let opposition take heart!