The first step in solving a problem is to acknowledge that it exists. Alcoholics Anonymous devised a formula to take care of this step: in group meetings AA members introduce themselves with the words: “Hi, I’m so-and-so and I’m an alcoholic.”
In the same way, us South African democrats would do well to look our problem straight in the eye and acknowledge that we no longer live in a democracy.
One of the defining principles of democracy is equality before the law – a political system that doesn’t have that, simply does not conform to the definition of democracy. And you and I are not allowed to land our wedding guests at a military facility.
This is only one of the many manifestations of our government brazenly flouting the most basic tenets of democracy, but it’s enough. So even if we don’t introduce ourselves with “Hi, I’m so-and-so and I no longer live in a democracy”, that’s the problem we should be acknowledging.
Local Government Elections 2016, 3 Aug 2016, Diepsloot. Credit: GCIS
We still have elections, of course, and judging by our Local Government Elections last year, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is still working well, but what’s the use of elections if our elected government puts a band of unelected scoundrels in charge of our country – people whose interests are in direct opposition to ours? That’s no democracy.
“But is that really how it is?” you may ask. “Are we really captured? Nobody’s been found guilty of crimes relating to state capture, after all? And the ANC was legitimately elected by the majority of SA voters? Anyway, aren’t all states to some extent captured?”
You would be right to ask. Each of these questions deserves a response. We’re speaking about serious matters here. Heaven forbid that one embark on a frolic because of a misconception.
However, it’s also true that many of you would already have made up your mind about at least some of these issues, so those responses won’t be very useful to you. So what I will do is to respond in separate sub-sections of this part of the letter, and let you decide what you want to read.
2.2 What about innocent until proven guilty?
2.3 Aren’t all states captured?
I recommend that you read at least Part 2.3 though, because it leads into Part 3 of the letter (The main problem: political funding).
As for the question about the legitimacy of the elections that put the current crop of our country’s leaders in place, I come back to it in Part 4.1: Internal party elections.
The report can be downloaded from this link.
For those of you who want further evidence of capture and loss of democracy, you can read far more competent accounts elsewhere. The report published by the State Capacity Research Project[1] titled Betrayal of the Promise: How South Africa is Being Stolen is a good place to start. Or simply follow the daily stream of leaked email revelations in the press.
If your research doesn’t convince you, and if you feel that my judgement on state capture and/or loss of democracy is incorrect, please comment below. I’ll try my best to respond.
The offer is only open to democrats though, who are genuinely not convinced. The hordes of shills hired to defend state capture will always find a way to do what they’re paid to do. It’s clearly a waste of time to try to reason with them – they can’t be convinced for as long as the pieces of silver they’re paid for the betrayal of their fellow South Africans don’t run out.
By the way, once in a while it’s good to revisit the audacity of the concept of first “capturing” our tax money, then using some of that same money – to the tune of millions per month[2] – to target us with outrageous, pernicious lies to get us off their scent.
“Radical economic transformation”[3] indeed, LOL! As if meaningful transformation of any kind, even “socio-economic” – and no matter how chaotic – can take place while the resources meant to achieve it disappear by the billion.
I mention “chaotic” because we’re still officially trying to attain the aims set out in the National Development Plan,[4] remember? There hasn’t been any integrated development plan to replace it, just the random swings of a desperate and dangerous state-supported public relations campaign designed to perpetuate looting, used as a substitute for what deserves serious planning if it were to serve the interests of South Africans.
Now concluding that we no longer live in a democracy is pretty alarming, I know. It means, among others, that every person who calls herself a South African democrat is immediately handed a huge responsibility: to take back our democracy.
After all, “the people shall govern” has no qualifiers. It’s not “the people shall govern until our country is hijacked”, or “until there’s a coup”. It’s an injunction to bring about – and safeguard – the rule of the people, through force of arms, if there’s no other option. That’s the way it is with democracies everywhere.
Fortunately we’re not speaking about armed resistance here. We’re not there and I believe we’re unlikely to get there.
An armed struggle is by far the least desirable way to fight for democracy. It’s the option of last resort. Not only because of the death, destruction and destabilisation it causes, but because it may create a new generation of liberation heroes, with the risk that their “brand” would again be hijacked by crooks to get their claws into our state.
So how do we get our democracy back then?
Unfortunately I can’t tell you that it will be easy, or that it will happen overnight. All I can say is that we won’t get it back until we change and expand a few laws relating to how our democracy functions. It’s common sense, really: if our current laws can’t safeguard our democracy, they clearly need to be improved.
And nothing short of that will do, unfortunately. Because even if we bring a new governing alliance to power in 2019, it will also find itself deeply in debt to vested interests and in a position to repay those debts, in all sorts of crooked ways, from our public coffers.
In Part 3 (The main problem – political funding) and Part 4 (The four other obvious causes of capture) I look at what rules need to be changed to give us our democracy back.
Footnotes
Click on the footnote number to go back to where you were.
[1] http://www0.sun.ac.za/cst/research/research_groups/state_capacity
[2] The Bell-Pottinger contract alone was worth ₤100K plus expenses per month: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Pottinger
[3] Scorpio and amaBhungane #GuptaLeaks: How Bell Pottinger sought to package SA economic message
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