London - “The New World Order that is in the making must focus on the creation of a world of democracy, peace and prosperity for all,” advised one, Nelson Mandela.
As South Africans sleepwalk into the 2024 democratic elections thanks largely to the pandemic of power cuts they have been experiencing over the last three years, it might be useful to reflect on Madiba’s hallowed democracy doctrine. Is it delivering for the new South Africa?
Judging by the state of British and American democracy, the system of governance is attributed to Winston Churchill for being “the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried,” some it seems are pondering whether “democracy is indeed overrated”.
The Report Card on democracy over the last decade, even Madiba splendid in his eternal optimism would have lamented that there have been few cheers about its progress globally.
Report after report from the gatekeeper organisations of ‘the conscience of humanity’, speak ad nauseum about the regression universally towards intolerance, trampling of freedom of expression and human rights, a callous disregard for the rule of law, a propensity to conflict, ultra-nationalism, ethno-chauvinism and authoritarianism – all contributing to a dirigiste of democratic deficits, which may take a generation or two to reverse.
That the Mother of Parliaments, the UK, and the most powerful and wealthiest democracy in the world, the US, have become the laughing stock of the world – “the Sick Men of Democracy” – shows the extent of their institutional, moral, and democratic decline, their wanton abuse of power, and if they had a free reign – an orgy of state capture.
No one has done more to undermine democracy and the Office of the Presidency than Donald Trump, the nemesis of liberal democracy.
At a stroke he threw out the democratic playbook and treated the Presidency and the US state and all its institutions as if it was his personal fiefdom fuelled by a breath-taking narcissism seemingly devoid of any rationale, except for his near cult-like coterie of acolytes.
Only last week, even out of office, he pleaded not guilty in a Court in Miami to all 37 charges relating to his alleged mishandling of US government classified documents, many of which he illegally stored in boxes in a bathroom in his Florida base.
It was the first time that a US president (past or present) has been indicted. Trump’s riposte is predictable – he had done nothing wrong; it is all a political witch-hunt against him by the Biden administration; and a very undemocratic attempt by the Democrats to get him disqualified from standing in next year’s presidential election.
True to form Trump on the contrary used the court case to rally his base at an event that same day in an attempt to get the Republican nomination.
Across the pond in the UK also last week it was the Trumpian wannabee, Eton-educated enfant terrible Boris Johnson who threw a ginormous temper tantrum when the House of Commons Privileges Committee found that he wilfully misled and lied to parliament over the shenanigans at Downing Street when he was Prime Minister in the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Johnson, who feigns a similar narcissistic trait as Trump – in their belief that they have a divine right to rule at any cost – predictably dismissed the report as “rubbish” and the Committee, a distinguished parliamentary oversight institution, as a “Kangaroo Court” out to get him, which incidentally had a majority representation from his own Conservative Party.
In the Old Days such a finding into an inquiry of such gravity would have prompted an immediate resignation.
We did get a resignation but for the wrong reasons. Johnson was ousted as Prime Minister in September 2022 over Partygate. Last week he resigned as an MP together with an acolyte, thus forcing two by-elections which the Tories are almost certain to lose.
In doing so instead of facing up to a vote and any sanction in parliament on Monday, he directed his vindictiveness to undermine his ex-Chancellor, now hated Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
So much so for Madiba’s aspiration for the New democratic World Order which is proving to be as elusive as it seems to be unachievable.
The reality is that it is the Old World Order that emerged from the ashes of the destruction of the Second World War and the post Bretton Woods global economic dispensation that is in crisis.
The New World Order may be in danger of echoing Huxley’s Brave New World in which similarities with our current society seems uncannily prescient, and where he warns of the harmful effects that expansion and development of an unfettered capitalist ideology can impose on society.
More disturbingly, liberal democracies seem to be fast forwarding into the dystopian past of an Orwellian 1984, with assaults on a cornucopia of freedoms; with Big Brother keeping a tight rein on society with its Pegasus spyware, aided and abetted by the IT revolution and currently by the brouhaha over Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Metaverse.
At the nexus of this festering dysfunction is the very world of democracy Madiba aspired to for the new South Africa. That liberal democracy today is in crisis is not in dispute.
It has been in steady decline for almost a century, leaving swathes of its own people behind as evidenced by the cornucopia of class, workers, ethnic and suffrage struggles.
Democracy has also had an awkward co-existence with imperialist instincts and a colonial mindset, perhaps underpinned by the nefarious eugenics of white supremacy, entitlement, exploitation and might through gunboat diplomacy. But so has absolute monarchies, authoritarianism, autocracies, military dictatorships, theocracies, and totalitarianism.
The post-war retreat from empire, largely because it became financially prohibitive and unsustainable instead of a genuine commitment to freedom, gave rise to criminally chaotic states in Africa, Asia and Latin America whose boundaries were as artificial as the bureaucrats who arbitrarily drew them in the name of so-called ‘independence’, bereft of any reparations.
Only a fool would write off liberal democracy, whose ethos of consultation and accountability overlap with other value systems including Ubuntism and the Shoura.
Far from its current state being terminal, it is the most successful system of governance, warts and all, in history delivering across the board prosperity to those countries that genuinely and appropriately adopted it, until the emissaries of excess – both the extreme neo-liberals and socialists – started messing with the equilibrium between wealth creation, state intervention and social safety nets.
Madiba’s democracy doctrine implied a higher standard - exorcising the moral ambiguities from democratic practice – eradicating inequality, whether in access to vaccines, infrastructure funding and sovereign debt dependency and forgiveness, terms of global trade, outlawing transfer pricing in natural resources; jettisoning patriarchy and promoting gender equality.
In other words, there needs to be a Bonfire of the Dichotomies implicit in both the Old and New World Orders.
A major contributory factor in tandem with the antics of the democracy dinosaurs, which is often overlooked, is our aberrant political and civic culture, which has degenerated into an ‘Us and Them’ mindset fuelled by a largely unregulated social media and lobbyists conjured on the back of rising populism with its penchant for conspiracy theories and fake news.
No wonder our youths present buckets of trust issues, broken promises, delivery deficits, marginalisation and disillusionment with our so-called establishment politics.
No country, let alone South Africa, is in a position to assume the moral high ground. In our brief post-apartheid history, and despite our progressive constitution and Bill of Rights, our democratic deficits are piling up – the evidence is overwhelming.
The casuistry of the riposte echo those of the democracy underminers.
Madiba’s democracy doctrine is clear, present and universal. It is not a mere matter of the internal affairs of countries. It is a doctrine rooted in our Struggle for freedom, justice, equality and inalienable human rights.
Otherwise, why would the ANC and the Constitution of the New South Africa have embraced and enshrined it so defiantly?
Parker is a writer based in London
Cape Times