decentralized people power: what OWS can learn from south africa's united democratic front

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http://www.nationofchange.org/decentralized-people-power-what-ows-can-learn-south-africa-s-united-democratic-front-1325687428

At an Oc­cupy Wall Street meet­ing in mid­town Man­hat­tan on De­cem­ber 20th, a de­bate broke out about the gen­eral as­sem­blies (here­after, GAs)—the core de­ci­sion-mak­ing fo­rums of the move­ment and its most vis­i­ble em­bod­i­ment of di­rect democ­racy. The meet­ing was the sec­ond of its kind de­voted to ex­plor­ing the idea of a city-wide gen­eral as­sem­bly. About 80 peo­ple at­tended, in­clud­ing mem­bers of sev­eral OWS work­ing groups and GAs across the city, of which there are now about a dozen. While some peo­ple seemed dis­sat­is­fied with the GAs, and per­haps even ready to dis­pense with them, oth­ers ap­peared in­tent on pop­u­lar­iz­ing them even more. The dis­cus­sion re­minded me that this move­ment is grow­ing and deep­en­ing its ties with local neigh­bor­hoods—yet as it does, it is en­coun­ter­ing the chal­lenge of how to ac­com­mo­date new com­mu­ni­ties and sup­port ex­ist­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions that share its goals. While this chal­lenge is still fairly new for OWS, it is one that has been faced and over­come by other move­ments be­fore.

As a par­tic­i­pant-ob­server who wants the Oc­cupy move­ment to flour­ish, this strikes me as an ap­pro­pri­ate mo­ment to look back at an­other so­cial move­ment that pro­moted con­sul­ta­tion and con­senus-build­ing. In the 1980s, South Africa’s United De­mo­c­ra­tic Front (UDF) helped to end apartheid by em­pow­er­ing ex­ist­ing com­mu­nity-based or­ga­ni­za­tions and de­vel­op­ing the lead­er­ship ca­pac­i­ties of local lead­ers, some of whom had lit­tle or no prior ex­pe­ri­ence as ac­tivists. No­tably, the UDF in­spired and mo­bi­lized di­verse af­fil­i­ates with­out try­ing to im­pose one po­lit­i­cal frame­work upon them. At this par­tic­u­lar junc­ture, when OWS’s New York City-based lead­ers ap­pear di­vided over the ques­tion of how much em­pha­sis to place on the GAs and on the gen­eral ethos of con­sen­sus-based pol­i­tics, the UDF’s vic­to­ries seem in­struc­tive.

Je­remy Seek­ings’ de­fin­i­tive ac­count, The UDF: A His­tory of the United De­mo­c­ra­tic Front in South Africa, 1983-1991, shows that this um­brella coali­tion that en­er­gized a broad swath of peo­ple by lead­ing from be­hind. It gave af­fil­i­ates ways to with­draw their sup­port from apartheid and from the eco­nomic trans­ac­tions that kept it in place. It knit to­gether a wide range of civic or­ga­ni­za­tions into an un­prece­dent­edly large mass move­ment. And, like OWS, it pro­moted par­tic­i­pa­tion and con­sul­ta­tion. Ex­plains for­mer UDF Gen­eral Sec­re­tary Popo Molefe:

The struc­tures for de­ci­sion-mak­ing within the UDF may have often seemed te­dious, but they taught us the im­por­tance of con­sen­sus pol­i­tics and par­tic­i­pa­tory democ­racy. … The reg­u­lar de­bate within the UDF on democ­racy and ac­count­abil­ity, the in­sis­tence that un­ac­count­able lead­ers be re­called and the im­por­tance at­tached to crit­i­cism and self-crit­i­cism served to weaken any po­ten­tial au­to­cratic ten­den­cies in the “new” South Africa.