Strategy And Tactics In A Digital Era - By Dr Yacoob Abba Omar

Given the extent to which we feel overwhelmed by the tsunami of technological changes that confronts us, there is a temptation to simply submit. Let the algorithms decide what we should wear, what grocery we should order from the store, even who we should date…since our electoral choices can be pre-determined by what we read, or who we keep company with, why not let such digital systems determine the outcome of elections?…

Perhaps the starting point would be inserting the potential role of digital media into the perennial debate on the modernisation of the ANC. This should impact on the very DNA of the ANC’s approach to organisational form, internal democracy and campaigning.

By Yacoob Abba Omar

Social, political, economic and technological changes we have seen in the past few years recalls Lenin’s famous quote “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” As the ANC gears up for its 2020 National General Council, it is required to reflect on the impact these changes have on our organisational form and methods of mobilisation. The impact of increased digitalisation and the platforms which have been made possible as a result is of interest.

US President, Donald Trump, has come to epitomise the worst excesses of the use of such technologies, whereas a number of movements across the world have shown its potential for the good.

How real is this digital era and where do we stand as South Africans?

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee’s The Second Machine Age (2016) writes about how automation overtakes the cognitive requirements of labour, making it unnecessary for humans to engage in certain categories of jobs[i]. They believe that machine intelligence and social networks will be the two key drivers defining our future. Klaus Schwab’s The Fourth Industrial Revolution, backed by the marketing power of the World Economic Forum, has become the centrepiece of discourse on where we are heading as humanity. It emphasises hyper connectivity, data-science, Artificial Intelligence and robotics as key drivers of productivity[ii].

Some basic facts, according to the Global Digital Report 2019 titled We Are Social:[iii]

There are 5.11 billion unique mobile users in the world today, up 100 million (2 percent) in the past year.
There are 4.39 billion internet users in 2019, an increase of 366 million (9 percent) versus January 2018.
There are 3.48 billion social media users in 2019, with the worldwide total growing by 288 million (9 percent) since this time last year.
26 billion people used social media on mobile devices in January 2019, with a growth of 297 million new users representing a year-on-year increase of more than 10 percent.

In North America, by June 2018 more than 95% of the population was online, with EU countries not far behind. Oceania and Latin America stand at over 70% while in Asia the figure is 48%, and in Africa 36%.

While our infrastructure may be regarded as patchy, South Africa has been ranked in Ericsson’s Mobility Report[iv] as the most developed digital economy in Africa. Ninety percent of the population already uses mobile phones with almost 70% on smart phones. Internet penetration has risen from 46% in 2015 to 63.8 percent in 2018, projected to grow to 80.8 percent in 2023. South Africa has over 8-million Twitter users[v]. Video is also the fastest growing form of rich media content with platforms like IGTV solely dedicated to this form of media.

This article looks at some of the key challenges these developments pose for politics in South Africa generally, and how the African National Congress should be responding. Its looked at under four questions:

What are the social changes these technological advances are bringing about?
How do these developments impact on our understanding of the concept of power?
How have political parties been impacted?
What are the implications for the ANC’s organisational development?

Impact of technology on society

Clement Mabi and Celya Gruson-Daniel (2018) of the French University of Technology of Compiègne argue that “technological solutionism”, where the digital is seen as the answer to the problems of democracy, should be taken with a grain of salt[vi].

At a talk at MIT in May, 2018 Brynjolfsson and McAfee suggest that there may even be a push back against the use of technology – a ‘tech-lash’ – due to issues such as cyber-risk and vulnerability to online crime, machines doing low-wage labor, privacy abuse issues, algorithmic bias when machines make decisions based on flawed human decisions and the proliferation of fake news.

As the scandal around Cambridge Analytic has shown, since our electoral choices can be pre-determined by what we read, or who we keep company with, why not let such digital systems determine the outcome of elections?

