All politics is of the stomach and pretending otherwise is of no use.
So argues a former colleague whenever he hears the “stomach politics” phrase being used − often in reference to those who betray their beliefs and principles in return for positions or other forms of reward.
The phrase has its origins, of course, in the Cameroonian expression la politique du ventre or “the politics of the belly”, which became popular after the publication of a book, The State of Africa – Politics of the Belly, by political scientist Jean-Francois Bayart close to four decades ago.
To Bayart, it meant a political system in post-colonial Africa that is patronage-driven, encourages bribery and corruption where those who hold political power and administrative authority use that power to enrich themselves.
In turn, the elite of the country in the private sector grows accustomed to acquiring services and favours they want from the political elites through rent seeking and bribes.
Over time, however, the different variations of the expression in day-to-day political-speak has simply come to mean being driven by greed in one’s political conduct. The politics of “it’s our turn to chop (eat)”, as they put it in Nigeria.
However, when my former colleague argues that “all politics is of the stomach”, he means people engage in political activity primarily for material gain – that there is no such thing as politics just for its own sake.
In other words, he comes from the same school of political thought as Guinea-Bissau’s Amilcar Cabral, who once famously wrote: “Always remember that the people are not fighting for ideas, nor for what is in men’s mind. The people fight and accept the sacrifices demanded by the Struggle in order to gain material advantages, to live better and in peace…”
Although I have never asked him, I suspect the colleague would also agree with Agostinho Neto, the Angolan guerilla poet who led his nation to independence, that “the most important thing [in politics] is to solve people’s problems”.
Cabral and Neto wrote their words in the context of their countries’ revolutionary wars against Portugues colonial rule. However, those words are true of all politics.
In democracies such as ours, parties enter politics to compete with one another for state power. This is because each party believes that it can use that state power, mandated by the electorate, to change society for the better – usually based on a set of policies they believe to be best for the country and informed by a particular ideological perspective.
This idealistic view of politics, however, is losing currency even among political players themselves. What is gaining much traction is a more negative and cynical view.
A political party would spend years, if not decades, fighting to obtain state power because it believes it can wield that power for greater societal good.
But the moment that power gets its hands on the levers of power, fractures began to emerge within its ranks. Suddenly, party ranks are divided between those who have “blue lights” and those who are without.
Those who have gone into the state are suddenly viewed with suspicion by their colleagues or comrades who did not make it to government.
If media reports are anything to go by, we saw a bit of that playing itself out at the DA’s federal congress this weekend.
Some reports cast some of the policy debates at the congress as being contests between “the blue lights brigade” – meaning ministers and MECs serving in the government of national unity and provincial governments – and those who are outside the government system.
Those in government were painting as pushing certain positions to protect their jobs and privileges.
The phenomenon is neither new nor limited to the DA.
Not long after Jacob Zuma became president and appointed to his cabinet some of the ANC outsiders who had helped him win over the presidency of both party and country, we saw a split between once close comrades along the lines of who was part of “the blue lights brigade” and who was not. The two factions became so consumed by the contest that they seemed to forget why they had fought for power in the first place.
Even with the current ANC alliance crisis resulting from the SA Communist Party’s decision to campaign for future elections on its own, we are seeing tensions and suspicions within the ranks that seem to be driven mainly by who has blue lights and who does not.
Now in the eyes of ordinary voters watching what’s happening in all these parties, politics stops being about “solving people’s problems” – like Neto said – or about the population gaining “material advantage” – as Cabral argued.
To the voters, politics increasingly appears driven by the “phuma singene” or “it’s our turn to eat” phenomenon. Then politicians wonder why so many voters are no longer bothering to turn up to vote on election day?
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