The Electoral Law at the birth of democracy in South Africa in 1994 created also the death of democracy, because it disempowered the people from individual choice of their representatives through exclusion of any role for constituencies in elections at national, provincial and 50 percent municipal level.

The Electoral Law created corporatist government, since voters lack the power of decision to hold each elected representative to account. Since they can only vote for the party-list, instead of a free choice of the individual who is to be elected, the people are required to vote also for their own disenfranchisement.

Top-down government was fatally built into South African democracy at all levels with this exclusion of constituency accountability from the Electoral Law. It turned the National Assembly into a rubber stamp, with similar consequences in eight of the nine provinces and in the great majority of municipalities.

Since voters are not allowed to exercise any control over each individual so-called representative, these "representatives" cannot and do not represent.

Consequences follow.

Firstly, corruption. Since the elected politicians are made into masters of the people through their non-accountability, it was inevitable that civil servants should also become unaccountable. With unaccountability it was inevitable that the political system should become corrupt at all levels. Unsurprisingly, this has now extended to the ANC itself, down to the level of the branch.

Secondly, politics has become irrelevant, since the people have no power to make their wishes and opinions felt. The promise of liberation is now widely regarded as a fraud. As a result, there is great danger of the rise of unconstitutional and anti-constitutional politics, leading to bloodshed and tyranny.

Thirdly, since the people have become bored and cynical, and feel betrayed, the ANC branch has no attraction for ordinary people, and this has left its branches wide open for takeover by criminal gangs. This is the meaning of ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe's recent call for ANC members to "liberate" their branches from "the vice of small groupings that are intelligent, that have the monopoly of wisdom and have a lot of cash-flow around elections."

Only a powerful mass movement for the deepening of democracy, of the promise of 1912 and the first clause of the Freedom Charter, that "The people shall govern!", can remedy this dangerous illness, which threatens every gain of the struggle. This is the real issue of the coming ANC centenary.