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I was reading Christi van der Westhuizen’s blog, and rereading Paul Whelan’s comment on my article about Friedman’s thoughts on the battle for African Democracy.

It got me to thinking about democracy, a hazily defined concept at the best of times, within our South African framework. Democracy is of course a choice. It was a choice at the end of Apartheid, that our national leaders (on our behalf) took to install a framework of freedoms and rights, such as those which had been fought for during Apartheid.

But democracy doesn’t stop there. Just look at the United States, and the struggles it face in the century after the laying down of its constitution. Democratic ideals and values are a choice which the population as a whole needs to continually recommit to, every day. Like a marriage, the people of a nation can cheat on its spouse Democracy, as we South Africans are currently cheating with Jacob Zuma’s proposed kleptocracy (or maybe we are just flirting at this stage, although it seems we’ve made up our minds…)

Any relationship, any action, is built on choices being made and maintained. The suggestion that African democracy is now being tested, is true; but is also wrong to some extent. The commitment to democracy has been tested before, it was tested with the election violence of 1994, its been tested when crime and service delivery have torn our society apart, and yet the people have been patient for the fruits of democracy to ripen; we’ve chosen to stick and stand by democracy.

Now, it would appear that a dark hour has befallen our love affair with African democracy. Those who have been entrusted with nurturing democracy, to ready our state to grow into a modern sophisticated first world democracy, have decided that the relationship is sour; a change of course is necessary.

Maybe that change of course, a leaning to the left some might say, will benefit our country. I happen to think it won’t. I happen to think that history shows traditionalists and socialists to not be the equals of fiscal conservatives and social democrats - the broad centre that rules most functioning democracies in the world today.

I agree with van der Westhuizen, when she illuminates the failures of the Mbeki government in averting the tests and trials our democratic relationship now faces. Make no mistake, Jacob Zuma and his cronies are the product of Paul Whelan’s ‘monocracy’, which itself is a product of the failed Mbekist experiment of centralisation of power on the Presidency.

By making the Presidency the de-facto dictator to the Parliament, Mbeki has enabled a man such as Zuma to grab at an office, an arm of government, with TOO much power. Had Mbeki not overstepped his boundaries time and time again, we would not now be faced with the threat of Zuma dominating our national discourse.

The President should provide oversight on the other branches of our government, but that is not the reality in our country. Instead Mbeki has built the Presidency into a monolith, which directs policy in both the party and the Parliament, wields its rightful executive powers, and establishes political committees where the decisions of the courts would not return the outcome the President wants.

If Mbeki wanted to save this country from itself, he has failed, for he and his lacklustre cabinet (which of course included once none other than Jacob Zuma) have made it virtually impossible for ordinary South Africans to choose democracy.
Is it too much to ask if we are not now in our time of Caesars? In the modern world, history shifts so much faster… has our Republic, like the Roman one of old, become the shell upon which tyrants and despots now claim authority?

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Filed under: Ideas, Politics, Society by Andrew la Grange