In November 1863, casting his eye across the Gettysburg battlefield where thousands of soldiers had died in the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln delivered his speech that to this day remains one of the most quoted when the topic of democracy comes up. He declared: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth.”
Every year on 15 September, we celebrate the birth of this freedom on the International Day of Democracy. The annual commemoration should certainly be a celebration, but it should also remind us that we need to promote and protect democracy — and stay vigilant so that it does not perish.
This task is now more urgent than ever before. Today, democracy is caught between the chaotic presidency of Donald Trump, which has extinguished the once shining role of the United States as the standard bearer for democracy, on the one hand, and its illiberal moral rivals who are fast gaining ground, on the other. The resultant hollowing out of democratic international norms and institutions heightens the threat of transnational conflicts. At the same time, the imposition of punitive tariffs restricts further the ability of domestic economies to manage their internal tensions — deepening both societal frustrations and polarisation.
It is at times like these that as a democratic nation we need to put our heads together and figure out how to push back against the growing anti-democratic trends around the world. Obviously, we can’t take on the whole world, but we can make a start by trying to put our own house in order.
Here again inspiration is readily to hand, provided by two well-known thinkers whose foresight can be our guiding light.
Edmund Burke, the 18th-century British statesman, parliamentary orator and political thinker, asserted that bad laws are the worst form of tyranny. What he meant was that poorly conceived laws could be more harmful than laws imposed by despotic rulers. Whereas good laws serve to preserve freedom and protect the rights of citizens, bad or outdated laws can easily become a mechanism of oppression.
The other and related wisdom comes from Louis Brandeis, an American jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to1939. As a supporter of equality, Brandeis said: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Wise words these, and even more applicable today than they were then.
Great wealth in the hands of a few who abuse their power and privileges, combined with an outdated electoral law that keeps this status quo going, presents one of the fundamental threats to democracy in South Africa.
To be fair, the current electoral law has been carefully considered during the transitional negotiations at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa). As key negotiators, both the National Party (NP) and the ANC agreed that, given the highly divided and unequal society, proportional representation (PR) would be the fairest electoral system for the country. It held the promise of an inclusive polity where even the smallest parties would be represented in parliament. With some reluctance, the ANC agreed to the system realising that consent would be widely regarded as a compromise meant to ensure both a fair treatment of minorities and an avoidance of majoritarian rule the NP feared.
But with the passage of time and given the dominant party position held by the ANC, it has become obvious the PR system has not been serving the ends of democracy well. First, because the control a political party exercises over its MPs means the latter serve at the pleasure of their party instead of being accountable to the people whose interests they are supposed to represent.
Second, because party control over MPs violates the separation of powers between the executive and the legislature. This came glaringly to light during the presidency of Jacob Zuma when the ANC-dominated parliament failed its constitutional mandate obliging it to act against an overreach by the executive.
Recognising the serious failings, in 2002 the cabinet appointed an electoral task team whose function was to appraise the existing electoral law with a view to ensuring greater fairness, inclusivity and, above all, individual accountability of MPs to the voters. The task was entrusted to Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, leader of the opposition during apartheid and a person remembered for helping initiate the dialogue between the apartheid regime and the then-exiled ANC. The Van Zyl Slabbert Report recommended a “mixed system” whereby 300 members of the National Assembly would be chosen from the yet-to-be established constituencies, with the remaining 100 MPs continuing as part of the PR system. Importantly, the implementation of a new electoral system stays well within the remit of the law because South Africa’s Constitution did not envision the extension of the PR system beyond the first two democratic elections.
Alas, as of today — and seven elections later — the proposal put forth by the electoral task team continues to gather dust. Voters are still unable to choose representatives who would promote their interests, rather than those of their party. And they still have no power to remove from parliament MPs who fail in that basic democratic duty or who abuse their privileges without sanction. This is despite the growing burdens of unemployment, inequality and lawlessness that citizens must bear daily.
So, the big question remains: do we want to have democracy in this country or are we fine with having great wealth concentrated in the hands of a powerful few? Until this question gets resolved, the government of the people, by the people, for the people remains wishful thinking.
Professor Ursula van Beek is the director of the Centre for Research on Democracy at Stellenbosch University.
Democracy – government of the people, by the people, for the people – cannot prevail while wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few
