Twenty years into South African democracy and what can be said is that we still have much to achieve.
Unemployment, corruption and the high crime rate cause a giant magnetic field that is keeping us captive and characterised as people of the third world.
What we have failed to achieve in my opinion is adapting the mindset of the ordinary South African to the idea of a democracy.
The primary contributor to this failure is the use of propaganda linking the present to the trials and tribulation this country was subjected to as a result of the apartheid regime.
Such propaganda is used in election campaigns to induce fear in the voter. The choice of what is right or wrong is thus clouded by the idea that the past somehow will repeat itself. Such thoughts are justified to those who experienced the horrors and pain of the pre-democratic society!
The question is whether this fear should be implanted into the born-free individuals who worked so hard to establish a free open society. I make specific reference to those who take the view that we are still in a fight against racial supremacy.
However, the naked truth is that reference to our enemy can no longer be attributed to race, culture or social background. Our enemy is the inability to look past negative aspects of the past and while still remembering the pre-democratic situation, to focus on a properly functioning democratic society!
The use of propaganda in election campaigns thus has a destructive rather than beneficial outcome on today’s society.
If history had taught us anything it is that such propaganda can be manipulated.
Political propaganda in South Africa in this sense could be fuelling a controlled fire, rather than putting it out!
