Democracy: Ready or not, we have to deal with it.

That said, the issue of independence, self-rule and democracy has become relevant again, especially in the wake of the current conflict in Ukraine. The basic argument, by one account, is that Ukrainians have had rather limited experience with independence, self-rule and democracy, and therefore have very little to draw on. This beleaguered country was split between Russia and Poland from the mid-1600s to the end of the 1700s, then between Russia and Austria through the next century, and between Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania during the inter-war period, and only after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in August 1991, did Ukraine become an independent country, governed, (so we have to assume) by consent of the governed.

After centuries of undemocratic rule, Ukrainian society shows all the pathologies of a history marked by rebellion, civil war, pogroms, famine, purges, holocaust, and currently seem to have a very tenuous sense of national identity. Out of all this, and stemming from its position as a ‘borderland’ that had always been ‘fertile and fatally tempting to invaders’ the journalist and historian, Anna Reid, explained, ‘Ukrainians inherited a legacy of violence’.

In some ways, the Ukrainians are much like the Russians, who themselves have had rather limited experience with democratic self-rule before 1991. The Ukrainians did enjoy brief spells of self-rule: during the Cossack risings of the 17^th century; the civil war of 1918-1920, and late during the period of Nazi occupation. On their part, the Russians went from the autocracy of Tsarist rule from about the mid-1500s until shortly before the Bolshevik Revolution, then to communist rule until the early 19090s, and only began to build democracy after the communists left the building.

All of this got me thinking about South Africa, about the country’s 20 year-long birth of democracy (this, at least, is one way to explain the bloody mess we’re in) and how little we have to draw on from our own history, to drive democracy towards increased, progressive, and more inclusive maturity. South Africa does not have a violently destructive and as disturbing a history as Ukraine. Of course, we would want to believe that we are the world’s greatest victims, and that ours was the only fight for social justice, but that’s just rubbish.

What we do have, though, is a deep history of conflict and conquest (neither of which started in 1652, mind you) division, exclusion, undemocratic and imperial rule, authoritarianism, militarism and the use of police for political ends, and more recently in our iniquitous past, we had apartheid’s structural and somatic violence. Across our history we have had slavery and indentured labour, of exploitative migrant work, and, at least since Dutch East India Company, of private enterprises that were loyal to political orders; from empire to apartheid’s limited and restricted franchise, the superstructure that framed society was distinctly undemocratic, with periods of violence. Like the Ukrainians and the Russians, South Africa has also shared a history of absences. During the Soviet era, and to a limited extent during apartheid, people disappeared either willingly or by force (and death). In South Africa millions of people were legally and physically removed from one part of the country, and dumped elsewhere. By various means of coercion and consent, and through the removals of the past, millions remain internally displaced, or missing.

To paraphrase Anna Reid on Ukraine, where in South Africa’s history are the sections on stability, peace, prosperity and trust? I don’t necessarily share the view that nothing positive can be found in our deep history. What do we draw on, though - other than a belief that in our primordial past we were good - to prepare our faces for the times we face? The easy place to start is at the top. But, as the legatees of this fractured history of South African, we have very little to draw on. Since the death of Tambo, Sisulu, of Govan Mbeki and Mandela, of Biko and Goniwe, Abu Asvat and Albertina Sisulu, we have been left with an emptiness that has left us somewhat floundering. As the silly song says: “If there's something weird, and it don't look good, who ya gonna call?” You certainly can’t call the current crop of leaders – and especially not the police.

In our daily lives, too, we seem unable to shake our inheritances of exploitation, expediency and injustice. Almost everything we have achieved since 1994 seems to have been acquired through hand-outs, favouritism, and to being given things that we don’t deserve. We are given jobs, or privileges, special consideration and social mobility is gained not because of perseverance or hard work, nor because we are sufficiently qualified, at least not in the formal sense, but simply because of our iniquitous past. That very fractured, violent, and destructive past.

We have come to believe that all of this is necessary. We cannot expect anyone to work hard to get anywhere, because hard work is associated with exploitation of the past. So many of our parents were abused at work, and were being paid very little for it. Today, it is impossible to expect hard work from anyone, lest we are associated with that iniquitous past where we seem to be living. It’s no use turning to private enterprises, I agree with that most conservative of economists, Milton Friedman, albeit for entirely different reasons, that the main objective of private corporations is to make profit – not to promote social cohesion, social justice or national objectives of prosperity and trust. What of our trade unions, then? Well, some of the trade unions that were established during our fractured past seem to have lost their telos, and are quite unable to work for workers. Nobody seems to be doing the jobs they’re actually paid for. As for the unions, they serve the very political ends that are losing association with anything that even vaguely resembles anything noble, beneficial or rewarding. They were creations of their time, and times have changed; they have not.

Very many people in South Africa work very hard to make ends meet. Many more people, or so it seems, look towards our leaders for a helping hand, often deservedly so. Yet, too many of us seem to be grappling with this democracy thing. Too many of us believe, that it arrived at a specific point, that we are, now, IN a democracy, that this is the best that it can get, ever, and perhaps more frighteningly, that this particular order, where we are at the moment, is an end in itself.

I cannot agree with the belief that people are not ready for democracy, or that democracy may have come ‘too soon’ for societies like Russia, Ukraine and South Africa. What does seem clear, nonetheless, is that our experience with democracy, at least when seen in the longue durée has been very brief and often tumultuous. It does seem, sometimes, like we live in that instant when you leave a long dark tunnel, and suddenly hit the bright sunlight. The eyes (and our senses) may take a much longer time, more than 20 years, to adjust to the sudden bright light of democracy, the passage. We cannot go back, and we cannot stand still. We have to continue.

Nobody said it was going to be easy – except if you read the Freedom Charter, in terms of which, we should all, now, be drunk on the unbearable lightness of liberation. We have to believe that things will get better. We just won’t ask when. DM