Why wearing black won’t cut it
A recent Facebook post on my timeline read: “Dear fellow middle-class and affluent countrymen. Wearing black is slimming and all, but it won’t effect change. If you want change, you must take real action, put yourself at risk and stand in solidarity with all of South Africa.”
Wearing a flattering black outfit to your nine-to-five office gig is not going to cut it. So, what will? As a middle-class, affluent resident who lives in relative comfort and has options to live abroad, I have to ask myself this question if I claim to support democracy as an ideal.
Yes, it helps to send WhatsApp messages, update my profile picture, wear black or even drive to Church Square to make an appearance. It helps to get engaged and irate when shit hits the fan and it definitely feels good to voice my opinion on how our leaders and parties do not live up to my expectations or fall short of delivering on my democratic rights.
But what about my democratic responsibilities? What am I doing for the other 364 days of the year? How am I contributing to the sociopolitical climate of this country within my own sphere of influence? What am I doing to build democracy?
Democracy can refer to “direct selfgovernment over all the people, by all the people, for all the people”. There is no reference to political leaders bearing the bulk of the weight when the process might best be carried “by the people, for the people”.
We are the people and we should be as empowered as the people we vote for. It may not be enough to show up at the polling station and hope that the powers that be will do their job. Clearly they’re not.
Playing our part in a democracy is more complex. It requires a quiet, slow, tedious and unglamorous process called community building.
This work is both material and spiritual. It takes decades and offers no quick fixes. It requires time, sacrifice and dedication — qualities few of us are demonstrating, least of all our politicians.
I’m talking about a gradual transformation of society and its moral fabric, because the process should have a purpose beyond the mere betterment of material conditions if it is to effect lasting change. So, how do we achieve that?
First, focusing our efforts on the future generation is time well spent.
A fundamental concept to consider is the spiritual dimension of humanity. Societal development must express values such as honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, generosity and other qualities of the spirit.
“The individual is not merely a selfinterested economic unit, striving to claim an ever-greater share of the world’s material resources,” reads a statement from the Bahá’i World Centre. Rather, “man’s merit lies in service and virtue”.
The spiritual education of children and young people in schools, through our individual efforts and