In 1994 we founded a democracy. In 1996, with the adoption of the Constitution, we became a functioning democracy. At about the same time, we were beginning to enter the stage of becoming a flourishing democracy.
In 1999, Patricia de Lille and Andrew Feinstein alerted Parliament to possible corruption with the arms deal, where the R90 billion cost had been subjected to enriching politicians in the process. We began to develop a sick feeling that something was wrong with the functioning of our democracy.
A year later, when President Thabo Mbeki began to disagree with the global scientific community on HIV/Aids, a further fracture happened within our socio-political firmament.
In 2005 he fired his deputy, Jacob Zuma, based on arms deal corruption allegations, and in 2008 we had Travelgate.
Pile on Nkandla, the Guptas, SOE corruption and the private sector corruption scandal around the 2010 World Cup and we have to admit that the proper functioning of our democracy has been at risk for a very long time.
It is now February 2023 and we are subjected to between 6 and 10 hours of load shedding a day. Essentially, we have been stopped dead in our tracks under the current government of becoming a world-class flourishing democracy and have now embarked on entering the failed state runway.
In a recent dialogue, it was pointed out by foreign political observers that the lack of urgency from the South African government to address key issues is seriously damaging the opportunity for investment as well as the image of the country.
While the lights are switched off in our homes, the energy is definitely on everywhere among most of our national ministers.
How did we go from founding a great democracy in 1994 and becoming a functioning democracy in 1996, to missing the flourishing democracy highway and now we are looking for the failed state turn-off in 2023?
It all began when the government lost the trust of the people. It was a slow erosion over time and then it became a flood. Today, the ANC government is selling “renewal” as a mantra while it doesn’t realise that it is inadvertently admitting serious and serial failure.
If there was any evidence that the renewal is working, it might be a believable mantra. But it’s all become just another cheap trick to keep people buying tickets to the circus.
Recently, ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula lashed out at now-fired Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter for his allegations about senior politicians’ involvement in corruption within Eskom. Eskom is losing R1 billion a month to corruption.
The point that is missed by the secretary-general is that he and the relevant ministers have a duty to engage De Ruyter on the allegations.
Instead, he does exactly what the previous secretary-general Gwede Mantashe did in 2015 when he boldly announced “there is no state capture.”
We are a barely functioning democracy, with increasing levels of hardship across all income categories. In a bizarre way, the state has prevented the flourishing of the state.
We are unable to fix unemployment. We are unable to curtail violence. We have an ideological approach to public service instead of a flourishing country approach. We call on our suffering citizens to be resilient while no plan emerges to address their catastrophic poverty.
I want to scream when I see politicians falling asleep during parliamentary sittings. There is no renewal. No renaissance.
Trust has been eroded. Pragmatism is completely absent. Accountability is non-existent. Solutions are corrupted and urgency is a foreign concept.
We are at a dead end. At every level, we are regressing in the functioning of our democracy. And still, despite all these worst-case scenarios, the government has an aversion to people who speak out and instead has a love for those who tell us it’s not that bad. How bad must it be before it’s bad?
* Lorenzo Davids.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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