In studying democratic consolidation over the past 25 years of freedom in South Africa, one finds various pockets of regressive impulse. Among these are horrific racist murders of men being thrown to lions or stuffed alive in coffins, barely concealed political murders, divisive tweets of once-powerful ANC leaders, migrants being hounded out of communities because they “smell foreign”, and something as seemingly minor as a local placard protest.

It is the latter, in a little nook of Chatsworth in Durban this week, that represents one of the latest and nastiest impulses to authoritarian regression. Left unchallenged, it is a malaise that will chip at the democratic edifice.

eThekwini’s municipal ward 71, comprising Shallcross, Crossmoor and Bottlebrush, represents a microcosm of a potentially non-racial community. Palatial homes, suburban cottages, mass council housing and informal settlements co-exist cheek-by-jowl. Their placement is simultaneously a function of apartheid spatial planning and defiance of apartheid divide and rule. Its racial makeup is a sprawling community of Africans in informal settlements in the middle of a massive Indian township created 50-odd years ago.

The perversely named Link Road slices through the two communities.

On the one hand, the formally settled Indian community finds itself vulnerable to burgeoning informal settlements and real or imagined consequences of crime and declining property values. On the other hand, Africans in the Bottlebrush informal settlement find themselves desperately jockeying for jobs, shelter and good schooling for their children.

Crime and social ills, like drugs and gangsterism, plague both communities. Periodic tensions between minor groupings from both communities have spilt over into violent confrontation on Link Road.

That scenario changed last September. A 26-year-old local lawyer of Indian descent was unwillingly plucked from practice and thrust forward as a local government by-election candidate. Interestingly, his prime backers were from the ANC branch in the informal settlement. In a dramatic shift of political allegiance, a nominally safe DA ward was won by the ANC’s Previn Vedan.

It was the strength of a candidate grounded in the local community that inspired confidence. His votes came from both the informal and formally housed communities. Vedan hit the ground running, bringing a fresh generational outlook, hope and optimism. With maturity well beyond his years, he reached out to the opposition he had defeated at the ballot box, stressing the need to build unity in a divided community. The majority responded positively.

Working on the ground, he succeeded in turning the dividing line of Link Road into a bridge between the Indian and African communities. Across the entire landscape of our country, interventions which yield tangible results for peace and social cohesion are as rare as hen’s teeth.

This warrants the attention of scholars who study democratic consolidation.

In April this year, flash floods claimed lives and destroyed a number of homes in Chatsworth and surrounding areas. Vedan rallied the community in an immediate humanitarian response. A willing hand also came from the renowned Gift of the Givers Foundation, which volunteered to build a small batch of homes for the distressed families on public land adjacent to the informal settlement.

Mean-spirited opposition came out this week in 15 placards and as many people purporting to represent a thousands-strong community. Alongside a bizarre “No Goats” placard was a call for the democratically elected councillor to go. The minor protest came with a torrent of barely concealed threats to his person and home. But more heartening was the slew of messages in support of the councillor’s humanitarian intervention to house his distressed constituents.

One cannot avoid a grand parallel between Vedan and another attempt to depose a democratically elected leader. In April 2002, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez faced a coup d’état by foreign-backed opposition. Loyal troops and the Venezuelan poor rallied around Chavez, protecting him during the two-day coup that failed to topple him. Coincidentally, a pair of Irish filmmakers making a documentary about Chavez were able to capture the drama in the celebrated documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

This week, cellphones grabbed images and voice notes of the anti-democratic sentiment. Like the attempt to depose Chavez, an organic support base both inside and outside his party, both Indian and African, rallied around Vedan. His exercise in building unity and social cohesion in a divided community may yet turn out to be a blueprint for our country at large.

Equally so, is the need to counter dangerous anti-democratic sentiment. There’s a line from a movie that goes along the lines: “When you have cancer, you don’t talk nicely to it, you cut it out. DM