The latest results displayed at the National Results Operation Centre (ROC) in Tshwane on Tuesday. Picture: Timothy Bernard/ANA Politics
OPINION: A united front to restore the lost faith in our democracy, led by tried and trusted leaders who can meet the demands of our times is overdue, lest we see more winters of discontent, with more deterioration in our public and personal spheres, writes Professor Saths Cooper.
For more than 20 years the burden has continued to weigh heavily on the hunched shoulders of the majority of South Africans who have been pushed to the periphery of society, kneeling on the sidelines, in constant anticipation of seeing a few crumbs of our much-vaunted democracy and freedom being thrown their way.
The long-suffering majority has been abused, been taken for granted, been as invisible as they were in the past, save for when they were needed by the powered elite or when they protested against their calculated exclusion from democracy’s promise. The latter – uniquely termed “service delivery” protests – should have sounded warning bells within administration after administration. Instead, these signs were ignored, even dismissed, yet attracting blame when violence erupted.
Yes, unzima lomthwalo has been the refrain without the rousing lyrics. The majority has been beggared in the land of their birth, made to feel alien, unwelcome, and quite dispensable. The majority has tolerated the self-serving foibles of the ruling class, silently marking the excesses that have been rubbed into their weary shoulders by those who became the agenda.
Experiencing the subversion and near dysfunction of nearly all state departments and public entities; all while there has been wholesale looting of public resources for the benefit of the powered elite, who brazenly strutted their ill-gotten gains and positions even as more people are unemployed, hungry, destitute, rendered surplus.
The outcome of the Local Government Elections (LGE) has once again shocked the powered elite, who deluded themselves into believing that the electorate will respond like “voting cattle”, as Robert Sobukwe referred to those who just went along with the prevailing narrative in the year preceding the tragic events at Sharpeville on 21 March 1960.
When the clear warning signs of the August 2016 LGE were apparent, these were wished away with all sorts of facile explanations. As they are now. Voter apathy or the terrible power of the powerless? Being betrayed regularly every two to three years over the last two decades till breaking point is reached? Signs of a maturing democracy? These are well-meaning – but woefully inadequate explanations – that do not meet the necessary and sufficient requirements to fully understand the profound alienation that we face.
All caused by the ruling elite whose callousness, misreading of the signs and increasing lack of concern have given rise to this appalling state of affairs. Victims being victimised, scorned, ignored and excluded, will retaliate; as we saw in the July mayhem. Trying to stay away from aiding one’s abuser is retaliation, even when it means extending one’s abuse. This may be the only meaningful response when one’s choices are hopelessly diminished.
The trust deficit in the existing political dispensation and their purveyors is so dangerously high that many will support dictatorship (as a recent survey indicated), just to see a semblance of certainty restored, whatever the cost to the liberties which many of us, in the comfort of our middle class bubbles, trot out ever so often.
Our democracy has reached its nadir. Our state is in free fall. Our system is not responsive to the needs of our people. Our electoral system is not fit for purpose. The system and those in charge must change, fast.
Yes, unzima lomthwalo is now shouldered by the powered elite, fractionalised into the plethora of formations created to contest the LGE. While thousands of jobs have been shed due to mismanagement of an economy ably aided by the Covid-19 pandemic, these hastily formed LGE parties have been created as the new – unproductive – economic activity.
True, they have thrown fear into the powered elite, many of whom are rethinking their individual futures, while the lot of the Rainbow Nation has been shattered into millions of unrecognisable pieces.
We can talk coalition till the next general election – less than two years away – but the seething anger, resentment, disaffection, obvious hunger, worsening poverty, and loss of faith in societal processes will not have abated, with little changing in the basic material conditions of most people in our deeply fractured country.
It is time for us to venture beyond the patent limitations of our parties, outdated beliefs and ideologies, and find ourselves in one another. Beyond the rhetoric, beyond the catchy LGE phrases, beyond our apartheid-induced racial and ethnic cocoons, to realise that we are as strong as the weakest amongst us.
A united front to restore the lost faith in our democracy, led by tried and trusted leaders who can meet the demands of our times is overdue, lest we see more winters of discontent, with more deterioration in our public and personal spheres. Unzima lomthwalo!
* Professor Saths Cooper is a former political prisoner, who was jailed with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island. Cooper was a member of the 1970s group of activists. He is now president of the Pan-African Psychology Union.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of IOL and Independent Media.
Insider