Al-Qalam 
By Imraan Buccus
As we head to the local government elections political violence is rearing its ugly head in KwaZulu-Natal again. Earlier this month three women were murdered, and another five people killed in a drive by shooting at an ANC meeting in Inanda. There have been a number of other incidents of violence and intimidation in Durban.
There is very little media coverage of the smaller towns in the province and the situation is probably just as bad, or worse, in places like Wembezi, in Estcourt, which is notorious for political violence.
With the economy in crisis, kleptocracy thriving in the now entirely failed ‘new dawn’, and the institutions of rule of law crumbling before our eyes these are dark days. And with the police so fundamentally compromised by corruption and capture by political elites – from the top of the hierarchy to local police stations – policing provides no easy solution to the crisis.
Bringing in police from outside the province to keep the peace in hotspots and investigate political murders, as was successfully done during the civil war of the late 1980s and early 1990s, is certainly a good idea. But without the political will to make this happen, and to sustain it, business will just carry on as usual.
The fundamental challenge of our time is to create the political will to push the government to contain the rampant criminality in the ANC and in the state, restore the rule of law, build a professional police force and take urgent measures to blunt the edge of the economic crisis.
But there is no credible party contesting the elections at local level, and indeed at the national level. Of course, some of the independent candidates at the local level offer some hope. And it’s heartwarming to see a number of Muslim community activists rising to the occasion as independent candidates in KZN.
The EFF is highly authoritarian and at least as criminal as the ANC. The DA is now a right-wing libertarian party that primarily speaks to the more reactionary elements of the rapidly shrinking white electorate. None of the rest of the parties that will be on the ballot paper have any real national support, and some, like Herman Mashaba’s xenophobic outfit are downright dangerous.
If there is to be a solution to our rapidly worsening crisis it will have to come from outside the sphere of parliamentary politics as it currently exists. In Zambia and Zimbabwe degenerated former liberal movements were first challenged at the polls by parties rooted in trade unions.
With Numsa, the largest trade union in the country with well over 350 000 members, out of the ruling alliance it is the logical base for a new worker-based party. But it has made two serious mistakes. The first was the launch in 2015 of the United Front, imagined as a vehicle to link struggles and popular organisations. The United Front was a complete failure because Numsa gave it autonomy and it was almost immediately captured by NGOs with no popular base.
The political party launched by Numsa just before the last national elections in 2019 also failed. In this instance the failure was due to the party being formed right before an election with insufficient time to prepare. The demoralisation that followed the complete failure in the elections and then the long Covid lockdowns effectively destroyed the party.
But, for the future, there are only two popular and democratic organisations of any real scale outside of the ANC, at both local and national level. One is Numsa, and the other is Abahlali baseMjondolo, which is smaller, with just over 100 000 members, but is important because it has shown that the urban poor can be successfully organised. It seems likely that if there is any hope for a progressive solution to our deepening crisis it lies with these two organisations.
Dr Imraan Buccus is Al Qalam editor .
