The way that the Government of National Unity (GNU) has been put together suggests that majoritarianism is a thing of the past. This apparent end of majoritarianism also suggests that under effective power-sharing among elites, minorities may expect greater protection. It does not follow.
Minorities and elites – there are important differences between them, as there are parallels – have not always been, and cannot always be associated with the best outcomes in state and society. We should not fool ourselves. We are the easiest to fool.
In liberal political capitalist societies, all parties, much like all corporations, would prefer to have absolute majority control over society or domination of markets. Unless you entered a competition only to be “represented” or to only provide “strong opposition”, you want to win it all.
Every party inside and outside the GNU would, therefore, relish a majority mandate. It is only when they don’t get what they want, that they expect special privileges and concessions… For instance, they don’t mind proportional representation systems, but they would, in a heartbeat, accept first-past-the-post electoral results if it meant they could have it all.
Unless you’re sat at a dinner table of crested blue-blazer society and believe that thinking long and hard is “fever-dreaming” – that most pitiful of anti-intellectualism and acceptance of the world as it is – and you believe that history does not matter, except for those parts that you prefer, a better conversation can be had.
We’re headed into an era of “national unity” in governance, which is an aspiration to a fairly ramshackle majoritarianism, made up of minorities and elites, so it takes a bit of courage to pull at things that are jutting out, or some of the ideas around majoritarianism.
Collection of elites as new majoritarian rule
The conversation can go in any direction. First there is an electoral majority. Then we have national questions about good and bad. Then there are questions about who may/may not speak, and whose values matter most.
It’s not all straightforward, but in each of these cases majoritarianism becomes selective and conditioned, based on power; those who have power and those who want power. It’s a sad fact that across history elites have almost always had the last say.
We can dispense with the electoral majority somewhat easily. Conventionally in liberal democratic countries the political party that receives the most votes in any election has a mandate to govern. This majority entitlement comes with the right to make decisions that affect society as a whole. This is easier said than done. It is often under conditions of majority rule that minorities become fearful, and petition against “the tyranny of the majority” and for “the rights of the minority”. This is often a ruse to protect vested interests, privileges or notions of exceptionalism. Never mind.
We tend to forget that elites and minorities, whether the aristocracy, the landed gentry, mediaeval guilds, the “founding fathers” of America, or even the Bolsheviks were either drafted from elites or a privileged class, to become “leaders”. Vanguard movements, they have been called.
The Bolshevik policies that highlighted “peace, bread and land” were well intended, but were promoted, at the outset, by a minority led by Vladimir Lenin who promised a better future than the poverty and misery during the Tsarist era.
At the height of their power in 1917, there were no more than about 250,000 Bolsheviks. Stephen Cohen placed this number at 200,000 in his book, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography 1888–1938. At the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia had a population of about 125 million people, made up of at least 20 different minority groups, mainly Germans, Slavic People, Poles and “Asians” (Asians were all alike, I guess) who would be forced into becoming the ideal Soviet Man of strength virility, the demigod of Soviet communism.
Almost nine decades later, Francis Fukuyama would imagine that history had ended, and there emerged triumphantly the liberal capitalist as the last man standing. See page 42 of Fukuyama’s The End of History and The Last Man.
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Minorities and elites seem to have no qualms about governing and/or establishing future orders. It’s what elites have done across time and place. This is not to say that it does not have positive aspects as Nelson Mandela suggested during his trial in 1964. His statement from the dock was, nonetheless, a document produced by an elite.
It has to be said, also, before we lose perspective, that the electorate did not go to May’s polls to vote for a GNU; they voted for their preferred political parties. An elite group of individuals gathered in the days and weeks after the poll to create the GNU.
In general, and depending on the size of our constituency or the size of our political representation, we simply pick and choose to foreground aspects that suit us the best, and, invariably, those aspects that would establish and entrench our powers. On almost every occasion when, over the past millennium (at least), political settlements were reached, or new orders were established, they were led by elites and/or minorities.
