Exclusionary path could kill new SA
SA’s democracy faces many challenges — from a brazen capture of key parts of the state and state policy to the Black First Land First stormtroopers who fanatically defend President Jacob Zuma and the Guptas and who have now launched a fascist-like attack on critical journalists.
The systemic nature of the South African challenge was brought home during my most recent interactions with Parliament. For the past five years, Parliament has been trying to pass amendments to the Mineral Petroleum Resources Development Amendment Bill, but has been bedevilled by inadequate consultation, poor interpretation of the Constitution on the part of the Department of Mineral Resources and additions and exclusions smuggled in through the back door.
Tracing the bill back to its first submission in 2013 and considering the many submissions made by civil society and community groups that were concerned about the lack of “built-in” protections for the rights of women and communities, the reality of an increasing elite and special-interest bias becomes abundantly apparent.
The new bill not only ignores the submissions asking for greater inclusion of communities and women, it goes further than the existing bill to entrench their exclusion.
This exclusion of the poor and marginalised dovetails most egregiously with the recent publication of the Mining Charter that, instead of prioritising the poor and marginalised, seeks to create legislative space for the inclusion of newly naturalised elites (read the Guptas).
Given that SA remains one of the most unequal societies in the world, this trend towards elite and special-interest legislation should raise alarm bells.
In a recent article in Real World Economics Review, Luke Petach of Colorado State University argues that democracy is harmed by economic inequality through an increasing political responsiveness to the wealthy and a decreasing political responsiveness to the poor and the middle class, increasing political instability, the ability of corporations and financial elites to subvert market reforms enacted by political consensus, and a shift of political preferences towards authoritarian political leaders.
All four warning lights of a failing democracy are disturbingly present in SA.
The contemptuous disregard by the president and the ANC for the mounting portfolio of evidence pointing to systemic corruption within the governing party and the state is indicative of the authoritarian shift that hangs like a sword of Damocles over our democracy.
As German-born American political theorist Hannah Arendt pointed out in her study of totalitarian regimes in the 20th century, the rise of totalitarianism relies on a notion of “the banality of evil” as a state of thoughtlessness in which an individual becomes “rinsed with clichés, norms, ideologies, and national ethos” and uses those norms as justification for acts supporting political authoritarianism.
The conditions under which the banality of evil may prevail are socioeconomic in nature and politicians will often use concepts such as radical economic transformation to justify their exclusion of certain voices.
A real and legitimate democracy is premised on the inclusion and interests of all people. Any argument that suggests the broad interests of society have been central to the past 23 years in SA is a difficult one to sustain. An easier case can be made for the fact that private interests have benefited the most.
The bill and its exclusion of the marginalised and poor is one of the clearest indications that SA has crossed the dividing line between a democracy and a degenerate corrupt society.
So, while we should be concerned about corruption, we should equally and even more so be concerned about the political exclusion of the economically excluded.