EDITOR – South Africa has evolved from a very authoritarian dictatorial past where the political landscape was absolutely opaque and the citizens were basically in the dark and then post 1994 we are exposed to absolute transparency where the whole political machinery is in the gold fish bowl and everyone is in the “light”.
How we have managed this transformation is of concern and it’s possible that this may be the core of our problems. The Constitution of South Africa has been compared to a symphony, with every provision in harmony with the lofty ideals that our first President held dear to his heart. It was perfectly tuned but unfortunately it did not consider that South Africans were not politically in tune with the Constitution and thus we witness the manifestation and ramification of this lack of understanding which will be our downfall.
In some countries the Constitution only formalises, in a legal instrument, a consensus of values and aspirations evolved incrementally from a stable and unbroken past to accommodate the needs of the future. The South African Constitution is different in that it recognises the injustices of the past and in honouring those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land it retained from the past only what was defensible and represents a decisive break and rejection of that part of the past which was disgracefully racist, authoritarian, insular and repressive and vigorously identifies with a commitment to democratic values and principles.
We have collectively witnessed how powerful this Constitution is in the recent past week with the release of the Public Protectors Report on State Capture. We must be thankful that this document holds so much of sway in the way that all us abide by it and we must be thankful for the fact the relationship between the spheres of Government viz. national, provincial and local have important implications for public participation. Whilst the relationship between the arms of Government viz. the executive, legislature and judiciary ensures that power is divided and that the separation of powers is one of the checks and balances introduced to ensure that power is distributed between these arms there has been concern amongst the citizenry of trust and confidence especially because of the way the executive and legislature have been performing recently.
What is redeeming in this period of uncertainty and “doom and gloom” is that there is a tangible extraordinary faith expressed for the judicial authority and more specifically the Constitutional Court, which enjoys absolute faith of the people of South Africa.
The Constitution also stresses the principles of accountability,transparency and openness which have a very intrinsic and powerful relevance for public participation in that it imposes a general obligation on Government and creates a climate that encourages and promotes interaction. There are very few countries on this planet that are as transparent as South Africa. Something that we take for granted but which should be cherished.
Just as an aside,Transparency International (TI) measures 168 countries in terms of their perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 -100 with 100 reflecting that a country is clean. South Africa’s ranking moved from 67th to 61st place on the TI’s Corruption Perception Index(CPI) in 2015. Its noteworthy that Nigeria ranks 26th with Kenya at 25th, Angola at 15th and the USA at 76th, UK at 81st. The most corrupt countries are Somalia and North Korea at joint 8th place and the least corrupt are Denmark and Finland at 91st and 90th place respectively.
The question, in the context of the South African political landscape, is whether we are too transparent for our own good and whether the citizenry of the country were adequately educated on how to manage this new found concept and on the consequences of mismanaging it?
Sicario
Durban
