South Africans deserve better than this so-called democracy
Nothing our politicians do really benefits us, and it's time we demand our time in the spotlight just like those at Sona pretended to do on our behalf.
Chaos erupts at the 2023 State Of The Nation Address (Sona) at Parliament on 9 February 2023 in Cape Town. Photo by Gallo Images/Jeffrey Abrahams
There are loads of reasons to question whether democracy is really right for us, starting with the most obvious one on Thursday night.
The State of The Nation Address (Sona) could have been an email and it would still have been staler than the 19th season of Idols.
Previously, we’ve had to go to court to find out whether the public protector had the power to, erm… y’know, protect the public. After all, it is a Chapter 9 Institution for whatever that’s worth.
Oh, and we live in a country where we can have a mayor whose party received only 1% of the vote.
We make up the rules as we go along
Panel beating democratic ideals have always been the venom in South African discourse. We had parliamentary sovereignty once upon a time, inclusive of the exclusion from the vote.
Post-1994, we planned a parliamentary middle finger to the electorate and created a constitutional amendment to enable floor crossing for a while.
Today, we can do what we want, tag on some political rhetoric and make it sound legitimate.
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Holding the government to account need not be a matter of your annual trick of shouting in parliament.
When you’re too busy looting banks and playing Gauteng municipal leadership hot potato, it’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to waste time actually sitting in meetings and getting things done.
When you have a sweet majority, it’s understandable why you wouldn’t admit fault to all the things you identify as wrong, and expect everybody to agree with you that things are wrong, but then ignore who is responsible.
Oh, and when you’re engaged in an internal leadership struggle but there’s nothing for you to do on the national stage to legitimise your place, you stand up, say you don’t want to waste more time and then waste more time on a matter that the public doesn’t care about and that, again, could have been an email.
As it is, our dwindling voter numbers are cause for concern in the legitimacy of our democracy, so we certainly don’t need our democratically elected leadership to keep taking us for fools.
Do something damnit! And when you do, make it less about you and more about us!
When you think about it, when last have our politicians really done anything for us over themselves?
We’re simply here, being used as political fodder to justify the stupid decisions they decide to make.
Democracy takes more than just duplicating jobs and creating reports
Supposedly a Minister of Electricity is the answer to our woes, despite having had ministers both in charge of public enterprises and energy to date.
Supposedly, we need to have more policing when the existing system, including prosecutions, has done little to curb gender-based violence. Supposedly we owe Justice Zondo a tremendous gratitude for his commission report, yet Zuma is chilling nicely and we’re too scared to talk about it even lest we get a riot again and forget to call in the army.
Democracy doesn’t just work. It takes work. It requires that we follow the order and not simply abuse the order to raise points of order, so that everything falls out of order.
This is not a system where you can simply apply the path of least resistance and expect it to still function.
You want to know why our state is crumbling? It’s because we’re allowing some self-serving fools to make decisions on our behalf without checking in whether those decisions benefit us.
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The State of the Nation Address doesn’t benefit us. The interruptions never benefit us. The arguments on order didn’t benefit us.
It could all have been an email, but the reason it wasn’t is because it wouldn’t serve the people who wanted to be seen. Even if it costs millions and the dignity of our democracy.
When do we get seen? When do our lives start taking a turn for the better? When do we get bang for our buck?
Does South Africa deserve democracy? Millions of South Africans certainly do! It’s those who are running it who we should question.
