Something is still really badly wrong with our democracy in South Africa.
The poorest of the poor are still frequently being intimidated into voting for particular parties - being threatened with their homes being burned to the ground, or that they or their families will be killed if they do not vote for the ANC - little realizing or actually believing - that their ballots are secret.
Though there is probably no way of knowing if those issuing these low-key threats are in any way directly tied to the ANC itself, or whether this is just a form of terrifying peer-pressure from fanatical supporters, regardless, many ordinary South Africans capitulate to these threats - and this makes the outcome of recent general elections pretty much a foregone conclusion.
While there is no way for anyone to find out exactly who you, or I, or the guy who lives down the road actually voted for - at least, not with the current electoral system and its mechanisms - many people believe it when they are told the contrary.
This very much reminds me of my grandmother, who was so old that she'd watched the Redcoats marching past her farm as a toddler in 1900. You see, even though she'd been introduced to new technologies in the run of her long lifetime - the radio, the motor car, trains, airplanes, telephones, TV, home electricity, plumbing, she never really quite understood much of it. I remember from when I knew her, back in the 1980s, that she was quite convinced that people she saw on TV could see her as well, so she always made sure her make-up was perfect, her hair neat, and her glasses on straight before sitting down to watch her favorite shows.
Sadly - and most frustratingly, my Ouma never accepted (or understood) both mine or my mother's explanations of why Derrick Watts couldn't see her through the TV screen, or why TV shows didn't literally show ostrich eggs incubating from the time they were laid to the time they hatched, or characters traveling from city to city - in REAL TIME!
Unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there to whom this same sort of naive mindset still applies when it comes to taking threats as seriously as those I mentioned earlier. Better safe than sorry, right? After all, who's to say someone wouldn't come after them if they even suspected they voted their conscience instead of toeing the party line?
And, just in case anyone might think that I'm "biased" and "making things up", let me point out that over the years I've had several interesting conversations with people, particularly those living in "locations", who have told me in no uncertain terms of their own experiences, and of the threats they themselves and others whom they know, received.
Be that as it may, I think our country is still very young in terms of understanding democracy as a concept. I mean, it's all rather a bit foreign, isn't it? For centuries, people of color had no political input, influence or say whatsoever in South Africa - and then suddenly out of the blue, everyone gets the vote. The scary thing is, that very little effort was actually made to educate people in the actual mechanics of democracy, how to actually cast a vote, civic education at schools for example, or in the mechanisms of politics and South Africa's government.
I think the broader populace, having been oppressed for so long, have only the idea that democracy means them being in charge now, and being able to make decisions for others and rolling over them regardless of what they have to say about it. Given the behavior of a lot of people of late, some of them even in governmental positions, I'd say this is pretty much borne out verbatim.
To some, the concept of a Constitution just means a set of guidelines that can be ignored for the sake of convenience, or changed to suit them whenever they are found to be inconvenient. I think they have confused the idea of democracy with mob-rule, and if you look at the internal politics of the ANC's tripartite alliance, that is exactly what you will see in play.
Speaking as someone who finished high school before the replacement of the NP government in 1994, I'd like to point out that my generation wasn't educated in school about the workings of democracy either. You know what? I believe that omission was deliberate.
I think it is because the previous government realized that if we white kids ever were educated on how a democracy was SUPPOSED to work, and what constituted democracy, we would have realized that South Africa never was a democracy at all, and had in fact, never been.
In the same vein, I sincerely doubt that kids in South Africa's schools today have any real grounding or education in what the mechanics of democracy actually look like either. To my knowledge, there are still no attempts or programs at school to create educated future voters.
Compare schools overseas to ours for example - to varying degrees, kids learn about democratic values, the Bill of Rights, their country's Constitution and its value and importance, and in some cases get hands-on experience in electing class presidents, or participating in campaigning and elections first-hand. Here we are at fifteen years into our "new" democracy in South Africa, and we still do not have anything remotely like this.
This in my view, is why we have so many politicians who materialize in office, glib and arrogant and self-serving, and soon after prove to be corrupt, inept, ignorant (or even worse, dismissive) of democratic process and oblivious to the consequences of their political actions.
Rather than people being called to political careers to defend human rights, or to make things better for everyone, or to just keep the machine running smoothly, politics has become the career choice of opportunists who recognize the opportunity to enrich themselves, or to also force their religious fundamentalist agendas into their work.
As a result, there are few truly impressive figures left in South African politics today, with little chance any will emerge soon either. Instead, we have a lot of opportunists with bulging pockets who trample all over process, flout legality, lie with straight faces, and stuff their pockets at the taxpayer's expense.
And, unfortunately, the political arena that is Government today, seems to resemble far more a chaotic, disorganized and ramshackle "revolutionary house" than a proper democracy, accompanied by all the discord and gross incompetence that accompanies such an institution.
Add to that, the worrying intentions of so many groups wanting to drag their own ideologies into politics, and to rearrange that pesky Constitution to suit themselves. What is so insidious about these groups, is the way in which they subvert democratic principles and try to use democratic processes to sabotage democracy itself.
An accurate analogy would be getting democracy to fall on on it's sword - to cause itself to be replaced with a theocracy - a religious fundamentalist state. It is sad that so few people can see anything "fundamentally" wrong with that outcome.
I believe that this failure to educate is why we have such a bad case of apathy and a general sense of disinterest in politics here - because people are going through school and entering the electorate without the sense of empowerment brought by the knowledge that THEIR vote can make a difference.
People don't realize this, because they don't know. And because they don't know, they don't care. And this is precisely what places groups who enjoy the benefits of such disinterest and ignorance, in power - and keeps them there.
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All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2019.
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