Decolonising and re-theorising the meaning of democracy_ A South African perspective.pdf

878097 research-article2019 SOR0010.1177/0038026119878097The Sociological ReviewBrooks et al. 1 Article Decolonising and re-theorising the meaning of democracy: A South African perspective The Sociological Review The Sociological Review 2020, Vol. 68(1) 17–32 © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guide...

878097 research-article2019 SOR0010.1177/0038026119878097The Sociological ReviewBrooks et al. 1 Article Decolonising and re-theorising the meaning of democracy: A South African perspective The Sociological Review The Sociological Review 2020, Vol. 68(1) 17–32 © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026119878097 DOI: 10.1177/0038026119878097 journals.sagepub.com/home/sor Heidi Brooks Political and International Studies Programme, IIE MSA, and Centre for Social Change, University of Johannesburg, South Africa Trevor Ngwane Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg, South Africa Carin Runciman Centre for Social Change, University of Johannesburg, South Africa Abstract Historically and today, social movements have often been at the forefront of envisioning the content of democracy. Although democracy itself is a contested concept, in general, definitions and measures of democracy are often drawn from the canon and experiences of the global North. Contributing to the growing decolonisation movement in the social sciences, this article examines understandings of democracy in the context of post-apartheid South Africa. It considers how ordinary people conceptualise democracy through an examination of its understanding in isiZulu, one of South Africa’s most dominant vernacular languages, and through analysing how democracy is understood and practised at the grassroots, by citizens mobilised in community protests. It is argued that popular understandings and expectations of democracy are rooted in traditions of popular organisation that emerged in the struggle against apartheid, and in the experiences of many citizens of the post-1994 state. Crucially, the article draws attention to the tensions between grassroots understandings and visions of democracy and that which has been articulated by the governing African National Congress (ANC). By rooting the analysis of democracy within local histories, practices and contexts, the article provides lessons for democratic theorists by illuminating how citizens and popular organisations articulate the current crisis of democracy and its possible alternatives, promoting a re-imagination of normative democratic thought based on ideas of democracy from below. Corresponding author: Heidi Brooks, Political and International Studies Programme, Faculty of Social and Health Sciences, IIE MSA, Roodepoort, 1725, South Africa. Email: [email protected] 2 18 The Sociological Review 68(1) Keywords decoloniality, democracy, democratic theory, isiZulu, protest, South Africa Introduction We say democracy in Setswana kgololosego, we are free, but to our side, we don’t see democracy, we just see a bad life. Because they [the ANC] say a better life but to our side it’s a bad life. So, I don’t think they [the ANC are] using that word democracy properly Baba Nhlapo1 lives in a village in Kuruman, a rural area in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Kuruman came to national prominence when protests over the state of roads connecting rural areas closed schools for over a year in 2014 (Matebesi, 2017). While the protests themselves centred on demands for infrastructure, in speaking to protesters both here and in other parts of the country it has become clear that such protests are about more than just the provision of basic services but are indicative of a wider crisis of the meaning and content of post-apartheid democracy. As Baba Nhlapo indicates above, there is a difference between the governing party’s conceptualisation of democracy ‘from above’ and the understandings and practices of citizens ‘from below’. Analysts concerned with measuring democracy often question the extent to which ordinary people understand democracy ‘properly’ (see Cho, 2014; Dalton, Sin, & Willy, 2007). Such measurements are often, however, implicitly or explicitly, developed from an understanding of democracy that is premised on the experience and development of democracy in the West (Koelble & Lipuma, 2008, p. 1). The result is often the exclusion of considerable bodies of knowledge that exist in postcolonial societies about the conceptualisation, practice and struggle for democracy. The insight provided by Baba Nhlapo above, highlights not just the possibility of conceptualisations of democracy that go beyond the Western canon – based on the histories and lived experiences within postcolonial states – but also the contentions within it. Contributing to a wider understanding of postcolonial democracies, this article offers a reflection on the meaning of democracy in South Africa by examining how it is understood by ordinary citizens and how this may, at times, diverge from the vision of the governing party and former liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC). The article seeks to show how the very experience of the struggle for democracy itself can imprint in important ways on citizens’ expectations of its theory and practice. The article thus responds to the decolonisation movement by seeking to ‘de-centre’ normative understandings of democracy often constructed on the basis of Western histories (Dastile & Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013; Grosfoguel, 2007; Mbembe, 2015; Mignolo, 2011). Our research shows not only an emerging distinction between democracy from above and below, but the desire amongst South Africans for more radical forms of democracy as found in democratic theory. As such, the conceptual intersection from which popular views of democracy emerge reflects both the importance of the decolonial project (and its emphasis on “pluriversality”)2 and the simultaneous claiming by South Africans of values espoused in participatory democracy. 