Even as talk of forming a breakaway party from the remnants of the ANC that have fallen out of favor accelerates, Allan Boesak has begun talk of also forming a new United Democratic Front (UDF). The timing of Boesak's proposal is perhaps telling.
While the UDF, which Boesak helped form, is often seen as having embodied the public manifestation of the banned ANC during the 1980s, the organization, which emerged in response to the attempt of the National Party to engage in pseudo-reform by establishing a Tri-Cameral parliament in 1983-1984, was in fact much more than simply the old ANC wine in new skins. Deeply devoted to local community politics, the UDF in many ways brought the struggle to the people in a way that even the ANC had not been able to do for much of its existence. Boesak's call, then represents in a very real way an attempt to revive people power and a recognition of the failures, or at least shortcomings, of electoral politics.
The UDF once hoped to “make South Africa ungovernable.” One wonders if a viable new slogan might be to “make South Africa governable again.”
