THE 2008 BUDGET VOTES: HOW THE OPPOSITON VOTED

By Gareth van Onselen, Director of media and research

 Introduction

 Attached to this article is a table which sets out how the 15 parties represented in the National Assembly voted in the 2008 budget votes.

This year the budget votes took place on 17 June, and the way in which the opposition voted once again makes for interesting analysis.

 Political parties in the NA

But first, let me briefly set out the composition of political parties in the National Assembly (NA), which is helpful not only for determining what the various acronyms used in the attached table stand for (with floor crossing, there has been a proliferation of smaller parties over the past five years - it can be hard work keeping track of all of them) but the size of each party as well.

There are currently15 parties represented in the NA which, together, constitute the 400 members that make up a full house. The vast bulk of these parties are tiny. Indeed, 11 of the 15 parties have four members or less, and six have two members or less, which tells you as much about the ANC's dominance as it does about the need for a consolidated opposition. From biggest to smallest, they are:

1.    The African National Congress (ANC): 297 members
2.    The Democratic Alliance (DA): 47
3.    The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP): 23
4.    The United Democratic Movement (UDM): 6
5.    The Independent Democrats (ID): 4
6.    The African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP): 4
7.    The Freedom Front Plus (FF+): 4
8.    The National Democratic Convention (NADECO): 4
9.    The United Christian Democratic Party (UCDP): 3
10.    The Minority Front (MF): 2
11.    The African People's Convention (APC): 2
12.    The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC): 1
13.    The Azanian People's Organisation (AZAPO): 1
14.    The Federation of Democrats (FD): 1
15.    The National Alliance (NA): 1

 How they voted

In broad terms, voting tends to reflect the following pattern: The DA, as the largest and most active political party (certainly the opposition party with the most comprehensive set of policy alternatives and the most coherent and well defined political philosophy) will lead the way and the other parties will follow suit - the larger the party, the closer it reflects the DA's voting pattern; the smaller the party, the more it tends to reflect the ANC's (the ANC obviously supports every single budget vote, as it is in government and each proposed budget is a product of its own policy). There are, of course, exceptions; but, as a general rule, this is accurate.

And so it is that, in any given year, the DA will oppose the most votes; as you move through the parties towards the smallest, support for the ANC's policy grows, until you reach the one-man parties which - if they bother to turn up for the budget votes at all - will support the ANC's policy without exception.

An important point to make is that, the stronger and better defined a party's own political philosophy is, the more likely it is to oppose a particular budget vote - for it then becomes easier to identify an alternative. The weaker and less well-defined its position, the more likely that party is to simply follow the ANC. Of course, the other consideration a party should weigh up before deciding how to vote is how well or how badly the ANC is implementing its existing policy. If it is consistently failing to manage a department, deliver a service or run a particular administration, opposing that budget is a good symbolic way of making the point that the government is not doing its job properly in this area.

This pattern is again reflected in the 2008 budget votes. The DA opposed the most votes (20 out of 34 votes; six in a division); followed by the FF+ (14 out of 34); the ACDP (14); the NA (11); NADECO and the ID (five each). The other nine parties supported every single ANC budget, without exception.

The three notable exceptions to the general pattern I outlined above are the IFP, the UDM and the NA. The IFP is the third biggest party in the National Assembly (it has 23 members), yet it repeatedly endorses the ANC's policy and practice year in and year out. In fact, since 1994, it has not opposed a single ANC budget vote (quite a remarkable achievement if one considers the various scandals, from HIV/Aids through to the Arms Deal, that have plagued the ANC administration). The UDM (with six members) has consistently acted in the same manner. The third exception is the NA - a one-man party formed during floor crossing, which has - for two years now - broken the mould and actively opposed certain budgets I a good example for other smaller parties to follow).

So, given that only a handful of parties (the six identified above) take the budget votes seriously, and exercise their right to oppose a budget, the real analysis lies in looking at the decisions these parties have made, identifying where they differ and trying to understand why they made the choices they did.

Within those six parties then, I believe the following four observations are significant:

•  A division was called (in each instance by the DA) for the Home Affairs; Health; Independent Complaints Directorate; Justice; Safety and Security and Agriculture budget votes. By and large, each of the six parties opposed these votes. The notable exception is the ID's decision to support the Safety and Security budget vote. Given the high crime rate, the conduct of Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi and the ongoing row between the SAPS and the Scorpions, it would seem like a budget one would be hard pressed to support. Nevertheless, the ID broke the pattern and endorsed the ANC's policy and practice in this portfolio.
•  A division was not called for the Foreign Affairs budget vote (the department largely responsible for South Africa's approach to Zimbabwe, and our conduct at the United Nations) but it was rightly opposed by three of the six parties. The three that supported this budget were the NA, NADECO and, again, the ID - another decision which would seem odd, given the scale of the problem in Zimbabwe and South Africa's failure to adopt the appropriate moral and political position in response, and ID leader Patricia de Lille's profile on it outside Parliament.
•  The DA was the only party to oppose the budgets for Sport and Recreation, Provincial and Local Government and Transport. All three departments have had their share of problems - service delivery shortcomings have led to widespread public protests across the country, our roads and railways are defined by huge infrastructure backlogs and political interference by the ANC in our various sporting institutions continues to undermine their effectiveness. Why the other four parties chose to support these budgets is difficult to say.
•  Quite clearly, if the opposition voting record is to be seen as a whole, the biggest problem area is the criminal justice system. If one considers that three of the six votes on which a division was called were the ICD, Safety and Security, and Justice and Constitutional Development departments (and a number of parties opposed the Correctional Services budget votes as well) this area, as a whole, constitutes the biggest concern for South Africa's parliamentary opposition.

 Conclusion

There is a great deal more one could get by studying the 2008 voting pattern (an interesting exercise is to compare how a party votes from one year to the next), but the overview set out above covers the most significant areas.

The stand out anomaly - if one is willing to overlook the abysmal performance of those smaller parties - is the ID's decision to support both the Foreign Affairs and Safety and Security budget votes, a choice difficult to reconcile with its public positioning on the ANC's performance with regards to the two biggest problems - Zimbabwe and crime - facing each department.

Our criminal justice system remains a fundamental problem area, defined not only by a lack of service delivery, but also poor management and even poorer political leadership. If the government is going to look for more support for its programme of action in 2009, it will urgently need to address the many problems that define these various portfolios, as soon as possible.