EFF shows noise will always bulldoze true democracy in SA

The spectacle of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and its accomplices reducing the State of the Nation Address (Sona) to little more than a barroom brawl on Thursday night was a sad reminder that, much as we pride ourselves on being “a democracy”, South Africa is still far from it.

A democracy is, by definition, a system in which the majority of people decide how their lives will be conducted and which people they choose to do such conducting.

What the EFF showed, in brutishly disrupting the Sona by President Cyril Ramaphosa, was that noise will always bulldoze true democracy in the brave new world of South Africa.

For 40 minutes, these louts not only prevented our head of state – and he is still that, no matter what you personally think of him – from outlining to his citizens his assessment of where we are and where we are going as a nation.

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Not only that, the EFF thugs wanted to make a statement as “freedom fighters” by trying to storm the stage in the Cape Town City Hall where Ramaphosa was waiting to deliver his speech.

They never intended to pose a real threat to Ramaphosa, as they very well knew from the outset, but in forcing security services to intervene, they got far more “bang for the buck” than they deserved.

And that image, of the tiny tail wagging a much bigger, yet, passive, dog, is emblematic of politics today.

The EFF – and its collaborator small parties – are playing “kingmakers” at municipalities all across SA. In Joburg, we have a “place holder” mayor who is barely coherent and in place despite his party’s one percent of the vote.

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Former gangster Kenny Kunene is MMC for transport, despite his party’s three percent vote share. This is a perversion of democracy and the bigger parties must fight it tooth and nail.