3 Brooks et al. 19 The article brings together research undertaken by each of the authors and draws upon three separate sets of interview data. To explore the meanings of democracy in isiZulu, Trevor Ngwane conducted 12 interviews with Zulu-speaking residents of Mbazwana, a remote town in northern KwaZulu-Natal to examine how democracy is conceptualised in isiZulu, the most widely spoken of South Africa’s 11 official languages.3 The analysis highlights the, often overlooked, interpretations found in indigenous languages of democracy as a theory and practice, and the role of history and political change in shaping popular conceptions. Secondly, the article examines the meanings attached to democracy by people involved in community protests. These interview data are derived from the Rebellion of the Poor research project, conducted by the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, that both Trevor Ngwane and Carin Runciman have worked upon alongside Kate Alexander. This is a quantitative and qualitative research project that examines the organisation and politics of community protests in South Africa (see Alexander, 2010; Alexander et al., 2018). Since 2012, the project has conducted 350 interviews with protesters across the country. Questions about the nature and quality of post-apartheid democracy are a prominent theme to have emerged from this research. Finally, the article draws upon research by Heidi Brooks (see Brooks, 2017, 2018) into the development of democratic thought in the ANC. The research draws upon historic documents, statements and commentary of the ANC, as well as in-depth interviews with current and former ANC activists and officials on the ANC’s conception of democracy and participation, as both a liberation movement and later a government in power. While the combination of these data by no means provides a nationally representative sample, we argue that their value lies, not only in the insight they provide into conceptions of democracy in South Africa’s most dominant vernacular language, but also in the powerful role that activists and protesters play in South Africa in shaping the understanding and content of democracy – both historically and today. The article thus reflects a decolonial approach. Our concerns to de-centre democratic theory do not operate at a level of epistemological abstraction but reflect and engage with contemporary and popular struggles unfolding in South African society (see Pailey, 2019). The analysis highlights, in particular, a commonality amongst those interviewed of a conception of democracy as freedom, both in terms of the civil and political freedoms denied to the majority under apartheid, and in terms of socio-economic freedoms and the realisation of social justice, defined and understood in relation to the post-apartheid past. The article also reflects on the role of the liberation struggle in shaping popular ideas and expectations of democracy, highlighting how the experience and practice of struggle engendered for many people the vision of a participatory democratic future. It also identifies, however, a tension between the forms of democracy enacted during the struggle and those envisioned by the ANC. While the ANC’s history is as a broad social movement, its governance since 1994 has, paradoxically, become a form of democracy from above. The article ends by reflecting on what the analysis of local understandings and historical context may mean for democratic theory, considering the ways in which a decolonised and contextual analysis of democracy ‘from below’ might require the reimagination of normative democratic thought. 4 20 The Sociological Review 68(1) Decoloniality and democracy In recent times, debates about decolonisation and how it might be achieved in sociology, and beyond, have entered the mainstream of sociological debates (see Connell, 2018). How we might decolonise is open to wide interpretation. On one end of the spectrum there are those who advocate the production of indigenous knowledge systems separate from the alien influence of the coloniser – thus perpetuating, paradoxically, the assumption that there is only one episteme. This, as Connell (2018) highlights, is the ‘alibi for Eurocentrisim’ (2018, p. 404). Others advocate an approach that de-centres and draws more holistically upon the histories and experiences outside the dominant centres of knowledge production (Bhambra, 2014; Dastile & Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013; Grosfoguel, 2007; Mbembe, 2015; Mignolo, 2011). Debates about democracy in the African continent follow a similar trajectory. There are those who argue that democracy is a colonial and imperial imposition and incompatible with African political and social systems. While other scholars argue that democracy is not a Western imposition. Indeed, as Steven Friedman highlights, citizens of the global South have, time and again, demonstrated their desire for ‘the rights and freedoms that democracy offers’ (2019, pp. ix, 59). However, and as we believe some of our data highlight, the democracy that many people are in search of neither emulates a model of democracy based on the Western ‘norm’, nor rejects elements of what might be described as liberal democracy. As Walter Mignolo argues, ‘decoloniality focuses on changing the terms of the conversation and not only its content’ (2011, p. 275): It requires what he describes as epistemic disobedience (Mignolo, 2011, p. 277). Yet, as this article seeks to show, the very nature of the liberation struggle in South Africa necessitates an