Burke Zuma’s model?
IN THE midst of our constitutional crisis, it seems that only President Zuma and his cabal are reading their history, more specifically Edmund Burke’s 1770 essay entitled “Thoughts on the cause of the present discontents”.
In it, Burke, one of the greatest exponents of the Westminster model of representative democracy, from which ours is partly derived, dissected how King George III’s court clique was capturing the state by sidelining parliament and appointing inappropriate people to important state positions.
As the similarities are uncanny, it would appear that the Zuma camp has digested Burke’s thoughts in their efforts to ensure success this time round.
While a search of Cape Town book shops on Saturday failed to dredge up a copy, it’s available free online at www. gutenberg.org in volume 1.
Burke’s thoughts are important at this juncture as they float behind both Chief Justice Mogoeng’s judgment on the secret ballot and retired Reserve Bank governor Jill Marcus’s recent comments regarding the independence of the central bank.
Burke guided British democracy through its first uneasy years in an intensely practical way.
On the one hand, he had experienced London’s Gordon Riots.
He fought for conciliation with the American colonies before their War of Independence and he thought deeply on the French Revolution, fearful that it could spread to Britain.
He also spent 16 years hounding Warren Hastings for his rapacious exploitation of the Indian subcontinent.
Burke knew from experience that representative democracy was in constant motion between extreme liberty and extreme despotism.
Burke disliked extremes and understood the need to keep these opposing forces in balance.
He was especially suspicious of the terrible simplicity of populists, who were happy to sing a siren song and overthrow the experience of generations in their doomed quest to create utopia.
He knew that reformation was always better for a society than revolution which, as pointed out by William Yeats on the Irish example, has the unfortunate habit of eating its children.
As the House of Assembly’s next vote of no-confidence in President Zuma draws closer, Burke makes it clear what its members should do.
The constitution and the good of the country must come before blind party loyalty and executive patronage, and his most famous dictum should be kept in mind: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” James Cunningham Camps Bay