Give democracy a chance
If we don’t learn to use our democratic rights to hold the government to account, we will lose our democratic freedoms as well.
Here’s a radical idea: let’s give democracy a try. Yes, of course we have a democratic system in place, and a government elected by the people, but in fact we have democracy in name only. South Africans appear not to have realised—although they may be starting to do so—that the act of voting is something is simply a means to achieve an end, not an end in itself.
Since 1994, we have allowed a dangerous pattern to take hold, one that seems to be democracy but actually is not. The people dutifully turn up to vote on election day, mainly for the ANC, and then when they experience poor service delivery and the other rotten fruits of corruption, they riot and burn to make their voices heard. Four years later, the cycle begins again: vote ANC and then barricade a road in order to get some attention from the officials you elected—all the while complaining, “Democracy has failed us. Democracy doesn’t work.”
Some argue that the rebuke delivered in the recent local government elections is an indication that the tide is turning, but in truth it was a very small one when one considers the extent of the corruption, the dire record of failed service delivery, and the hijacking of the machinery of the state that has gone on. On any rational basis, the ANC should have been struggling for political survival.
The truth is that democracy, especially when practised in our large societies, is a blunt tool. Citizens cannot afford the luxury of just turning up to vote at regular intervals, and of voting as they always do. It is necessary to vote out the people who are not delivering, and then undertake at least some of the tedious between-election work of holding officials to account via civil society structures, pestering MPs and councillors, convening meetings and the like.