9 July 2009
editorial
Johannesburg — THE Congress of the People (COPE) may not be unravelling, but resignations this week by two of its leaders certainly reinforce the impression that all is not well with the eight-month-old party.
Though Lynda Odendaal declined to explain her resignation, her colleague, Simon Grindrod , explained his at great length. The comments in his resignation letter were cutting, and of concern, particularly his accusation that COPE's leadership was proving to be as intolerant of criticism as the ANC's had been when COPE's founders broke away. "I now regard the rhetoric of 'deepening democracy' as totally baseless and regret being overwhelmed by the exciting potential this had for our country," wrote Grindrod.
To say it has had severe growing pains is to be charitable to the new party. Beset as it has been by internal leadership issues and other woes, COPE has let down many who voted for it, and that disappointment may have fuelled scepticism about the chances of a black-led opposition party making it in future. But if nothing else, COPE's troubles serve to highlight that it is no easy matter to set up a new opposition party. COPE was in fact spectacularly successful when it won 7,4% of the vote in April's elections. That may have given the party and some of its followers the mistaken impression that it was all going to be plain sailing from there on.
But the party has yet to build a branch structure or proper national structures. It has yet to define whether it is ideologically left wing, centre-left or centrist. And it has yet to puzzle out where it stands on a range of crucial issues, from education and healthcare to Eskom and the SABC.
Until it does that, it cannot hope to have much impact on the national political agenda, nor can it provide the counterweight to the ANC's hegemony that many hoped it would.
But it had better hurry up and get on with it, because COPE has a platform that is too important to waste. The elections gave it 64 elected representatives, including about 30 in Parliament in Cape Town. It is the official opposition in four provinces. The party must not squander those votes.
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