Or as Giovanni Navarria in The Networked Citizen[vii] says, citizens can be ‘consumers and rightless bits of exploitable data’ or they could be ‘’indomitable agents of political change’ (2:2019). We must feed into this mixture the divide between digital natives, that is young people born into the age of the internet, and digital migrants, the rest of us who grew up on the wireless, TV and Internet.

It is possible to find a middle ground between cyber optimists such as Manuel Castells and cyber-pessimists such as Evegny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion. Mabi and Gruson-Daniel propose a “differentiated” approach which “allows us to apprehend the weight of the sociotechnical environment in the variety of forms of citizen mobilization”.

There is no doubt that technological changes have made possible a diverse ways of acting, expressing and creating a sense of community amongst like-minded persons such as the #FeesMustFall movement witnessed in SA, or the Arab Spring, or as seen today, the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement. Such technology allows for new forms of transparency, for greater vigilance of authorities and empowering whistleblowers.

Pauolo Gerbaudo (2018) author of Digital Parties: Political Organisation and Online Democracy[viii], points out that ‘’Political parties seemed, of all the organisations inherited from modernity, the most impervious to the digital revolution”. However, the force of new technologies and ways of organising “’has contributed in eroding the competitive advantage of traditional parties”.

Gerbaudo calls the new formations “digital parties”, or “digital populist” parties because of their conjoining of populist discourse and digital organisational techniques. These include the Pirate Parties which have a presence in about 50 countries, the Five Star Movement of Italy and new left populist movements such as Podemos in Spain and France Insoumise (Rebellious France) in France. He places Momentum, which was key in driving the surge in popularity of Corbyn’s Labour Party in the UK, in the same category. Some have enjoyed stunning success such as the Five Star Movement that is now in power in alliance with the right-wing party Lega.

Michal Jacunski (2018)[ix], in his study of political parties in the Polish system, highlighted the growing skepticism of traditional parties’ ability to represent voters. Coupled with governments creating mechanisms to interact directly with citizens, there is a tendency to bypass the formal representative roles of political parties. The imbizos which the South African government has been using to communicate directly with the citizenry is one such example of direct communications.

Professor of Comparative Politics at the European University Peter Mair (2009)[x] argued that political parties have made a u-turn from “representing the interests of the citizens of the state, to representing the interest of the state to its citizens”. This relationship between party, state and citizen needs to be further explored by the ANC.

Mabi and Gruson-Daniel remind us that context is important so that “the political scope of digital technologies is taken into account, as well as the heterogeneity of the contexts in which they are embedded. This approach reminds us that digital technologies are only one of the variables to be analyzed in order to grasp the complexity of power relations’’. This allows us to segue into the question of how do these developments impact on our understanding of power.

Power in the digital era

FH Hinsley (1966:26)[xi] captured the traditional meaning of sovereignty when he wrote that it is “the idea that there is a final and absolute political authority in the political community… and no final and absolute authority exists elsewhere”. How does this notion stand up to the vagaries of transnational cyberspace and the digital era?

Navarria suggests that we rethink the concept of power today where “all actors have one weakness in common: none of them is ever in a position to exercise full control over the networked environment in which they operate…In a digitally networked environment power can therefore be redefined as the ability to achieve a certain goal while all the time being aware that total conquest of opponents is impossible” (6:2019).

Hadrien Macq and Vincent Jacquet’s of Liege University, Belgium[xii], suggest that we look at two types of activists who impact on power dynamics:

technical activists who generally come from communities related to the digital world. They seek to improve democracy by using digital tools.
relational activists who believe their parties, by using the right technologies, can push through an agenda which radically improves democracy and the citizen’s place in it through more horizontal interactions.

Mabi and Gruson-Daniel, based on their observation of the operation of several European parties, suggest that “technologies alone are not enough to embody a project of social transformation or democratic renewal”. This talks to “the resilience of institutions and their ability to establish themselves as a key player in any social transformation project. In this context, the call for digital technologies and their participatory vocabulary does not, ultimately, challenge any balance of power at its core”.

