Voting for people who look like us: A tribalistic smudge on the democratic trophy

• Published date: 08 May 2024
• Publication title: Mail & Guardian: Web Edition Articles (Johannesburg, South Africa)

I read this in an article by Clark et al, titled Tribalism is Human Nature. I thought it a fitting statement to describe the political landscape of South Africa where, even after 30 years of a constitutional democratic dispensation, it is common to hear people fall back on their racial, ethnic or cultural groups when justifying who they want to head the country's governance

Tribalism is having strong loyalty to one's own group or identity. In a nutshell, it is the "us versus them" mentality to which, unfortunately, many South Africans still subscribe .

Tribalism is certainly an undertone of many South Africans' way of thinking, which is probably ingrained in our psyche due to historical prejudices. Association and relatability on the basis of race is an ongoing phenomenon in South Africa.

The 2022 Census shows that South Africa is made up of 50.5 million African/black people, 5 million coloured people, 4.5 million white people and 1.6 million Indian/ Asian people. Many of us, belonging to one of these racial groups, would really like to see the people who we vote for belonging to the same racial group as us. A more warped form of this would be not wanting to see a political candidate succeed simply because he or she belongs to a certain race.

It comes as no surprise then that the majority of supporters who attended the manifesto launches of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) on 10 February 2024 and the ANC on 24 February 2024, both at the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, were African people.

Both of these parties have implicitly, through the implementation of so-called "transformative" policies, and explicitly, through racial comments, manoeuvred within political tribalistic tendencies to the exclusion of non-black people in order to garner support from the African population.

This is a classic example of political tribalism. Oxford's Dictionary of African Politics explains political tribalism as: "The manipulation of ethnic identity, whereby it is transformed into a kind of nationality in which leaders play on a community's fear of losing out to other ethnic groups in the competition for power and resources in order to mobilise support. This is often done by demonising other communities, generating fear, and arguing that only by uniting behind a given leader can the group effectively defend its interests."

Politicians see tribalism through race as an opportunity to secure a comfortable position in government (not forgetting a handsome salary), all the...