According to an article published in BusinessTech this week, economists have stated that Ramaphoria is now well and truly dead. One would find it hard to believe that it ever really existed, but what baffles me is why South Africans continue to believe and place their hopes in individuals as opposed to parties, and policies to place the country back on the right track.

Our democracy is not one where voters are afforded the luxury of electing presidential candidates, party leaders, or ministers directly. Leaders are held accountable by the party, not the voters. Parties are held accountable by the electorate. Thus, the voters should hold parties accountable for electing incompetent leaders. It’s that simple. It is the disconnect between these concepts which is partly to blame for South Africa’s current state of affairs.

The problem with South Africa’s democracy is that we are far too easily distracted by an individual’s shiny packaging and clever PR while ignoring the disastrous party policies they may be hiding behind their back. Exacerbating the problem is our obsession with the political saviour. Our deification of political leaders blinds us to the dangers of their party – a threat which lurks in the shadow cast by the pedestal upon which they are placed. But why does this behaviour persist and how can we snap out of it?

The reasons behind this phenomenon are multi-faceted and perhaps rooted in not only a lack of education, but the establishment of feudal monarchies and Bantustan chiefdoms by the apartheid government, which fostered a culture of absolute individual rule, and South Africa’s love of auspicious stories of emancipation and the prince charming who delivers a fairytale happy ending. Sound familiar? South Africa lived out its very own happy ending back in 1994, proverbially kissed back to life by Nelson Mandela. Though in our case, the saviour all too quickly, and all too predictably, turned into a new villain…

And that is exactly the point made here: Politics is not a fairytale and no person or party can be trusted indefinitely. This is the lesson South Africa cannot seem to learn, and it is the reason behind the trap of governance and economic paralysis in which we keep getting caught.

Why do you think the ANC continues to market itself as a “liberation movement”, in post-apartheid South Africa? Because the party knows that despite having brought the country to its knees, it can still convince voters that it can recreate the happy ending it once delivered almost three decades ago.

There is a strong emotional response to politics and political figures in our country and understandably so. Our country is still in the grip of such severe post-traumatic stress disorder that the only relief is the prospect of something that sounds so blissfully utopian that it is inevitably impossible. As a result, we search for heroes instead of leaders, messiahs instead of wise and capable politicians, and a convenient lie instead of an uncomfortable truth.

Where former Bantustans and monarchies are concerned, we can blame apartheid and its legacy for using existing chiefdoms to divide and conquer South Africa’s black majority. Perhaps it is the mindset of a king who rules unchallenged, coupled with a hefty dose of tribalism, which has led South Africans to support bad leaders, or relinquish their electoral power.

Socio-culturally speaking, it takes a substantial period of adjustment for absolute monarchies to become accountable democracies, for subjects to become citizens, and South Africa is perhaps merely caught in the transition. I’m no expert, but nobody can deny the tribal self-interest of certain tribes, or the cultural divide between Afrikaans and English-speaking South Africans for that matter. Our strength as a highly diverse country is also our biggest downfall. We are the rainbow nation, a spectrum of light that cannot seem to shine as one solid beam.

Added into the mix is, inevitably, a domestic education system and a global political climate which fosters rash emotional response over reasoned analysis, and character assassination over open and tolerant debate. What is currently referred to as “woke” culture is incredibly dismissive and undermining of the principles necessary for a healthy democracy. Delicate and extremely sensitive topics of discussion are wounds dressed so tightly in bandages of outrage and offence that nobody can access and treat them, and in South Africa’s case, ongoing attempts at reconciliation ricochet off walls of prejudice and intolerance.

The result is a form of celebrity-style adulation – we keep bad parties in power because we love their leaders, or perceive them to be equally as “woke”, and reject parties with far better alternatives purely because we do not agree with what one or two of its members have to say. The irony is that being “woke” is supposedly having the impression that you are somehow intellectually superior, when in fact, “wokeness” is merely a revived form of ideological tunnel vision and thought censorship, which history has proven time and time again to be gravely dangerous for democracy.

So what about Cyril Ramaphosa then? The once-shiny façade of a festering party and government is fast losing its lustre. Not surprising when you put a fresh apple into a basket filled with many that are already rotting. As South Africans, we need to learn how to toss the basket out altogether and be ready to do so again when the replacement basket begins to rot, regardless of the type of apple we choose.

We need to realise that there exists no political hero, or saviour, or messiah in South Africa who will fix a party, or the government by extension. There are only elected public servants who fear the wrath of a powerful electorate. We need to be brave enough to engage the democracy gifted to us by those who fought hard for a say in the matter. Holding out for a hero will get us nowhere, and second chances will only cement mediocrity and failure. The hero in our country is you, so go out and save South Africa. DM