Impact on political parties

Gerbaudo has argued that the in the aftermath of the 2008/9 financial crash, “masses of individuals were aggrieved by the economic crisis and felt unrepresented by existing parties”. The latter have seen their membership eroding. This disaffection with the status quo has been fertile ground for the rise of populist movements. Here I want to look at how that has been enabled by developments in technology.

The erosion of the old and rise of the new is seen throughout Europe where traditional social-democratic and conservative parties, such as the SPD and the CDU in Germany, the Socialist Party in France and the Italian Partito Democratico are facing severe challenges.

The social democratic PASOK dropped from 40% in Greek’s 2009 election, to 6% in the 2015 elections. Some refer to this phenomenon as ‘pasokification’ where old social-democratic parties converted to neoliberal centrism.

The difference between traditional and digital parties can be seen in their platforms, their approach to membership and the forms of internal democracy:

Digital parties focus on ‘participatory platforms’ or ‘participation portals’ for registered users to participate in discussions about current events; attending online training events; voting in online primaries or on internal officers; and donating money to the movement. Hungary’s Lehet Más a Politika (Politics Can Be Different) introduced an interactive function on its website inviting Hungarians to log government cuts.
There are differences on how membership is seen, with digital parties operating with a free registration model that is very similar to the free sign-up of social media firms, with little information required for the account to be created. This makes it easier for sympathisers to become full members. Digital parties are now among the largest parties in their respective countries, and this fact alone constitutes a major achievement, according to Gerbaudo.
Decision-making in digital parties is facilitated through polling and rating mechanisms built into the architecture of social media and online platforms more generally. They can extract data about members from their interactions, and adapting to their shifting opinions, similar to digital companies and their data science teams.

The jury is still out on how much more democratic these digital parties really are.

For example, Garbaudo argues that internal consultations take the form of a “reactive democracy”, reminiscent of Facebook reactions, and very limited in terms of its qualitative intervention on the content of decisions. “Participation … is often limited to a very small number of participants, an ‘aristocracy of participation’”. He is of the view that “their digital democracy has so far mostly proven a sham, with participatory platforms being used more as a site where the leadership constantly checks and verifies its consensus, rather than a space for authentic decision-making and pluralism”.

Jacunski points out that all the enthusiasm for digital parties has not been reflected in Poland ‘’where the core of the electoral process depends on established parties, rarely bringing unexpected breakthroughs” apart from the 2009 success of the right wing Palikot’s Movement (10:2018).

Jacunski’s research shows that the digital divide is not only along class lines, but also those who oppose modernity in principle, or who lose out because of poor connectivity in rural or remote areas. This could lead to a democratic divide if only digital means are used. His research shows that the most popular forms of communications across all parties were via phone calls, meetings and online chats. Traditional methods such as leaflets, or even social media, were hardly mentioned or not mentioned at all.

Interestingly, members of such tech-savvy parties still regarded meetings highly. The older and mixed parties were found to have more portals than social media sites. He arrives at some key conclusions:

Organisation inertia by itself may contribute to slowness in adopting digital platforms;
Attitudes of leadership is critical in pushing along their member’s adoption;
Digitalisation seems an important opportunity to technically refine party structure, but many fails to provide emotions and a genuine feeling of belonging to an ideological community’’ (20:2018).

It is intriguing how meetings are still one of the forms of communications even the digital natives preferred. Jacunski draws on the concept of ‘social presence’ enunciated by social psychologists John Short, Ederyn Williams and Bruce Christie in their 1976 book The Social Psychology of Telecommunications. They argue that ‘’direct forms of contact within a political party and meetings with politicians lead to an enhanced ‘social presence’ and a sense of political contact with others’’ (14:2018)[xiii].

