Popular Power and Vanguardism: The Democratic Deficit of 1980s ‘Peoples Power’

ABSTRACT

The era of ‘people’s power’ in South Africa between 1986 and 1987 is often considered to have held the makings of a participatory form of democracy. Analysis of the traditions that shaped it, however, reveals a discourse of participation that was not altogether democratic. Through examination of historic documents and interviews with activists, participants and cadres, this paper examines the role for the demos imbued in people’s power. It challenges the notion that the form of democracy established since 1994 is somewhat inferior to that prefigured by people’s power, and rather contends that people’s power itself did not constitute an entirely democratic form of participation. While incorporating ideas of grassroots participation as a basis for popular control, it also embodied a unitary form of democracy. Through absorption of a discourse of vanguardism and a concept of participation as teleological, people’s power failed to resolve the fundamental tension between political control from above and popular initiative from below.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the interviewees who gave up their time to participate in the research as well as to the archival staff of NAHECS at the University of Fort Hare, the Mayibuye Centre, the South African History Archives and Wits Historical Papers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Heidi Brooks http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4995-5310

Notes

1 On this normative definition and theory of participatory democracy, see work by Pateman (1970), Barber (1984), Keane (1988), Beetham (1993; 2005) and, more recently Cornwall (2008), Hickey and Mohan (2004) and Theron and Ceasar (2008).

2 See, for example, Sinwell (2011).

3 Cf. Neocosmos (1998), Legassick (2007) and, to an extent, Sinwell (2011).

4 A deeper discussion of the ideological heritage of people’s power and the multiple intellectual currents that shaped it can be found in Brooks (2018).

5 See also Cherry (2000a).

6 On the danger of participatory forums becoming dominated by the interests of a few, see Cornwall and Coelho (2007), Cooke and Kothari (2001) and Mansbridge (1983). Glaser has also highlighted how they can be used as a smokescreen to disguise decisions already taken by dominant groups (1991, 103), or to suppress disagreement and individual rights in the interests of a ‘higher’ form of democracy (1991, 105, 109).

7 On the early establishment of Congress hegemony and role of domestic structures in this process see Seekings (2000b). On the role of youth formations, in particular, see Seekings (1993) and Heffernan (2016).

8 On its multiple intellectual origins see also the discussion in Brooks (2018). Here, the focus is not on the democratic deficit of people’s power, but on the implications of its varied conceptual makeup for the formulation of a coherent model.

9 Examples include civic and trade union activists such as Cas Coovadia, Lechesa Tsenoli, Thozamile Botha, and Moses Mayekiso. A cohort of progressive planners, NGO staff and academics from the 1980s also provided technical expertise on the local government transition, including Mark Swilling, Billy Cobbet and Andrew Boraine.

Additional information

Funding

This work is based on research undertaken as part of my doctoral thesis, supported by the Leverhulme Trust in the United Kingdom.