appreciation of the hybridity of popular conceptions of democracy. It is a hybridity which draws upon alternative means of collective existence which challenge the confines of liberal democratic theory while also being shaped by forms of anti-apartheid resistance located in democratic ideals. As such, while the article seeks to contribute to debates on decolonisation, its starting point is not decolonial theory, but popular struggles taking place on the ground. These subaltern struggles, these authors argue, have much to tell us about the understandings of democracy often overlooked in conceptions from above. Understanding democracy from below Our approach to analysing the meanings of democracy advanced by working class Black African citizens advances along two lines of enquiry. One, to analyse how democracy is conceptualised in isiZulu and, two, to analyse how protesters involved in community protest in South Africa discuss democracy when translated into English. In combining these perspectives, we draw attention both to how processes of translation are often a form of epistemic violence that erases meaning, but also the importance of translation ‘as a practice of plurality... articulating a common ground for challenging modernity hegemony’ (Vazques, 2011, p. 41). Participants in Mbazwana were asked, ‘What is democracy in isiZulu language? (‘Yini i-democracy ngolimi lwesiZulu na?’). All the respondents referred to democracy as 5 Brooks et al. 21 ‘intando yeningi’, which literally translates into ‘the will of the majority’. In isiZulu, ‘intando’ is a noun whose meaning is equivalent to the English ‘[political] will’. However, linguistically, it is related to the root verb ‘thanda’ which means ‘to love’. Strictly speaking, therefore, democracy in isiZulu refers to ‘what the majority loves’ insofar as the language does not distinguish between the nouns ‘love’ and ‘will’. Based on the dominance of the Zulu language in terms of the number of people who speak or understand it, ‘intando yeningi’ is arguably the most prevalent vernacular interpretation of the word ‘democracy’ in use in South Africa, and is used in Zulu newspapers, in politics and in schools. However, some Zulu linguistic experts dispute the translation of ‘democracy’ into ‘intando yeningi’ on two grounds. Firstly, they argue that there is no valid equivalence of meaning between the nouns ‘love’ and ‘will’. The subtext to this criticism is that to define democracy as ‘what the people love’ is a distortion that may lead people to misconstrue democracy as ‘licence’ or ‘doing what you like’. This is arguably a conservative interpretation, concerned with the ‘disorder’ and lack of ‘discipline’ or ‘respect’ that some Zulu cultural moralists associate with modernity and the democratic order, in particular. Secondly, they refer to the Greek etymology of the term ‘democracy’, pointing out that it means ‘rule by the people’. A literal Zulu translation, they argue, would therefore be ‘umbuso wabantu’. ‘Umbuso’ refers to ‘rule’, ‘state’, ‘government’ or ‘authority’ and ‘wabantu’ means ‘of the people’. Interestingly, ‘umbuso’ also means the ‘good life’ or ‘autonomous living’. In isiZulu, rather than democracy being named ‘umbuso wabantu’ (meaning: rule by the people or rule of the people), it became ‘intando yeningi’ (meaning: will of the majority or, by implication, rule by the majority). The political project of fighting for universal franchise in South Africa apparently shaped the choice of terminology used in the Zulu interpretation of democracy. At the time, it was popular to speak of the struggle for ‘one man one vote’, with the clear implication that what was being demanded was majority rule. The importance of ‘iningi’ (the majority) was reinforced by the struggle for and against the protection of ‘minority rights’. The Zulu language watchdog therefore blames political and societal leaders for promoting an incorrect translation or interpretation of democracy into isiZulu guided by political imperatives. Democracy as the practice of freedom In discussing democracy with our interview participants, whether the topic arose organically during the course of discussions about protest or more explicitly about its meaning in isiZulu, it is notable that there was a commonality of democracy understood as freedom: a conception of democracy related not only to civil and political rights but to socioeconomic freedoms and collective decision making. The centrality of freedom to popular understandings of democracy is not especially surprising, nor is it unique to South Africa. In Uganda, for example, Karlström (1996) has found that the words used to mean democracy most closely translated as freedom or liberty. Yet, while the conceptualisation of freedom may not be unique, arguably the context is. In South Africa, the post-apartheid state and its history of colonial settlement and majority dispossession are central to the understanding of democracy. On the one hand, the notion of democracy as ‘freedom’ and its connotations with a liberal 6 22 The Sociological Review 68(1) tradition of democratic thought is contentious in the history of South Africa. Liberalism’s pursuit of freedom of the individual is sometimes seen as undermining efforts to erase apartheid’s legacy of inequality and to provide the required upliftment of the Black majority through protecting minority (read ‘White’) rights. Yet, as the following discussion shows, freedom in South Africa has also come to be associated with an ongoing struggle for socio-economic rights as a form of freedom which has not been guaranteed by liberal constitutionalism. It is, in a sense, a reclaimed and decolonised meaning of freedom. In interviews, the context of the apartheid past was often central to how participants discussed democracy. Baba Qekiso from Daveyton drew attention