OHM & The Anti-Party System Movement

Alternatives

The “Alternatiewe” movement aroused guffaws on emergance. There was nothing quite like gereformeerde blues for a laugh at a braai, but as we also popularly utter at braais:

“Kyk hoe lyk hulle nou.”

Now, a new ‘aternatief’ is emerging. The Voortrekkers leaving the British Colonial Sevice in its dust does not differ much from the common stance of the alternatiewes, nowhere more pointedly expressed than naming a band fokofpolisiekar.

Turns out it was a Dutch thing, escaping not just British, but any authority. In the “Prince of Fools” carnivals in Southern Netherlands every year, the mayor is ‘deposed’ and hands the town key to the Prince of Fools. I learned about it from performing for years with the excellent Pretoria dance band ‘Sounds Exciting’, led by singer Willie Boshoff. We played every year for what was termed ‘karnivalsgekken’, a transplanted replica of the Prince of Fools carnivals in Holland. Tossing mayors into canals could be a thing!

Hindsight

We don’t like baasskap. For early liberals of any shade, especially the Liberal Party of South Africa in 1960, the concern was for our friends in their communities, whether Mpophomeni or PMB, for a return to individual citizen freedom and sovereignty. In relaxed every day terms, that meant getting along with our lives, with no interference. Do as you would be done by.

Its main characteristic was distinctly ‘unmilitary’, a strange thing, if one thinks about it, straight after WWII, when everyone seemed to equate leadership with force: Churchill, Eisenhower, Stalin, de Gaulle, Smuts. The Nats continued, with the kragdadiges - BJ Vorster, PW Botha. The ANC continued with Slovo, Zuma, the arms deal. But ‘force’ along with SANDF, seems to have lost its dentures.

Contrasting the peaceful liberals, the concern of an Afrikaner nationalist back then was survival of an emerging nation, and its successors still beat that drum. You can easily see which of those two concerns would come with guns. The Liberal Party was never going to do the gun thing, and was principled enough to disband rather than go along with excluding races.

But some kind of liberal longing for freedom lives on in most people, especially those who do not want to kow-tow to someone. Politically that someone would be a party whip - aptly named, don’t you think - shades of “The British Disease”? There are always going to be people who, in a non gun kind of way, will challenge the party framework. It just happens to gel with fighting corruption, patronage, and municipal decay.

OHM grew 32% 2021–2026

The Organic Humanity Movement (OHM) is a tiny party, yet to secure a seat, but has grown on its 2021 vote count of 3,688 total votes nationally. In 2026 Local Government Elections it recorded 4,881 total votes. This is a 32.3% net increase over the initial 2021 local government benchmark, a number that is up there with our 30% matric pass rate. Before we laugh, though, let’s remember small beginnings: Helen Suzman sat in parliament, a single liberal voice, for thirteen long years before her party began to grow into today’s DA, now the second largest party by vote count.

Statistically, at the OHM’s current growth rate, it will take roughly 150 years to get 51% of the vote. That’s five generations, and that vote is not enough for the 75% parly majority it would need to abolish the rights to assemble and form movements, and with that, the right to have political parties.

I have a feeling that things don’t work this linearly. They creep then jump. Climb, flatline, climb, flatline. Growth is strange. A businessman once told me:

“There is no standing still. You are going forward, or backward. Finis en klaar”.

It tends to accelerate and become exponential rather than arithmetical. Linear is so last century.

Idealogical growth seems to be tied to people who die, and things change with that. For example, there was a belief in normal rule of law for a long time world-wide: democracies have proved to be where people’s lives improve. But it has faded enough that the richest democracy in the world now has more homeless, less health care, and more broke people working three jobs (and more billionaires) than anywhere else, and now, nobody seems to think it too wrong for Putin to stomp on Ukraine, and for the US to arrest and jail a foreign president.

I think that is because some people died and took that ethos with them - simply, it was the death of institutional wisdom. People in government today (excluding Zelensky) have no horrors before them to guide their consciences.

That doesn’t mean that there can’t be birth of instituional wisdom, too. Alexandra Occasio-Cortez in NY, USA, has never gained less than 68% of any vote, and mostly gets around 78% percent. She is one of a new grouping of democrats referred to as “progressives”. Sounds awfully like Helen Suzman and her ‘progs’. Another progressive, Ilhan Omar garnered 76%. The GOP is beginning to “feel the Bern”.

Trends: Phutaditjaba and Howick

Tiny as the results were for them, there were two places where the OHM did surprisingly well: Maluti-a-Phofung (old Qua Qua) and Howick. The two places could not be more different, yet they seem to demonstrate a cross-cultural anti-party resonance.

Maluti-a-Phofung’s population is approximately 98%+ Black African, predominantly Sesotho-speaking. and 1.5% of whites, who represent about 2,000 active voters. Absolute vote totals show that OHM’s support in Maluti-a-Phofung can’t be from white suburban voting blocks. It does not even have those. Raw vote distribution proves that most of OHM’s voters are in township and rural voting districts, and mostly Sesotho-speaking.

Howick is a town of many wealthy white retirees, with the local municipality evidently content with their DA mayor, Zulu-fluent Chris Pappas, who has made a name for trust and service delivery. It is hard to say where the OHM’s increased votes came from there, but they surely did not come at the expense of the DA.

Trust is gone.

There is no doubt about that. Ever since the ANC axed 16 of its own coucillors, who then stood as independents and instantly won back 10 of those seats (they now have 20), it has become clear that voters know who they want, and won’t take instructions from ’the party’. They will vote for people they believe will restore water, electricity and saniation.

It is no surprise that the OHM’s constitutional model (direct representation of independent individuals subject to immediate voter recall) appeals directly to voters disillusioned by far-away party bosses. My guess is that a big part of their appeal is that immediate voter recall - the option to vote people OUT, if they do nothing in their first 100 days or so.

Conclusion

Never say “never”. (said Trump to Carney - Ahem). The OHM could get there. Surprising things happen. Ian Smith said “not in my lifetime”. The ANC said “until the second coming of Christ”. But to me, the trend is a move toward local and civic, away from national.

I don’t know whether the OHM will ever get in. My favourite political model in UDF days was civic blocks as a voting ward, where everyone knows everyone. I predict that independants will just take over. When enough do, it will seem simple and logical to vote OHM, because of that one ‘vote them out’ thing. We still have to wait five long years to vote out an independent, and we need to change that.

With computer networking and skills at current levels, there is no reason why small civics can’t be administered and developed sustainably and correctly. Churches and stokvels get it right with no fuss. Why not civics?