The Cope Conundrum - The Road to Nowhere

The untold story of Cope is a lot more nuanced and dramatic than anyone would ever care to admit.

There was a time when the Congress of the People was more than just a three member caucus fading into political oblivion. It was a nascent palace coup, the palace being the Union Buildings. While only a few people know the real state of panic this caused in the very upper echelons of the state security apparatus of South Africa, this is not an apocryphal history lesson. There are people who are more intimately connected to what really happened and therefore more qualified to tell the real story in a generation or so.

We all know the crib notes - a black opposition party, lauded by all, polling at close to 20 percent before the 2009 elections, then paralyzed by infighting, factionalism, racial mobilization to mention a few of the very worst tendencies it sought to break from and yet repeated.

The question for the few Cope members who remain is, where to now? While it would be easy to say "the road to nowhere", to go from 1,4 million votes to being a speck on the political radar is something that warrants a more serious analysis, especially in light of its recent attempts to rebrand itself as a social democratic party.

LIBERAL COPE

We must dispel with the notion that Cope is an organization of the left. Despite all the recent protestations affirming a sympathy for the left, it is a liberal organization with a smattering of conservative religious elements.

Its failed alliances with the Freedom Front Plus, Inkatha Freedom Party, African Christian Democratic Party and the now defunct United Christian Democratic Party in the disastrous Collective For Democracy tells you everything you need to know about the core political sensibilities of its leadership.

While a black liberal opposition party may have had some currency prior to the last national election, the DA's most recent strategic realignment, ie, to present itself at least cosmetically as a black liberal party with a conservative religious spine, has headed Cope off at the pass.

Believe it or not, there was a time when Cope could have dictated the terms of an alliance with the DA and the Independent Democrats, but a collective failure of leadership to consolidate on the gains of the 2009 election result caused potential viable alliance partners to think twice about entering into anything more than ad-hoc partnerships on an issue-by-issue basis.

A PIVOT TO THE LEFT?

With the crisis in Cosatu and the rise of champagne socialism in the captured left of the ruling alliance post-Polokwane, can Cope change tack from liberalism to saviour of the left?

In short, no. The EFF are younger, sexier, more radical. While their brand of populism, rhetoric, hashtag sloganeering and new wave Bolivarian cult of personality is ultimately a destructive path for our country, they dominate the national discourse on issues such as Nkandla and Marikana. They are crude, yet effective, and they understand the dynamic of politics as theatre.

Cope has no reach into the trade union movement. Early forays into starting an alternative trade union federation were not well received by party leadership, who cut the project off at the knees. Despite several smaller unions interested in joining a Cope-led union alliance, Cope's liberal leadership would have none of it.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE COPERS GONE?

An analysis of the results of the last general election reveals a few home truths about the matter. Let's look at what happened to Cope's parliamentary caucus.

The vast majority of the members went to the ANC. A few members went to the DA. The only MP's who remained in Cope did so either because they were not courted by other political parties, or because they harboured unrealistic expectations of returning to Parliament on the misplaced belief that the party would accrue at least 5 percent of the national vote.

The disaffection among its parliamentary caucus and the subsequent rout thereof was reflected in the election results. Cope's 7,4 percent was all but eaten by Malema's EFF, sending a resounding message to Cope's leadership that the protest vote had swung decisively to the left.

The DA consolidated its conservative base by decimating parties such as the ACDP, completely obliterating the UCDP, holding its support in the Western Cape, as well as attracting significant numbers from Cope.

The ANC, for all the predictions of a sub-60 percent performance, mitigated its losses by voters returning from Cope, by destroying the IFP in KwaZulu-Natal and outperforming liberal expectations in key metropoles. No political party managed to make significant inroads into the heart of the ANC's rural base and thus it maintained its overwhelming majority.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE TECHNOCRATS GONE?

Cope had some of the finest young talent in the country. Drawn from the ANC as well as swathes of people who had never before felt politically engaged, it had its very own Lindiwe Mazibukos, Mmusi Maimanes and Julius Malemas. Instead of nurturing, protecting and promoting young talent, they were factionalized, abused, downtrodden and eventually purged. Some of that talent now occupy influential positions in the ANC and the DA, but when two elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.

All critical opinions that were rooted in solid analysis was dismissed, the holders of such opinions were derided, denigrated and often ostracised. In the case of Marius Redelinghuys, a fine technocrat and a communications expert, his sexual orientation was used to attack his character, something that is out of step with a supposedly progressive organization. He is now the national spokesperson of the DA and member of parliament, and while he is no friend of mine, to meritoriously attain such a position after being ostracized by Cope says much about how badly Cope's leadership treated its rising stars.

WHERE WILL THE COPERS COME FROM?

With no clear policy direction on many of the issues facing South Africans, caught in an unstoppable pincer movement between the effective and established DA, and the populist EFF, Cope's future looks even bleaker than its present. It cannot be a liberal party as the voters have roundly rejected such an iteration of Cope in 2014. It cannot pivot to the left, as the EFF are much more effectively dominating the discourse of the left. In any case, the leadership of Cope, Mosiuoa Lekota in particular, has through its actions and inactions of the last five years shown a disdain for the left.

Cope cannot have a conference until 2019 as it had a conference in Januay 2014. Cope is stuck with the present leadership for four more years. While it is stable, it is also stagnant and miniscule. Its class of 2009, a 37 member bench that could cover every portfolio committee, was reduced to a lonely trio.

An opportunity for renewal will present itself when the window for reshuffling parliamentary lists opens, but with only three MP's it would need a significant performance in the local government elections to achieve the momentum required to reinvigorate the party.

What is more likely is that the LGE's will be yet another nail in the coffin of Cope.
The only hope is to play the junior partner in alliances with whoever will have Cope in a partnership. There is no way that the leadership would ever call an early congress, or resign. And why would they? Their pensions get fatter with every year, they continue to live in subsidized parliamentary housing and their exorbitant salaries and perks are secure until 2019.

So what now for Cope? Well, if you look at its recent conference, the muddled thinking and organizational schizophrenia of the party is writ large. In his keynote address, Mosiuoa Lekota tries to bring together concepts that are contradictory and often mutually exclusive. For example, he characterizes Cope as being a social democratic movement, but advocates for a business friendly anti BEE and BBBEE system. He advocates for citizens sharing wealth through direct shareholding in tradeable equity, while simultaneously calling for more centralized interventionist government that dictates to businesses to release their savings into investments. He is by turns pro-business, and anti-business. Capitalist and communist. Expedience is the order of the day.

The focus on embracing technology to empower every member to vote for Cope's leadership and engage in policy dialogue is nothing new. Such proposals were dusted off from original proposals crafted by thought leaders in the party such as Phillip Dexter, Marius Redelinghuys and myself.

These innovations come five years too late and betray the weakness of Cope. It no longer has the number of active branches to send one delegate per branch, so it must therefore as a matter of necessity allow members to vote directly through their cellphones, as one would when voting on Strictly Come Dancing, Idols or one of a plethora of reality talent competitions. In lieu of policy and identity, it has now placed all its eggs in the basket labeled "kitch and gadgetry".

Cope is on life support, in a coma of political irrelevance. Through incompetence, poor leadership and the forces of history, it has dwindled into a nothing party, its policies non-existent, its statements a degraded echo of what other opposition parties are saying.

It’s time to end this miserable experiment, either at the polls, through an alliance, or just folding altogether.

Roscoe Palm was Cope's Parliamentary Media Liaison from 2009 - 2012, whereupon he resigned from the party. He writes in his personal capacity.