to the historic denial of freedom of movement and speech. The fact that these freedoms now legally exist meant that, for him, the ‘ANC has done its job’. Since we went through apartheid it [democracy] means freedom. You can go wherever you like, we’re also talking about freedom of speech, do you understand? In the past they would say blacks one side and whites one side, do you understand?... We’re now able to live in suburbs with Boers and everywhere... No, ANC has done its job.4 Another participant, Baba Mbatha from Ermelo, drew attention to civil and political rights, such as freedom of speech and gender equality. Interestingly, he also discussed ‘freedom of participation’, a theme we shall return to. Democracy to me it simply means to be free, freedom of speech, freedom of participation, it means not judged by colour, it means gender equality is balanced and taken serious... Yes, I would say South Africa is a democratic country... it’s not perfect but I agree that South Africa is a democratic country. The importance of civil liberties and personal freedoms to the meaning of democracy also corresponds to findings from a nationally representative survey by Afrobarometer. When asked the open-response question, ‘what if anything does democracy mean to you?’, 48% provided an answer related to civil liberties and/or personal freedoms (Afrobarometer, 2015). As demonstrated above, there was general agreement amongst our research participants that when measured against the protection of political and civil rights, South Africa was generally considered to be a democracy. However, many of our participants felt less sure about democratic quality when it came to the idea of socioeconomic rights and freedoms. When the ANC came to power in 1994, it promised ‘a better life for all’. A key feature of this better life was the extension of basic services such as housing, water and electricity, which were historically denied to the majority of the population. The history of racially stratified access to services means that such goods take on a wider symbolic meaning as a mechanism to address past injustices and an important measure of democracy. Indeed, national surveys have found that South Africans are much more likely to emphasise the realisation of socio-economic outcomes as crucial to democracy than citizens in neighbouring countries (Mattes, Davids, & Africa, 2000). Since 1994 there has been vast and undoubted improvement in the extension of basic services. But these services have been extended through neoliberal cost-recovery 7 Brooks et al. 23 principles, meaning that, although 90% of the population now have access to piped water, many households are simply unable to afford access (Von Schnitzler, 2008). In a society that is regularly considered to be the most unequal in the world (World Bank, 2018), this has created a paradox in the post-apartheid settlement: at the moment that rights were extended to all citizens for the first time, the extension of these rights has been undermined by a neoliberal logic that restricts them on the basis of the ability to pay. For many, post-apartheid South Africa is far from ‘a better life for all’ and these lived experiences play a crucial role in shaping how democracy is both defined and evaluated. For interviewees that had been involved in protest, poverty was often something that they felt excluded them from democracy, as Mama Zwane from Khayelitsha reflects: Hai, man!... we don’t have democracy! They talking about the 20 years democracy, for them not for us! Ja, for them, not for us. We still struggling. We still struggling... you see if we are in democracy there’s no more shack, here... No more bucket system... we supposed to have the roads, everything! A better education... I’m staying with my family, we stay eight! In two rooms. There is a democracy?... No, there is not a democracy! They have, these people in Constantia, Tableview, Parklands, they have a democracy, not for us! From this perspective, the freedom granted by democracy is a thin form of freedom. It may bring about institutional and procedural change. However, as one of our Zulu interviewees, Baba Sibiya, reflected, there can be no real democracy when a certain standard of living is not guaranteed for all – a standard of living only possible if people have jobs: So, ukungabikho kwemisebenzi kusho ukulamba komuntu, ukulamba komuntu kusho ukugqilazeka kwakhe. Incindezelo. Inqilazo leyo, le ekhona ngalesikhathi esithi thina incindezelo yaphela, ikhona-ke lapho. (So, the lack of jobs means hunger for the human being, hunger for the human being means s/ he is oppressed... It is oppression. That is the suppression which continues during this time where we say oppression has ended, it is still there.) A distinctive aspect of Zulu conceptions of democracy, based on the interviews conducted for this research, is not only democracy as freedom but democracy as an ongoing struggle for a better life. In the latter sense, democracy, as the Zulu respondents suggest, is problematised: it is not fixed, nor defined by institutional processes and letters of the law, but constitutes for ordinary people an ongoing struggle. Remarks from another interviewee, Mama Sally, a small business entrepreneur, in addition to noting the plight of women-headed households, sought to more generally underline socio-economic divisions: Loluhlelo oselukhona lwentando yeningi luhle kubantu abanemali. Ubona ukuthi kahle kahle lusebenza kulabobantu. Ngoba uma ungenamali intando yeningi ayikusizi ngalutho. (The system of democracy that exists today is good for those with money. It works very very well for those people. If you don’t have money, democracy does not help you in any way.) 8 24 The Sociological Review 68(1) In sum, a distinctive aspect of Zulu conceptions of democracy, based on the interviews