Has democracy failed? This is a question troubling the minds of many a concerned South African.
Overwhelmed by 30 years of the African National Congress’s (ANC) failures, people have become sceptical about the professed correlation between democracy and development.
Who is to fault them when all indicators – including racial harmony and social cohesion, economic and social equality, unemployment and poverty, crime and corruption – point to a country teetering on the verge of unmitigated disaster?
However, those who are optimistic find solace in Cornelis de Kiewiet’s 1941 book, A History of South Africa, Social and Economic, where he observed that South Africa has “survived politically by disasters and economically by windfalls”.
True, our resilience was tested over centuries of wrong perpetuated by one race over another. We are survivors of the disastrous colonial era of British imperialism.
We endured decades of heinous crime against humanity – apartheid – and forged a daunting path of national unity and averted a possible disaster of civil war.
Whereas the minerals beneath our soil have been our curse, they have been, to a large extent, the windfall that kept the economy afloat.
But will South Africa, this time around, survive? What, then, should South Africa do to avert the disaster?
How we got here
Any idea, effort and action to save our country must start with a brutally honest conversation about how we got here. As they do in medical practice, we must diagnose the problem before we propose remedies.
The ANC brought us here. The people of South Africa entrusted the ANC with the responsibility to govern, and it gave them a kakistocracy – a government by the least competent, least suitable and unscrupulous individuals.
Its deployees looted, bankrupted and collapsed state-owned institutions and government departments. The epitome of SA’s kakistocracy was Jacob Zuma. He not only sold the state to the Guptas, but he also secured himself in comfort under a monument of corruption in Nkandla.
Zuma was not alone; he had foot soldiers who facilitated and aided State Capture. Malusi Gigaba et al handed over the running of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and dished out lucrative tenders to their masters at Saxonwold.
The ANC implemented a cadre deployment strategy that idolised a cult of mediocrity at the expense of good governance. And today, South Africa is exactly where Nigeria was 42 years ago when we should have learnt from its mistakes.
In his 1983 booklet, The Trouble With Nigeria, Chinua Achebe lamented that “the cult of mediocrity would bring the wheels of modernisation grinding to a halt throughout the land. Look at our own collapsing public utilities, our inefficient and wasteful parastatals and state-owned companies.
“If you want electricity, you buy your own generator, if you want water, you sink your own borehole; if you want to travel, you set up your own airline. One day soon... you will have to build your own post office to send your letters!”
Other than Sars, no South African SOE is functional. The SABC, SAA, Prasa, Denel, Transnet, Eskom and so on, collapsed under the weight of kakistocracy.
The danger of kakistocracy is that it thrives on and promotes cronyism; it drops the standards and emboldens the vacuous to take charge; it protects scoundrels to plunder with impunity; and hollows out the capacity of the state to deliver crucial services.
In the end, those who can afford it acquire services from private, not public entities. The result is that people lose trust in democracy; they become cynical and disillusioned with politics. Whereas pre-1994 most people would have thought of democracy as the panacea that would ameliorate our social and political woes, today questions on whether we democratised too soon abound.
In his political theory of sequencing, acclaimed political historian Francis Fukuyama observed in Political Order and Political Decay that “countries that democratised before a strong state was in place, such as the United States, Greece and Italy, created clientelist systems…” while Prussia, on the other hand, began to “put together an effective bureaucracy before it industrialised and well before democratic accountability was introduced”. That is how Prussia became the epitome of government efficiency.
In a clientelist system, politicians and government officials provide government services in exchange for a bribe. The difficulty is that once the seeds of clientelism are sown, it takes centuries to weed them out of the system to build a strong democracy and an efficient bureaucracy. Ask the Italians.
Plutocracy — disappointing results
Meanwhile, some are calling for the rise of outsiders – mainly the rich – to step up and lead South Africa. But could plutocracy be our redemption? The assumption is that because they have made their money outside of politics, they would not steal.
Thus, the name of Patrice Motsepe – the billionaire mining mogul and owner of Mamelodi Sundowns Football Club – is suggested as a potential messiah who could pull South Africa from the brink.
But South Africa has already tried plutocracy through Cyril Ramaphosa’s return to active politics in 2012 and Herman Mashaba’s 2016 Joburg mayoralty. The results are disappointing.
That the two are filthy rich is undisputed; their wealth has been publicised in Forbes Magazine; however, our experience under the leadership of these billionaires confirms that “capitalist crusaders”, too, are fallible.
As renowned sociologist Max Weber warned, there is no guarantee that plutocratic leadership “will not exploit their political domination in their own economic interest”.
Phala Phala dollars
Ramaphosa’s hoarding of Phala Phala dollars under a mattress and non-declaration to Sars proves not only the temptation of plutocrats to exploit their political domination in their own economic interests, but also the arrogance of power.
Mashaba’s use of a buddy of his, Akhter Alli Deshmukh, to do modelling for insourcing in the City of Johannesburg — without following procurement procedures — blurred the ethical lines of good governance, proving yet again the fallibility of plutocrats.
It must be obvious, therefore, that our redemption will come neither from tycoons nor benevolent dictators. Our solution rests with us.
Best option
First, democracy is still our best option. We must stop approaching politics like soccer, where loyalty is more important than performance. We must give other parties a chance to govern. Politicians must know that there are consequences for poor performance.
Second, we must reform our electoral laws to allow for direct presidential and parliamentary elections. The elected must be accountable to the electorate, not political parties.
Last, we must learn from the Singaporean democratic system, where merit, pragmatism and honesty are the key values of its governance system. In Singapore, merit reigns; hence, both political leadership and the bureaucracy are highly qualified. For Singapore, it matters not whether the idea is Western or Asian; if it’s practical and it works for the people, it is implemented. It has a zero tolerance for corruption. Ministers who collect bribes from tenderpreneurs are condemned and locked up in jail.
Meritocracy, not plutocracy, will be our redemption. DM