Many of us were so excited a little while ago when the African National Congress (ANC) began to splinter and the Congress of the People (COPE) broke away. For the first time in our young democracy we seemed to have a realistic opposition that could appeal to the black masses. We all thought that the rise of COPE signalled the demise of the ANC's dominance of politics in South Africa.
With the obvious lack of service delivery many supporters of the ANC have been looking for another party to vote and when COPE arrived they found what they thought was a realistic option. However, since their first party conference it has all gone downhill. Leadership battles, policy disagreements and lack of vision have prevented the party from providing the opposition we all hoped they would (or could) be. So now that COPE has all but fallen apart it seems as if the 1.3 odd million people who chose to vote for them wasted their time and will go back to voting for the ANC, or worse, not vote at all.
If we take a superficial look it seems as if the whole process has been a failure. But if we look a little bit deeper into the unraveling of the party we can pull out at least one very positive development for our young democracy: choice.
Many of the ANC supporters would never have thought that they could vote for anyone other than the party that was the catalyst for the downfall of Apartheid; COPE shattered that mindset. They have crossed a line many thought would never be crossed and with any luck we will find that the Rubicon of race politics has been traversed and South Africans will move away from their 'traditional' party.
If nothing else the rise (and fall) of COPE has shattered some mindsets and begun the process of moving to a real democracy where our citizens vote for the best party and not the traditional party.
