Unemployed Peoples' Movement (UPM) leader, Ayanda Kota, who is shown embracing a supporter on the front page of this newspaper, and the leader of the Mind political party, Jock McConnachie, have a lot more in common than might appear at first glance.
Unemployed Peoples' Movement (UPM) leader, Ayanda Kota, who is shown embracing a supporter on the front page of this newspaper, and the leader of the Mind political party, Jock McConnachie, have a lot more in common than might appear at first glance.
For example, they agree that the municipality is not doing a particularly good job in delivering basic services to Makana residents. It would appear they also share the belief that service delivery is far too important to be left in the hands of the politicians.
McConnachie argues that political parties should not have a role to play in local government, because councillors affiliated to political parties, with notable exceptions, usually devote their careers to pandering to the whims of party bosses instead of channelling their energies into improving basic service delivery to their constituents.
On the other hand, an independent councillor is accountable only to the people who voted for him, so it is in his interests to do as much as possible to improve their circumstances. This anti-political party rationale is the unifying factor of the independents that belong to the Mind party – as counter intuitive as this might seem.
The UPM's Kota has not spoken publicly on whether politicians, in general, should take office at local government level or not, but he has expressed his opinions on the performance of those politicians who are currently in office.
He does, however, insist that his movement is not political. He says the UPM is not seeking to topple the ruling party, so he does not understand why the ANC feels so threatened by his movement. Kota's statement recalls a UPM meeting about service delivery issues last year that was rudely disrupted by young men wearing ANC items of clothing.
Both McConnachie and Kota claim that their respective organisations, Mind and the UPM, are not political – but this of course depends on whose definition of political we are using. The number of definitions available in dictionaries and online sources is enormous, but for practical purposes let us quote Wikipedia, which defines politics as “a process by which groups of people make collective decisions”.
According to this definition, and virtually all other sources consulted, both Mind and the UPM are political entities even though they do not aspire to seeking high political office.
