South Africa: the future of Democracy - 2020 and beyond. (Part 1)

Introductory Comments

Liberating the future

In popular reporting and thinking, people - and particularly the voter - have been conditioned to perceive the future in a narrow political connotation. Politics has almost become a synonym for the art/science of future prediction. The President's "State of the Nation" address said something about the future. The budget speech was about the future - even projecting planning and outcomes for the next 30 years.

The future has been tied up - or perhaps even hijacked - by a political process where a democratic election define the outline of future planning; introducing a numerical majority in parliament where the dominant presence of numbers have the final say - regardless of capabilities! In this way, the future is all about politics, and in its very essence, politics is about the control of people. Eventually in time, political control tends to project the internal dogma and planning of the political party in power - and the voter and democracy disappears from sight.

It seems that, at the very start of some new thinking about the future, liberating the future from the suffocating impact of politics has become imperative.

Time and context

In broad analytical terms, however, the future comprises much more than politics. The future can be perceived as an interaction between the continuity of time and the  reality of context. The acceptance of "context" as key mechanism in the analysis of the future society at large - including government and population - is of critical importance.

Context as an analytical concept or tool enables the discovery of the meaning of something. Context outlines the interrelated conditions (circumstances or events) in which something exists or occurs and explains why something happens. In the final analysis context promotes understanding, that is, anticipation of expected behaviour/developments in future. Understanding provides a certainty about the environment without which decision-making becomes impossible.

As time continuous, the context constantly alters due to changing circumstances, which are determined by a shift in the driving forces of society. This implies that nothing in politics and society is ever final or of a permanent nature. A continuous process of change defines the very the essence of society.

Society in context

If contextual thinking is applied to South African society, it delivers the following: the current political dispensation has been in action for almost the past twenty years. The focus of this report will be on the context of the next ten years. Within the continuous time flow of the last twenty years, and the expected next ten years, three major shifts in context can be identified with the possibility of a fourth context beyond 2020. The context of society today is no longer identical to society of 1994. It resulted in a situation where the same party is still in power, but within a completely different context - despite the majority in parliament.

The general election of April 1994 introduced a specific context into society at large: a clear democratic euphoria. By 2013 this has made way for a context of democratic scepticism, which is expected to turn into a context that projects democratic failure by 2020. Depending on the interactive driving forces in society up to 2020, what follows could probably be called a civil democracy. There is currently not a name for or an appropriate description of the expected future context - this is unknown territory.

In February 2013, with his opening speech of parliament, President Jacob Zuma directed himself to the future, followed a week later by the budget speech of the Minister of Finance. Both gentlemen anchored their approach to the future in the context of the democratic euphoria of the early 1990s. In reaction to this, the political opposition and various commentators replied within the current context of democratic scepticism. The speeches sound fine, but how could they possibly be achieved, given government's lack of delivery. [They operate within the same parliament, but in two separate contextual worlds.]

Afterwards a roving TV camera on street level produced a quite different response. "Government promised us jobs. Schools are bad. Women are raped and killed. Nothing has come of the 1994 promises". The first vision of a democratic failure is now entering the political vocabulary - cautiously referred to as "a failed state".

The statements from Parliament sounded impressive, but for the jobless and uneducated the situation on street level is already close to despair. No one, way back in 1994, would have dared talking about the future within the context of a democratic failure. It would have bordered on the treacherous - it was just not done! By 2013 it has become inevitable as the division between today and yesterday becomes more visible and tension in society ever closer to the surface.

Prepare for never ending change

The future is always more complex than the present, because more interrelated factors (events and circumstances) enter the broad system of society. The search for the future is also subjected to never ending change: the context of 2013 is already adapting and changing on its way to 2020. This change in context will impact on the whole of society - also politics!

Since 1994 reporting about society at large was mainly one-dimensional. The context of democratic euphoria was determined by the struggle legacy of the ANC and its sound majority in parliament. That provided the appropriate text-book for reading the future! It was like looking at the future through the eyes of the majority party and the struggle glasses of yesterday. It can be politically very exciting, but also completely irrelevant to understanding the world of tomorrow.

By 2013 this approach has become untenable and democratic scepticism has set in. After four successful election victories, Government is still in control of the voting power, but since 1994 society has become "governmentally empty" - the circumstances and events have changed. Democratic scepticism reflects the reality of voting power, but very little of doing power! It implies political power in parliament, but a lack of governing capabilities on street level.

This indicates that the crucial relation between Government and population has been changing. The constitution promises, but the Government cannot deliver. This introduces the issue of good governance directly into the centre of the whole discussion: it is not about the numerical size of the majority in parliament, but the quality of governance!

The population is at present confronted by a lack of services and they have basically two options. They accept this lack of services from the hand of government, and what follows is a decline of living standards, job losses and structural corruption. This is in essence the meaning of democratic failure. Or the population resists the process of governing decline and start reacting in self-interest and initiate alternative options - i.e. fixing the roads by commercial farmers to reach the markets, repairing the broken taps and dealing with open sewage. What emerges on street level is not a new political party but a functioning alternative.

It seems that civil society up to 2020, in a variety of interest groups, will play the dominant role in this regard. The major opposing force to Government does no longer come from the political opposition, but from civil society itself. Although scattered across the country and uncoordinated, this is exactly what is happening at present. The population accepts a new role in society in its relation to Government.

Democratic failure implies the decline of the present political dispensation, not as a result of a lack of voter support, but due to a lack of expertise and skills. The last resort of human capital resides at present outside Government in civil society. In a way, Government has run out of options. Indications are that civil society will be up to 2020 and beyond in a process of inherent re-generation, or functional adjustment, a process that will change the present relationship between Government and population completely.

What may emerge out of this after 2020 does not yet have a name in the current political text-books. As a tentative conjecture it is called civil democracy - what may follow may be a completely different kind of political dispensation.        

Dr Jan du Plessis is Virtual Editor and Publisher of Intersearch. This is an edited extract from the Intersearch Management Briefing for February 2013. Dr Du Plessis can be contacted at [email protected] 

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