Democracy’s no walk in the park

Democracy is hard work. In a democratic society, if you are in charge you still have to listen to others.

You have to tolerate the opposition parties shouting in your ear at every turn.

You have to suck it up when the judiciary overturns your decisions on the basis of the constitution.

You have to answer to the media and subject yourself to its scrutiny, even if you don’t like it.

It’s extremely hard work, democracy.

You have to turn up in parliament and account to the nation.

You have to mount free and fair elections at reasonable intervals.

You have to declare who is funding you so that the electorate can work out whose interests you are serving.

The list of the hard work of democracy is long.

Democracy keeps you busy all the time.

You have to constantly ensure it works.

You have to replenish it and burnish it.

There is no halftime or rest period in the game of democracy. It’s go, go, go.

That is why many countries slide back from democracy.

It does not favour those who want to rule without accountability.

It does not work in societies who seek monarchs and dictators instead of elected representatives.

Take the past 43 years in Zimbabwe.

In 1980, when freedom came, two parties dominated.

Then the leader, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, didn’t like the noises being made by the opposition.

He sent in special forces who maimed, jailed and killed opposition forces led by Joshua Nkomo.

In time, Mugabe obliterated Nkomo’s party, forcing it to pay allegiance to him.

In the 2000s, Mugabe harassed, maimed and killed new entrants into the opposition game.

Morgan Tsvangirai was detained, tortured and beaten into submission after he won the 2008 election.

Journalists, activists and NGO workers are now routinely detained and tortured.

Zimbabwe has gone, in just 43 years, from being a vibrant democracy to being a carcass that is being sucked upon by Zimbabwe’s greedy elite.

There are many other examples of what happens when countries abandon the rule of law, accountability, and the many other guardrails of democracy, and rush into the arms of dictatorships.

It does not matter how “benevolent” those dictatorships may claim to be.

A dictatorship is a dictatorship.

It will arrest your sons, rape your daughters, impoverish you, drive your people to other lands.

Dictatorships hate their citizens and will always attempt to cage them.

Has SA’s ruling elite become tired of democracy?

We have to ask this question because in recent years our leaders have certainly behaved in a manner that suggests that they would much rather abandon the hard work of democracy and lead in a manner that gives them carte blanche to jump into bed with dictators, ignore international human rights agreements, and even ignore our own laws which were written (ironically, by these same leaders in their more optimistic years) to give meaning to our democratic aspirations.

SA’s support for Russia’s illegal invasion of a smaller and weaker foreign country is a cause of confusion for many across the globe.

The entire thing does not make sense because it goes against everything we’ve professed to stand for.

Worse, we are standing cheek by jowl with a country that routinely jails opposition leaders, human rights activists and journalists, invades its neighbour states, and sends mercenaries across the globe to destabilise our African neighbours and shore up dictators.

We do not allow mercenaries to operate from SA, but we are chummy with those who send out mercenaries to help Africans kill Africans.

Who are we and what have we become?

It is now impossible to deny that the ANC has, since 2009, failed to govern.

The eight years of Jacob Zuma were, by the ANC’s own admission, wasted and lost.

Ramaphosa’s five years began hopefully, but have become an embarrassment.

A party such as this will seek to blame others for its failures.

It will want to break free from agreements (such as the

Rome Statute) that force it to stand against dictators.

It will refuse to see that it is not our constitution that has failed, but its own inaction and failure to implement its own policies.

Defence minister Thandi Modise was asked by the Mail & Guardian last week if SA was supplying ammunition to Russia.

She answered: “I’m tired because every time we have to be told about the US.

“Everybody now sees the spook called SA.

“I can tell you that categorically, we did not send [anything], not even a piece of Chappies [chewing gum] to Russia. We should be left alone.”

Well, she can’t be left alone. That is what democracy is. It demands accountability. It demands answers.

If she is a democrat, then she will answer the question and answer the many followup questions that arise.

But she is tired. So are many of her colleagues.

The answer for them is to vacate the stage, not wreck our system to ensure they don’t get asked tough questions and don’t answer to the people who elected them.