For instance, when European settlers in North America declared independence from Britain (their Unilateral Declaration of Independence [UDI] was adopted by themselves in 1776) it was led by a small minority of men, among whom were slave owners.
In something of a response to the UDI in North America, (and the French Revolution, it should be said) Samuel Johnson would ask: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”
Charles Dickens reminded us of The Good Rich Man who “is always a superhumanly kind old gentleman who ‘trots’ to and fro, raising his employees’ wages, patting children on the head, getting debtors out of jail and, in general, acting the fairy godmother.”
Never mind widespread popular grievances, the outcomes of the French Revolution (a series of revolutions between 1789 and 1871) were heavily shaped by elite interests, the aristocracy, business people or so-called “counter-revolutionaries”.
This pattern of elite influence has been repeated over and over in history, and not always for the better. This elitism refers simply to the group of people who, with or without direct mandates and entitlements, set themselves up as creators of future orders – and ignore things they don’t like.
For instance, friends and comrades in the liberal capitalist political class would turn to the Magna Carta about law and order to make the (just) claim that “to no one will we deny or delay, right or justice” (a nice line, to be sure), but they will probably ignore the first few words of that sentence, about restricting trade, because free trade has been posited as good for the majority.
Majority rule and protection of minorities
There is no question that the rights of minorities have to be protected. It can be done in democratic majority rule societies. There is certainly a lot of evidence to suggest that where majority rule actually exists, minority rights can be protected. We should point out, also, that in an era of increased identity politics, the opposite is also true.
For example, AfriForum was not, actually, a thing during the apartheid era. Sure, the National Coloured Congress stood up, and were elected to look after coloured interests, but (from the top of my head), Ghanaian FSZ Peregrino, a 19th century Pan-Africanist, founded a movement and launched a newspaper (the South African Spectator) to promote and protect coloured interests…
Nonetheless, the strength of majority rule lies in state policies and public institutions that protect minorities. Private institutions invariably protect or promote vested material and other interests, and quite often behind a fig leaf of “speaking on behalf of the people”, of opposing corruption or abuses of power, promoting freedom or liberty – all good things.
Let’s remind ourselves of the difference between demands for “freedom” at a Donald Trump, Georgia Meloni, and a Julius Malema or Jacob Zuma gathering of loyalists. Let’s bear in mind, also, the new-found dedication to democracy and transparency (all good things), by groups or individuals who seemed to have no qualms about the lack of the same things during minority rule.
I am not for a minute suggesting that they don’t have rights! The point is that these actors and agents came alive to speak in the post-apartheid era during majority rule, and carrying justifiable, though prejudicial concerns. It’s just that they showed less aggression and concern about tax abuse, crime and corruption during the previous era of minority rule…
Trust long lost in state and society
In principle, majority rule should make all voices equal. Minority rule should give primacy to minority interests. The problem is that in South Africa, trust has long been lost in state and society. This may account for the proliferation of minority parties in the country, and the way it has splintered that (once) immovable bloc, the Grand Old Liberation Movement, essentially an African nationalist movement which used minorities strategically to give it a veneer of respectability – until they were no longer of use.
We get, then, to where in the democratic era minorities have felt unprotected, albeit that very many have confused discomfort or equality with oppression. We cannot traduce actual life world conditions and feelings of oppression. It does not help that minority groups have been in the cross-hairs of ethno-nationalists and African nationalists.
National unity sounds like a good thing. It may well be. What we cannot accept, completely, is the way that the status quo ex ante has been given legitimacy through a process of romance and mystification.
With the GNU we have a novel (novel for South Africa) type of majoritarianism, cobbled together as it has been, of disparate social and political forces.
To get a sense of this absurdity, consider that in a single stroke, now sitting in the country’s executive, Gayton McKenzie and John Steenhuisen (representing minority groups and interests) are equals as Cabinet ministers in a ramshackle majority government. DM
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