conducted mostly in northern Zululand, is that democracy is not only freedom but is understood as an ongoing struggle for a better life. It is not experienced as a gift from the elite or the ANC, but is understood, problematised and used in the struggle to improve everyday life. Race, class and gender dynamics need to be factored in. Democracy as consensus Another prominent theme that arose in discussions of democracy was ideas around collective living and/or decision making. This is perhaps something which particularly distinguishes postcolonial understandings of democracy from Euro-American thinking. In the former, the self and community are often inextricably conceptually linked (Koelble & Lipuma, 2008). For Baba Sibiya, democracy was seen as a collective way of life: Uma esigodini abantu bebonke mabethi kuphilwa kanje bavumelane bonke, babeyiphila leyompilo abayinqumela ukuyiphila, bonke. Okusho ukuthi intando yeningi yayithi ukuvela khona lapho ngoba uma bethi siphila kanje thina esigodini bonke abantu bazoyiphila leyompilo. (If and when all the people who live in one area decide to live a certain way and all agree to that, then all would live that way. The will of the majority emerged in that context because if they decided on that way of life everyone would live that life.) Baba Sibiya went on to add ‘Uma sesifuna uburight bayo iright ngokuthi uma nabo becabange kahle basithatha isinqumo, lesinqumo abasithathile siyabasiza abantu abaningi’ (If we want its rightness [correctness of democracy], it is right [good] because if the people take a well thought out decision, such a decision will help many people). Here, he arguably sees democracy as a system of making collective decisions that are binding, and of finding a common good. A key idea underlying the practice of collective decision making is also the understanding that the outcome is consensual. In our interviews with protesters, it is government’s failure to consult, and thus engage in a form of collective decision making, that is at the core of community grievances. As Baba Sentle from Khutsong explained, the protests about demarcation that engulfed Khutsong over a three-year period were ‘to show this government that consult first, and even if you consult, if people don’t agree with you, accept their disagreement’. The idea of consensual decision making is, as Friedman (2019) suggests, the most consistent alternative to Western liberal democracy proposed by African scholars. Both Wiredu (2001) and Wamala (2004) argue that consensual decision making is intrinsic to African societies. In the South African context, ideas around collective decision making emerge from diverse traditions, rooted in memories of traditional governance as well as in the traditions of direct democracy developed in the struggle against apartheid. Pre-colonial traditional African councils (‘imbizo’, ‘pitso’ or ‘kgotla’), in which all members of a tribe could participate, and the rudimentary principles of participatory democracy cultivated by popular organisations of the 1980s, shape local memory and popular practice. Our research supports Friedman’s (2019) view that ordinary people in Africa continue to support and participate in formal 9 Brooks et al. 25 democratic processes even as they admire or are influenced by memories of past decision making practices. While there is not space to explore the lineage of the traditional councils here, the establishment of popular structures in the 1980s and their continuity today are discussed in the subsequent section. The role of liberation histories Democracy is most often analysed within the contours of a nation state. In a postcolonial context, the boundaries of the nation state and the content of its democracy are inevitably entangled in its colonial history. In the case of South Africa, the anti-apartheid struggle played an important role in shaping the new democratic project, both in the forms of popular organisation it engendered and in the role played by the liberation movement. The struggle for liberation, led by the ANC, sought national and political unity, shunning difference and division in the name of a common purpose. Thus, ethnic identities, such as ‘being Zulu’, have largely been eclipsed by a South African national political identity (Piper, 2009, p. 402). The ANC’s unitary discourse, however, has had implications for the notion of democracy it advanced. In considering how liberation histories have shaped democratic thinking in South Africa, we identify two traditions: a tradition from below, most visible in the 1980s and shaped predominately by domestic resistance to apartheid; and a tradition from above, shaped by the then-exiled but dominant liberation movement, the ANC. While there are commonalities and mutual influences in these traditions, there are also key points of difference. Building democratic traditions from below While we recognise that grassroots ideas of democracy extend back beyond the 1980s, this decade in the struggle against apartheid was particularly significant as a period in which the civic and independent trade union movements were able to forge democratic spaces in the shadow of a repressive state. Importantly, these are traditions that continue to inform community organising today. In the 1970s, trade unions for Black Africans, who, at the time, were not legally recognised as employees, began to grow. A key tenet of the emergent movement was the need for democratic accountability. What emerged was a vibrant democratic culture in which shop stewards were elected directly by workers and acted on the mandates of the membership (Adler & Webster, 1995). As the trade union movement grew, other forms of resistance to apartheid also emerged, in particular through the civic movement – community and residents’ organisations, formed predominantly in township