Implications for the ANC

I would like to conclude this essay by looking at the implications for the ANC. Currently we have a President and many of our leaders who read their speeches from iPads, have twitter accounts, engage in WhatsApp groups and are active on Instagram. As President of the country, Cyril Ramaphosa has placed the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) at the centre of national discourse.

These developments have also been the subject of the ‘tech lash’ McAfee refers to. In a situation where the economy is not growing, where businesses have to cut overheads by reducing labour and where certain retrenchments are directly linked to adoptions in technology, it is not surprising that parts of society will stand opposed to such advances.

The ANC’s website has had its ups and downs and hopefully has resolved some of its issues. The problems faced resulted in a long downtime period and the ANC having to register a new address. Those of us requiring access to documents or updated information were unable to do so. The alternative was accessing the website of SA History Online for archival material.

As has been emphasised above, any discussion on the use of technology has to work within the prevailing context. An example of this is the fratricidal battles being fought amongst our leaders through Twitter. Sadly, ANC leaders go against the organisation’s communications policy by attacking each other through social media.

From the party typologies discussed above, it’s clear that the ANC falls into the category of traditional parties. This can be seen for example after the 2017 National Conference, in its Organisational Renewal document, the ANC resolved to establish a one-stop portal infrastructure. It set out what should be contained there as well as the need for a team of dedicated administrators to provide a personalised service to members. The portal is to be used for the quick processing of membership applications.

The ANC also resolved for the establishment of an automated sms system. Concerns with the membership system is indicated by the central role such a portal is supposed to play. It also speaks of the need to use cloud technology to improve monitoring of the elections.

As we move towards the 2020 NGC we need to ask ourselves, how can the advances in technology be used to strengthen the organisation. By this we do not mean the simple increase in membership though, as discussed above about digital parties, new approaches can help widen the ANC membership base – especially amongst the young. Strengthening should also mean increasing the level of participation in policy discussions, sharing of information and even electoral processes.

One of the fears traditional parties have about adopting digital media more comprehensively is that it opens up membership to all kinds of unsavoury characters. We need to simply look at the fights which occur at every level of our organisation to acknowledge that such unsavoury characters did not need social media for that to happen, get elected onto its various bodies and then use their positions to access or dispense patronage.

Making our organisation easier to access will allow sympathisers as well as former members to stay in touch with the organisation, get news about its events, follow its debates and contribute to its coffers.

Leadership of the party should be able to access the insights which can be gleaned from such platforms. As South Africa’s Mongezi Mtati founder of WordStart explained “social media platforms give us the ability to research keywords, discussions and hashtags which are clues around what people feel about certain topics” (2019)[xiv].

In the corporate world and amongst many of the parties adapting to digital technologies, two positions have become critical:

the communications function has as a central component social media, and
organisations are getting experts in analytics and insights. These experts are required to, inter alia, mobilise the power of all manner of research by accessing social media in helping shape the strategies a party should follow.

This does not mean that the ANC relinquishes its vanguard role of the national democratic revolution. Just as, for example, a tourism company would not stop being a tourism company if it uses insights from social media. It is just that in the age of artificial intelligence we have many more tools to understand the needs, aspirations and concerns of our base.

Nor should it mean that individual leaders should not use social media. In fact, Mtati (2019) argues that “having individual voices and responses resonates more with people than media statements and strict, scripted party lines, and the resulting content feels more honest, authentic and transparent”.

But neither should it mean a free for all. The ANC will need to more strictly monitor and sanction trespasses of its communication policies. The vanities of leaders, notwithstanding which part of a house they wish to show off their prowess be it in the bedroom or kitchen, must be harnessed by the overall interest of the organisation and the country.

There is a concern that social media will make our already noisy democracy even noisier. This does not have to be the case. Mtati recommends that political parties could consolidate social media interactions into a single, owned platform that anyone can get access to. Such a ‘microsite’ will ensure you separate yourself from the noise and make content more visible “Your digital team can then curate conversations, Tweets, Instagram images and video content that can be displayed on the site. Some of this content can be referred back to for articles and other content”.

