Do South Africans really deserve democracy?

Do we deserve democracy?

Stupid question, right? Like many things, democracy is assumed in South Africa because of our difficult past, and it seems like a manner of avoiding going back to that difficult past. Why would anyone ever question whether we deserve it, and even if we somehow didn’t deserve it, what would we deserve in its place?

It’s a tough question to ask because the first hurdle is getting over the inevitable offense taken by those reading in that the question implies, we’re too dumb/primitive/weak to run a functional democracy. Unfortunately, given that so many will immediately be guided in that thought direction, I’ll rework the question as one that asks: “What have we done to make democracy work for us?”

The answer to this, relatively similar question is remarkably easy – remarkably little.

In a couple of weeks South Africans will be hitting the polls in a municipal election and the biggest distinction we’ve been exposed to regarding party philosophies was a result of a court case. The DA thought that the ANC should not be able to submit candidates post deadline, and the ANC thought that it should be able to. Who would have thought that nearly 30 years into this democracy thing, we’d be seeing the biggest party-political clashes come about because of an administrative blunder?

Sure, it strikes the fear of hell within me to know that those tasked with running the country can’t seem to run their own party, but that’s hardly as scary as admitting that we’re not really making this democracy thing work for us.

How is it that we have no culture of political debate? How is it that weeks away from putting a cross next to a name, there’s little to go on when questioning what distinguishes them?

Actually, let’s give credit where it’s due. I may get to decide based on who’s poster I like the most.

C’mon! A decision on who is going to rule us coming down to who looks better in rain-soaked cardboard. Is that what our democracy has come to?

Where are the long term plans? The manifestos? The ideas? The steps? Where are all the things that make an election exciting? Where are the things that make elections more than just voting for the same party you always have?

Maybe they’re there somewhere hidden in the backends of websites nobody has the data to hunt down, but I’ve seen manifesto launches and walked away still wondering what the party stands for – for various parties, many a time.

The idea of moving somewhere where democracy is made to work is appealing, because obviously the grass is greener on the other side, but it’s not by virtue of it being on the other side. It’s by virtue of the grass being watered.

If we want to enjoy our democracy, we need to treat it like we deserve it and water it. If we’re going to make a success out if this there are some basic things that we need to get done and they all involve demanding more from electioneering.

We speak of holding politicians to account but really, what would we hold them accountable to? How do we know whether a politician has done their job when we hardly know what their job was to begin with.

In countries where democracy functions better, they don’t waste time with arguments of when trash was collected a day late or the roads having holes in them, because they don’t have those problems. They can therefore get on and debate real things, like how to create economic stability and food security for the area.

I mean, they could even go as far as debating which districts to engage in which strategies with. Meanwhile, down here in the +27, our guys can get away with bragging that they used taxpayer money to fix a couple of roads.

And the worst part is, we accept that. We take that level of discourse as a norm and hold our politicians accountable against that weak, nonsensical, ridiculously low level of expectation.

So yeah, perhaps it is offensive to ask whether we deserve democracy.

We probably do deserve it, but for goodness sake, could we start acting like we deserve it at some point too please?