Time for society to decide future
OUR constitution, along with mainstream religious teaching, advocates care for the poor, afflicted and otherwise disadvantaged.
To this end it demands egalitarianism, a doctrine calling for all people to be treated as equals, legally, socially and economically.
It requires the removal of discrimination on grounds such as race, gender, sexual orientation and religion.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we’re all the same.
Humanity is happily diverse, with a rich variety of talents and perspectives.
Every individual has something unique to contribute to the common good.
The big political question is how our government can and should promote that common good, especially in changing times.
Once, the government was seen as a kind of collective parent whose job was to decide what was good for the people. This is no longer the case. Technological and other changes have expanded the scope of political engagement beyond formal democratic institutions, creating a growing expectation for society at large, and not just politicians, to decide our future.
Nelson Mandela anticipated this need for inclusiveness in shaping the world our children and grandchildren are to grow up in.
These developments challenge the organisational assumptions of long-established political philosophies like socialism, marxism and communism (including the ANC’s Freedom Charter), which support egalitarianism in theory but whose stories in practice reveal narratives of abuse of power and wide oppression.
Modern representative democracy is arguably the best realisation of egalitarianism to date, but many still believe that political power must be held by an elite.
Indeed there is a worldwide tilt toward autocracy and in South Africa this tendency is powerfully rooted in the ANC.
The Zuma administration undermines our constitution and defies our courts, and recently an ANC policy conference voted overwhelmingly to extend the already bloated powers of the presidency.
This threatens to further weaken democratic institutions and destroy what remains of government credibility.
The ANC argues that the constitution inhibits development.
This self-serving nonsense stems only from a quest for absolute power.
The constitution was created with substantive input from the ANC, in a nobler period of its history which the present ANC has forgotten.
It was recognised then that power must be held in check because, if not, it would be abused, whether it was power over beasts or humanity.
Jacob Zuma is a living demonstration of this truth.
Yet the abuses he has committed are not enough, and he and his supporters want freedom to commit more.
This corrupt obsession with power has crippled even those parts of ANC policy which are commendable in historical intent, because excessively centralised control of everything that moves seldom works, and rather has a paralysing effect.
As a result, the inequality of apartheid days is currently continued in a different form, under new management.
After almost a quarter of a century of ANC rule, South Africa ranks at the bottom of the pile among nations – the company we keep makes embarrassing reading.
Unemployment remains massive, with many young folk having never been able to find work.
We have become a nation in love with talking about empowerment, but power by itself achieves little without competence and compassion.
We are producing generations of young people trained to demand instant fixes through the acquisition of power, but who know little about morality, work, patient learning or responsibility.
The current political landscape desperately needs a moral vision to move the country forward, but as yet there seems to be no leadership for such an effort.
It is time for a new government of national unity. Who can promote this? Our churches, leaders from all areas of civil society, and moderates from all political groups who see the crisis for what it is and are willing to pool their resources of goodwill.
It would not be their role to mobilise electoral support but rather to formulate a clear moral vision for the country, a coherent body of principles and a framework for moving forward in the interests of that most neglected cause in contemporary South Africa: the common good.