communities, to address local material needs. These two developments were not unconnected as many of the leading shop stewards in the trade unions also became central in the civic movement (Swilling, 1993). As such, the ethos of bottom-up control and accountability that had developed within organised labour was similarly brought into the civics. Mass mobilisation and the threat of state repression facilitated the civic movement’s break with previous traditions of top-down organisation, reliant upon a predominantly middle class leadership, and saw the building of new forms of organisation rooted amongst local communities and geared towards the resolution of local struggles (Murray, 1994). Through the United Democratic Front 10 26 The Sociological Review 68(1) (UDF) – an umbrella organisation housing a multitude of civic and sectoral organisations, and aligned to the banned ANC – local community struggles were linked to demands for national change (UDF, c.1987). Accountability and internal democracy were, for many participants, a crucial feature of the civics, and the pyramid structures of popular committees they established became known as ‘organs of people’s power’. Premised on the idea of forging ‘people’s power’, the civics encouraged people to solve their own problems within their own local structures, organising to fill gaps in state-provided services and implementing their own community initiatives. Although the civics saw themselves as working in consensus-driven ways, reality was, of course, often more complex and contradictory. Cherry (2000) documents how the civic movement in Kwazakele township in Port Elizabeth, while building structures embodying radical and participatory democratic principles, was also often intolerant of political differences. A democratic weakness of the organs of people’s power was sometimes their failure to allow for alternative views. The constitution of popular structures, from street committees to other modes of community organisation and problem solving, spoke to a desire on the part of ordinary people to see a future democratic society built upon such principles and practices. Former 1980s civic activist and trade unionist, Baba Tsenoli remarked in an interview that democracy would constitute something much deeper than electing people to parliament; it would also involve the everyday participation of ordinary people in decision making. From the 1990s, not only did many of those individuals with roots in the civic and trade union movements participate in government policy formulation to institute participatory decision making (Brooks, 2017, p. 108), but also the ideas and expectations of participatory democracy continue within civil society and popular structures today. Ngwane’s (2016) research into amakomiti (‘popular committees’) in South African informal settlements demonstrates the range of self-organised structures that continue to exist for the organisation of social life for the working class. Ngwane documents seven forms of such committees present in the settlements he studied, each of which reflects differing forms of relation to the state. While some committees have a formal or institutionalised relationship with the state, others are independent but may still engage it. In analysing amakomiti, Ngwane argues that they represent ‘democracy on the margins’. First, and foremost, they are a response to the everyday challenges of living in informal settlements. However, they also provide a space in which democracy is given meaning through practice: from community members deciding collectively how space should be divided between households, to mediating domestic disputes and deciding how to organise for the state provision of basic services. Amakomiti tend to try and make decisions in consensus seeking ways, echoing the traditions of deliberation in traditional African councils as well as within the civic movement of the 1980s. The process of reaching ‘consensus’ is complex and ongoing within amakomiti and majority rule is also an accepted practice. While these spaces create open platforms for local and direct democracy it is also important to recognise that they reflect their own, often gendered, power dynamics, and while meetings may give the appearance of open deliberative democracy, majorities can be organised and leaders often have wide scope to make decisions on behalf of the community (see Pointer, 2005; Runciman, 2014). With respect to consensus, this highlights some of the 11 Brooks et al. 27 challenges, both at the local level and when scaled up into a system of governance. As Eze (1997) and Hountondji (2002) discuss, a danger in consensus is that it can perpetuate the common interests of those in power or suppress differences. While these practical difficulties cannot be denied, this does not deny the significance placed on the idea and practice of consensus by citizens. A democratic tradition from above Although the ANC has been the governing party since 1994, it still lays claim to the movement traditions that were forged during the liberation struggle. Many of the activities of the civic movement, discussed above, were interwoven with an allegiance to the ANC. The UDF, in many ways, acted as a legal front for the ANC in South Africa. The bottom-up traditions of democratic organisation in South Africa, and the movement that became known as ‘people’s power’, were claimed by the ANC in exile. The ANC’s claim to a movement tradition is thus derived from this historic allegiance. It is not insignificant that, as a movement of mass struggle, the ANC has historically understood its role as that of a ‘vanguard’ (Nzo, 1991) – an organisation able to provide the required leadership and sustain mass political consciousness towards identified revolutionary ends. The ANC today continues to make reference to itself