We must not forget the lessons of the European parties which has shown that people still desire meetings or physical contact for the establishment of social presence. However, we need to move away from the traditional setting of ANC meetings where the branch, regional or provincial executives feel that they must sit at the front, and especially on a raised platform.

This ‘cult of the induna’ would have to give way to the needs of the ‘woke generation’ which – young as they may be – profoundly believe that they bring something of value into our ongoing conversations. And they certainly are, keeping in mind that the median age in South Africa is 26.6 years. Young people are not just the future. They shape contemporary social movements and have the potential to impact on politics in very profound ways.

What are the risks we run if we do not urgently look at the implications of the digital age for the ANC?

The ANC could fall to ‘pasokification’, seeing its membership and support eroding election after election.
The ANC policy debates would continue being dominated by the old aristocracy, and hence not capture the dynamism and vigour of open debates.
It’s renewal project will be stillborn, ensuring that it becomes distanced from the millennials and Generation Z who are the voting base of the future.

So, what is to be done?

Perhaps prior to the 2020 conference the ANC should carry out an audit of its presence in social media and review its online platforms so that a better strategy can be proposed. This must be part of the organisational renewal discussions and processes.

The implications of this audit would need to be spelt out in terms of capacity, resources and organisational structures. Needless to say, much of this can be done online.

The most critical step will have to come from the leadership who should recognise that reading speeches from iPads, while sending the right signals, could also be sending mixed messages entrenching the digital divide reflective of SA’s inequality. It’s a bit like the leadership podium drinking champagne at rallies. They should not stop doing that but should also show their resolve to take the entire country into the digital age.

Furthermore, drumming to the beat of the 4IR is insufficient if it does not have a ruling party which embodies politics in the digital age.

The most important step is to embrace the digital era with the aim of overcoming these divides, of improving the skills of all South Africans, of reducing the costs and entry barriers to the twenty first century.

[i] Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee The Second Machine Age (2016)

[ii] Klaus Schwab’s The Fourth Industrial Revolution

[iii] https://wearesocial.com/global-digital-report-2019

[iv] https://www.ericsson.com/en/mobility-report/reports/november-2019

[v] https://www.statista.com/statistics/484933/internet-user-reach-south-africa/

[vi] Clément Mabi et Célya Gruson-Daniel, « Political Forms and Movements in the Digital Era », RESET [En ligne], 7 | 2018, mis en ligne le 29 octobre 2018, consulté le 02 décembre 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/reset/1094 ; DOI : 10.4000/reset.1094

[vii] The Networked Citizen Power, Politics, and Resistance in the Internet Age Authors: Navarria, Giovanni (2019)

[viii] Paolo Gerbaudo 13 December 2018 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/digitaliberties/digital-parties-on-rise-mass-politics-for-era-of-platforms/

[ix] Michal Jacunski, 2018, ‘Digitalisation and political party life in Poland’, Polish Political Science Review, 6 (2) 2018, pp 6-25

[x] Mair, Peter (2009), ‘’ Representative versus responsible government’, in MPIfG Working Papers, http://www.mpifg.de/pu/workpap/wp09-8.pdf

[xi] F.H. Hinsley, 1966, Sovereignty, New York: Oxford

[xii] Hadrien Macq and Vincent Jacquet ‘Internet and Cyber Party Membership: the Case of the Belgian Pirate Party,’ http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/170684

[xiii] John Short, Ederyn Williams, and Bruce Christie (1976), The Social Psychology of Telecommunication

[xiv] Mongezi Mtati https://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/669/187013.html

Issue 48

Strategy And Tactics In A Digital Era – By Dr Yacoob Abba Omar

At The Root of Capital’s Strategies & Tactics For Power And Control - By Malusi Gigaba

Is Today’s A World of Unipolarity or Multipolarity or Bipolarity? - By Thato Magogodi

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