A Significantly Changed Scene

Sandy Grant | Monday May 5, 2014 12:05

I am unclear why it would have chosen to make this news public a matter of days after this government and Namibia had signed a further agreement to construct a rail link between the two. 

The obvious first impression was that South Africa’s was a deliberately timed announcement intended to humiliate and embarrass those two countries.

The intention being to make both face up to obvious realities that there is no realistic alternative, given the facts of geography, to further integration into South Africa’s transport system.  The way to deep-water ports for the export of this country’s coal has to be to the south, not to the west and certainly not to the east. 

But what is surprising about this reminder is that it has taken South Africa so long to play its hand. It has watched over the last few years as this government has signed one preliminary agreement after another with both Mozambique and Namibia.

Throughout those negotiating processes it must have been concerned that its hold on southern Africa’s railway system might just be slipping away.

But seemingly, it didn’t react.  But now, it has done so. Not in order to pre-empt the signing of the agreement between this country and Namibia which might have made some sense – but in the days immediately after it had been signed with some ceremony in Walvis Bay. 

For me, the South African move makes much sense and can only be helpful to this country.  It removes the possibility that the P100 billion proposed trans Kgalagadi – Walvis Bay railway, without the needed foreign investment, might have proved to be an unrealisable dream – with the result that the huge coal reserves here would be left with nowhere to go.  But why South Africa would have chosen to play it crudely, tough and rough is something that both this country and Namibia will need to understand. If that is possible.

Other observers may also be wondering why SADC, which was created to sort out such problems, has proved to be so astonishingly irrelevant.   If, as now seems to be the case, each country has no option but to fight its own corner, what future can there be for the creation of a sensibly integrated southern Africa communications system?  Or indeed, for SADC itself?

 But let me now change the topic from coal to the more than 300 independent candidates who have already been registered for the forthcoming election.

For years past it has been a standard belief that in a generally conformist society there could be no possible gain for someone standing as an independent candidate in a national election.  Historically, the idea was of course anathema.

 The individualist was a threat to community security and had to be eliminated. And usually  was.. In the modem political system, which for so many years has indeed reflected societal norms, the occasional mokoko was regarded as a bit of a joke, an irrelevance, and a distraction from the main issues and the main candidates.

But if the IEC has confirmed that, at this very early date, it has approved the candidacy of no less than 20 applicants for Parliamentary seats (up from 12 in 1998) and another 198 applicants for Council (up from 124 in 1998) with another 80 still to be assessed, we must start thinking again. This time around, it will not suffice, I suggest, to generalise about all these people and to dismiss them as bitter losers of political party internal elections, people greedy for the perks of office, who can safely be ignored. 

The sheer numbers of candidates who have already been registered as independents – with perhaps still more to come – must demonstrate that the independent candidate is now a new factor in politics which needs to be recognised and taken into account. This individual is dissatisfied and unable to find a home in any of the political parties, and decides therefore to strike out on their own.

They may be dismissed as nut cases but they do pose a significant threat to the established parties.  How will those parties react when they begin to understand that today’s society may be prepared to vote for an individualist rather than a conformist? 

Would it not show that the country has changed in the last few years in ways that we have yet to grasp? Whilst the majority of those 300 plus candidates can expect to lose, their significance lies in reducing the prospects of better-favoured candidates. 

 In that sense they may be written off as being merely spoilers. But that will not make them any less dangerous.