as a ‘vanguard’ movement (ANC, 2012, p. 12). Yet the implications of the vanguard role for the meaning of democracy are important. Under the conditions of the 1980s, the ANC’s vanguard identity brought together a wide range of forces towards the achievement of national liberation. However, it nonetheless encompassed a top-down mode of operation in which the guiding hand of the movement was indispensable to achieving a united outlook. This approach was combined with the exigencies of operating as an exiled movement, guided by democratic centralism, and by the militarised command structures of its guerrilla operations and unavoidably clandestine character of its underground operations at home. In this environment, the role of people’s power, while exerting bottom-up control over local material challenges, constituted, at the level of the liberation struggle, vehicles of ANC revolutionary strategy (Brooks, 2018, p. 323). What has emerged with the forging of a democratic state, is a tension between democracy from above and below. In the present day, the ANC’s history as a mass movement adds complexity to its relationship with the people. The decades following the advent of democracy have seen a shift in the movement–people relationship, evidenced by the gradual unravelling of the ANC camp and the breakaway of individuals and groups historically loyal to the movement. This altered terrain reflects what the ANC has admitted to being a diminishing of its movement status and a weakening of its connection with the people (ANC, 2012). This rupture in the movement–people relationship, however, is also reflected in the fracturing of democratic traditions and increasing bureaucratisation. Expectations and demands for popular control and participatory decision making now come increasingly from outside of the movement – from within the arena of civil society, opposition parties and popular, community and sectoral organisations. Indeed, the language of ‘majority’ rule invoked by the liberation struggle has sometimes been used to undermine or silence critics of the ruling party. While public policy in South Africa has sought to embed a system of participatory democracy alongside representative government, it has become 12 28 The Sociological Review 68(1) entwined with the ANC’s historic conception of participation as a means of extending its own hegemony (Brooks, 2017). It is significant that popular organisations in the 1980s rarely interpreted their own vision of democracy as being at odds with that held by the liberation movement (see Brooks, 2018) – itself a reflection of the ANC’s own endeavour to establish hegemony over the domestic struggle. In a post-apartheid context, however, the conflation of participatory democracy with movement hegemony stands in tension not only with popular visions of democracy as a bottom-up process, but with the nuanced interpretations of democracy held by South Africa’s citizens. The borders and longevity of participatory democratic traditions in South Africa are tied to the connection between the ANC and the people. Democracy, from ‘below’, which emerged in the 1980s from within the ANC’s broad church, is today increasingly to be found outside of the movement. The reformist class compromise of South Africa’s transition and subsequent adoption of a predominantly neoliberal agenda have directly pitted the ANC against the masses, including its Alliance partners. Ironically, while bottom-up traditions of grassroots organisation and the notion of people’s power emerged from the ANC camp, the ANC’s own conception of democracy as governing party has gradually become that from ‘above’. Conclusion: Theorising democracy in the global South This article strives to make a contribution to the decolonisation of democratic theory through demonstrating the pluriversality of discussions and debates happening within contemporary South Africa. Challenging the model of procedural, representative democracy in which the role of citizens is limited to participation in elections, democratic theory since the latter part of the twentieth century has seen a renewed push for popular participation in civil and political life. Since the 2000s, this debate has increasingly been taken outside of its Euro-centric history towards the specific experiences of the global South. Here, far more than in the democracies of Western Europe and North America, the adoption and bedding-in of representative democratic systems and extension of formal rights have not realised what De Sousa Santos and Avritzer refer to as democracy’s ‘redistributive potentialities’ (2005, p. xxxv). It is in light of this democratic paradox that this article contributes to a theorisation of democracy in South Africa from the perspective of its inhabitants. An important component of debates about the quality of democracy in South Africa is framed by popular demands for greater participation, reflected in the rise of social movements and sectoral- and community-based protest. Whether challenging government policy or underscoring the failures of delivery, protest has come to be seen as a symptom not only of the failure of representative democracy but of citizens’ desire to engage government on the issues that affect their lives. Rather than understanding democracy simply as Dahl’s ‘polyarchy’ (1989), or as the attainment of political rights alone, popular organisations are increasingly raising questions about the broader societal features which constitute that democracy. In South Africa, as elsewhere, social movements are not struggling for liberal democracy, as such, but for what Arbatli describes as a deeper and more real form of participation (2017, p. 2). 