Real democracy?

Brendan Boyle: The people have spoken for the seventh time since the end of white rule. After the results of yesterday's election are certified, probably by Monday, many councillors and perhaps a few mayors will be looking for a new source of income while others prepare to move into their seats.

Writing, as I must, before the polls closed, I have no idea if the vote returned the ANC to power in more municipalities or with broader majorities or if the Democratic Alliance enlarged its footprint.

What matters most in our maturing, but still adolescent democracy is surely that no victims of the vote have questioned or tried to upset the constitutional process. Tension and occasional violence were within parties, mainly the ANC and directed at implementation of internal party democracy rather than its national foundation.

Democracy appears to be entrenched in our political system. Now it must be entrenched in the minds of our political leaders.

President Jacob Zuma has paid lip service to the principle of free choice, but shown little tolerance for its reality among black voters.

Though sometimes with a pretence of humour, as when he says a vote for the ANC is a ticket to heaven, he has argued that because the ANC delivered the vote it is entitled in perpetuity to get it back at every election.

Implying that the secret ballot really isn't secret, he threatened communities whose close cultural association with their ancestors he understands far better than I could with the wrath of their forebears if they don't vote for the ANC.

On his knee like a ventriloquist's dummy has been Julius Malema, voicing the racism that was the worrying undercurrent of the ANC's campaign. The DA is only for whites, was his message. Is the corollary that the ANC is only for black people?

White people are criminals, they hate black people, they want to reimpose apartheid, he said repeatedly in comments that probably say more about him than about whites.

Zuma's rhetoric and Malema's rants raise concern about whether they would ever hand power to another party at national level in the way that at least some councils will do next week. There is a sense that the ANC will accept a few municipal setbacks, but not national defeat.

To truly entrench democracy in this country, to make it something that all South Africans accept even when it goes against them, the contest needs to be stripped of the racial load that apartheid's white leaders and their many fellow travellers so irresponsibly imposed.

The ANC accuses rivals of trying to return to apartheid, but is itself guilty of exploiting that old divide when the contest needs to be on issues of the new South Africa, not the old.

Helen Zille deserves credit for building Tony Leon's legacy into a potent political force, for creating an alternative and for taking the political debate beyond race and history to the issues that will determine South Africa's future.

But the democracy she helped underpin will be that much healthier when the ANC's self-serving alliance with Cosatu and the SA Communist Party is dismantled and those partners contest separately for a share of power.

Zuma has failed to consolidate the influence of the partners in the ANC. When elections and major conferences loom, the ANC pulls labour and the communists closer. When the policies and practices of government need to be decided, the partners battle to be heard.

If yesterday's election shows a drop in the ANC's majority, Cosatu and the SA Communist Party would be wise to start investing in serious, professional market research to answer this question: would support for the ANC fall below 50% if Cosatu and the SACP fight the next election under their own banners?

With less than half the vote, the ANC would have to negotiate a formal coalition based on an enforceable contract and the roles of Cosatu and the SACP would be entrenched.

They could speak in government for their own values and not, as now, have to adopt those of the ANC. They could criticise their cabinet partners, discipline their own members under their own codes and to get their own share of parliamentary funding.

We would have the same government we have now, but the quality of debate, the range of policy options and the incentive to govern well would be massively enhanced to everyone's benefit.