Referendums are the last thing the country needs
SO the struggling DA now wants their little enclave, the Western Province, to have power to hold referendums. Is CapeExit one of the issues on its list?
The last time this silly referendum idea was mooted was in January 2016 when the Catholics of all entities called for one on nuclear energy for our country.
In my rebuttal article in another daily warning that referendums, apart from being even more costly than elections just to elicit a single answer from the electorate, are also highly emotive, divisive, dangerous, and something that modern democracies steer away from. That was the last we heard from them.
We only have to remind ourselves of the absolute mess the Brexit disaster brought about for Britain, something this nation will never ever recover from.
The first issue that comes to mind when referendums are discussed is the death penalty. But interestingly, our sly DA wants it to gain more powers because they still cling to the idea of a federalist system which was defeated at the groundbreaking Codesa talks preceding our first election in 1994.
The last referendum during the death throes of apartheid in March 1992 resulted in a slim margin for the governing National Party paving the way for the new democratic dispensation. What if they lost it? Where would our country have been today?
Our country is in the midst of a devastating pandemic that has cost almost 60 000 lives already. The question arises why an ailing political party would now come up with this issue.
It can only be to deflect attention from their internal squabbles and scandals costing them massive amounts of votes to the left and the right, from all ethnic groups that foolishly put their faith in them.
They’ve tried everything thus far to overthrow the existing order: coalitions, trying to govern through the courts, finding fault with almost everything our government does, affording their elected officials and ordinary members a so-called “free or conscience vote”, etc, to no avail.
Referendums are ideal for
First World nations with smaller populations whose electorates are highly educated about pressing issues the world faces.
The greatest danger of the referendum route is its opening of doors to other even more pressing issues like language and land rights, a wealth tax, a third term for presidents, whether our troops should sacrifice their lives in conflictstricken countries. The list is endless.