13 Brooks et al. 29 In South Africa’s case, this resonates both with the traditions of the civic movement, which envisaged a radical form of democracy that went beyond representation, and with the practices of contemporary social and community movements encapsulated in the demand ‘nothing about us, without us’. Pointing to the failure of contemporary political systems to achieve substantive outcomes, De Sousa Santos and Avritzer label the contemporary struggle in the global South as one for the ‘democratization of democracy’ (2005, p. lxviii). Movement and community organisations are forcing a normative reconceptualisation of what democracy means and the expectations we should have of its practice. It should not, as Mama Zwane bemoaned, be ‘democracy for them, not for us’. It was noted earlier that interest in the trajectory and discourse of social movements and protest is increasingly being linked in the social sciences to the broader decolonisation project. An important facet of this, as we have argued, is understanding discourses of democracy within their social and historical settings. Drawing on the argument for a revision of ‘conventional approaches’ used to measure democracy (Koelble & Lipuma, 2008, p. 1), this article supports the need to understand and measure democracy in ways which take into account the specific histories and cultures of each setting. As Koelble and Lipuma argue, this is not a scientific exercise, neither is it ‘culturally neutral’ or a-historical (2008, p. 2), but must rather take into account the way in which ‘colonialism and its aftermaths have altered the conceptual fabrication of democracy for these states and for their citizenry’ (2008, p. 5). In this sense, it requires a process of thinking and re-imagining which takes place, not merely within a framework of Western epistemology, but, as Mignolo advocates, ‘in the borders of local histories confronting global designs’ (2011, p. 277). Yet it also does not warrant a rejection of existing democratic theory: in South Africa, the divisive nature of the apartheid state and its deliberate denial of democratic rights triggered a struggle for the opposite. As such, popular expectations of democracy have drawn upon a vision of a more equitable society underpinned by values located in the dominant epistemology. This does not, however, prevent us from examining the ways in which popular struggles are re-imagining these democratic values, and their practice, in light of their own experiences and vision. In addition to the institutional sphere of democratic spaces, forums for interaction with the state created by citizens themselves also constitute an important indicator of the state and quality of democracy (see Arbatli, 2017). In South Africa, protest has become a visible component of civil society activism amongst a portion of the electorate for whom the meaning of democracy is linked not only to political rights but to the politicaleconomy of survival. Formal citizenship, as Miraftab points out, brings only selective material inclusion (2009, p. 40). Drawing on Sandercock, she argues that ‘it is this disjunction between formal and substantive inclusion that motivates the contemporary practices of insurgent citizenship’ (2009, p. 40). Responses from the interviewees in this study perhaps suggest the need to not only re-think the nexus between the institutional and conceptual, but also to engage in a more considered reflection on Claude Ake’s historic distinction between the meaning of popular rule in Africa and that derived from Western experience (1993, 1996). For him, ordinary citizens in Africa do not separate out political democracy from economic democracy. Rather, achievement of political freedom itself should entail ‘social betterment’ and the ‘democratisation of economic 14 30 The Sociological Review 68(1) opportunities’ (1996, p. 138). As our Zulu respondents explained, democracy is characterised as an ongoing struggle for a better life. It was highlighted earlier that voices of protest provide an important insight into how challenges facing democracies are perceived by those who inhabit them. Koelble and Lipuma argue that ‘measuring a democracy necessarily entails the appreciation of the creation of those visions of democratic governance by the governed, which in turn, necessitates an appreciation of the processes and conditions under which these are produced’ (2008, p. 3). In the South African context, we can extend their argument for a decolonised understanding of democracy to include not only an appreciation of the nature of the postcolonial state, but also the specific meanings that are attached to democracy during processes of struggle. The post-2004 protest wave in South Africa, while highlighting issues of government non-delivery, has not been merely about its technical or procedural aspects, but about the whole understanding and experience of post-apartheid democracy. Community protest is shifting the topography of the public space and of the state–society interface in which participatory democracy is played out. This is not to discount democracy’s association in the minds of ordinary South Africans with its institutional and procedural aspects, nor should it downplay the intrinsic value of the rights and freedoms underpinning its constitutional democracy. However, it should also account for an expanded notion of democracy encompassing its human and substantive elements. Funding The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. Our pseudonyms make use of titles which are the common respectful form of address in South African culture. Baba, ‘father’ is used for older men and Mama, ‘mother’ for older women. See, for example, Mignolo (2011) and Grosfoguel (2007) on decoloniality’s emphasis on pluriversal (not universal) histories and ideas. IsiZulu is used as a first language by 23% of the South African population, but is spoken by many more as a second language. 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