Episode 02 - Reverend Kenneth Meshoe, ACDP

Reverend Kenneth Meshoe is the leader and founder of the African Christian Democratic Party. The ACDP was formed 100 days before the first, universal, democratic elections in South Africa in 1994 and has been a fixture in the national assembly since then. As the name implies, Christian values sit at the core of its political beliefs, with it being led, appropriately, by a reverend of the Christian church.

Our conversation began with a discussion around how Christian values shape the political values of the party. The key takeaways from this discussion was that the Reverend attributes the lack of values such as respect and integrity as drivers for many of the problems that South Africa faces today. Respect was a particularly important value to him and he saw its absence in the way politicians treat voters, in the way that protesters often treat the property of others and in the way that South Africans treat each other. His focus is therefore to reinstil these values in the political consciousness of South Africans as a means of providing a strong moral foundation upon which policy can be built.

Related to this was our discussion about what are the biggest issues that South Africa faces today. According to the Reverend the biggest issue and the root of most of our problems is a widespread ‘I don’t care’ attitude. He gave the example of how when people are attacked today, no one steps in to assist them, as we all think to ourselves this has nothing to do with me, so why should I care? Similarly he points out how if a politician does not care about his constituents they feel as though they have free reign to steal the money that should go to helping them.

Moving away from values towards more practical matters, a few policy plans of the ACDP stood out. With regards to crime, the ACDP is in favour of implementing harsher penalties for criminals with the goal of ‘reintroducing fear of punishment’. In a practical sense this entails making prisons less comfortable for criminals so that the prospect of going there acts as a true deterrent for criminals.

Corruption is another key area for the ACDP. Their policy plan focuses on going after those at the top of government who have been involved in corruption, as the Reverend says that ‘a fish rots from the head down’. Interestingly, the ACDP has recently had to deal with corruption by one of its councilors. Once it was found out that the councilor had been bribed to stay away from a crucial vote, the party moved quickly to remove him, despite him being well-liked in the party and one of the better workers, according to the Reverend.

A final aspect of their policy plan that I would like to highlight is their approach to service delivery. The ACDP is in favour of de-centralisation of service delivery. He wants communities and small businesses within them to be able to act as quickly as they can to sort out the problems they face from infrastructure breakdown, instead of them having to go through the arduous process of contacting a central maintenance provider and then having to wait (sometimes weeks) for them to dispatch a person to do the repairs.

Bringing it forward to the various possibilities for coalitions in the 2024 elections, the ACDP is one of the parties with the most experience working in coalitions. The most important aspect for potential coalition partners is that the parties values align and the agreement they enter into is based on these aligning values. When asked about who the ACDP is willing to enter into coalitions with, the Reverend was very clear.

They have had good experiences with the DA and are willing to work with them. On the other hand, he will not enter into coalition with the ANC (in fact he chuckled at the suggestion and said if he did he would be foolish to do so) and neither will he entertain the thought of working with the EFF, as they are, according to the Reverend: bitter, disrespectful, arrogant and hate white people.

Beyond these parties he did not want to talk about any others, leaving us on the note that we will have to see what the next election brings to see what the shape of the governing coalition looks like. I think we will all be watching with the same interest to see what the next elections bring for us in terms of a governing coalition.