SA is Not a Democracy part 1

Democracy is a loose term. It can mean different things to different people. It is a loaded word and has been used and abused to promote ideologies and organisations of all types. Heck, even North Korea considers itself a democracy!

The word democracy comes from Greek and means 'rule by the people.' See why it is a loose term? 'Rule by the people' can mean a variety of different things. Today when we speak about democracy we are usually referring to representative democracy, where we choose leaders in elections who are supposed to represent our interests. Great! So different groups of people with different interests elect leaders, so that everyone is represented in the government and those leaders sit and have big discussions so that the country is run in the way that is best for everyone.

Wrong!

The first problem is that here in South Africa government doesn't make decisions by discussion and compromise. It makes decisions by voting and the vote is won by a simple majority (excepting of course for amendments to the constitution.) So if a party has 51% of MPs, that party holds all the power. And since the number of MPs is proportional to the number of votes, 51% of the voters can effectively control the lives of the other 49%, given how much power the government has over individuals in our country.

The next problem is that only 16 million of our 55 million population votes, which effectively means that just over 8 million people can control the lives of the other 47 million. I'm sure most of you are starting to see a problem here.

Now the nature of our ruling party makes the above problem much worse. Most of the country votes blindly for the ANC. They are almost guaranteed to win the elections no matter what. The ANC has over 700 000 members, organised into about 5000 branches. There are about 500 other voting delegates at elective conferences, but for simplicity's sake we will assume there are 5000 branch delegates who vote to elect the ANC leadership and thus their MP's. Each delegate needs 51% of his branch vote, and each ANC leader needs 51% of the delegates' votes. This means, that in the extreme situation 26% of ANC members can choose the party's leadership,and thus the path the country will follow. Doing the maths, that's less than 200 000 people determining the destiny of more than 55 million.

These calculations are both rough and simplified, but they illustrate just how few people are making the decisions that we are supposed to be making as a nation. And even then, we are still assuming that these elected leaders act according to the will of the people who elected them.

I know this has been a bombardment of figures and statistics, so let me make a final point for those who don't really care for numbers. Our situation is summed up very well by looking at the times of greatest political change. With Jacob Zuma about to be ousted after years of controversial and morally bereft leadership, it is clear that more change in the country comes out of the ANC elective conference than any other occasion, including the national elections. That is not democracy.

Thus we see that in spite of the endless propaganda bragging about our democratic ideals, South Africa is not really a democracy at all. But then what is a true democracy? The Greeks didn't just give us the word democracy, they gave us the whole concept. In part 2 I will explain, referring to the ancient Greek model, how we can have a real democracy.

Opposition Wins Again

Cheers erupted from the ANC caucus in parliament as speaker Baleka Mbete read the results of the secret ballot vote of no confidence against Jacob Zuma. 177 for. 198 against. The irony is that this group of jubilant souls were only celebrating their own demise.

To say the opposition lost would be technically accurate, but not at all a fair reflection of the bigger picture. The vote of no confidence failed, but the opposition won. You see, this was always a win-win situation. The very idea of the no-confidence vote was to put the ANC between a rock and a hard place. That is why we have had 8 of them already. Each time the ANC votes to keep Jacob Zuma in power they tie themselves ever closer to their greatest liability and alienate those who "love the ANC but hate Zuma." Every time the ANC caucus puts their weight behind Zuma they lose seats in the 2019 election.

I'm sure most ANC MPs know this, but are more concerned about saving themselves from the whip of party discipline than saving the party from the wrath of the voters and the mire of immorality. Though sometimes I do wonder.

On the other hand, voting Zuma out would also be a dangerous road and additionally, it would be an unpredictable one. No one really knows what would have happened had the required 50 ANC MP's broken ranks and had the president removed. It is far from inconceivable that it would cause an irreparable rift and possibly a split in the party. Far less likely, it would have been the turning point for the ANC to course correct and repair its once honourable reputation. But those possibilities are just what-ifs now. The ruling party has chosen the slow poison.

The only way for the ANC to escape this trap would be to recall Zuma itself. This would allow them to show some semblance of morality while not bending to the will of the opposition, though at this point it may even be too late for such a move to still be considered a show of strength. But this hasn't yet and certainly will not happen until at least the electoral conference in December. There are too many people high up on his side who would go down with him.

The country needs Jacob Zuma gone. But Jacob Zuma is not the extent of the problem. The ANC is the problem. You cannot separate Zuma from the ANC, and the secret ballot vote proved that. Zuma is not unique, he is a representation of what is happening in the rest of his party. Most of the ANC are as morally decayed as Zuma. If it were not so, he would not be in power. The whole party needs to go.

So while the DA and the EFF publicly mourn the retaining of President Zuma, privately they will be celebrating another hole fired into the sinking ship of the ruling party, all while its hopeless crew drown, shackled to their own pride.

Smoke and Mirrors

South Africa is sitting on a precipice. Not since at least the early 90's, more probably the 1950's have we been so close to falling to a certain doom (noting that in the 50's we did fall.) It seems the ordinary folk of our beloved nation fail to comprehend the precariousness of our position. State capture is far more serious than most believe, in fact, academics have described the related events as a 'soft coup'. We are becoming more and more a dictatorship, a monarchy disguised as a democracy. Yet despite the dire situation we find ourselves in, with a moral-less ruling party, rampant corruption and one family slowly taking control of all our supposedly democratic institutions, far too much of our time, attention and media coverage is devoted to a non-issue: race.

Do not mistake me, I do not refute that this is a sensitive issue, nor seek to undermine the gross injustices of our past, but today's racial issues are but squabbles among siblings compared to the world war of apartheid. Take for example the Helen Zille Twitter row. I can only imagine that great struggle icons like Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu, who fought real racism and oppression, would be turning in their graves to see the reaction of their once great organisation to a couple of vague remarks that at a push could branded insensitive. It is frankly ridiculous that Zille's tweets have received exponentially more attention than situations that are actually going to have a real impact on the lives of ordinary South Africans, like the appointment of Gupta-servant Brian Molefe to parliament, or the Gupta take over of the SABC, or Eskom, or who knows how many other state institutions. It's simply a matter of priorities, and ours are all mixed up.

So why do we harp on about race then? Why does every unsavoury interaction between individuals with racial differences become a racist event? Why are hours of conversation time on 702 and other radio stations devoted to discussing this, the least of our worries as a nation? First, like I said, race is a sensitive topic, so racialised news is sensationalist. It grabs our attention and makes us angry. For some reason we want to be angry. It is an unhealthy fetish. The second reason is far more dangerous and builds on the sensationalism of the first: that is that it is a powerful distraction. It is a powerful distraction for Zuma, while he plunges the country into crisis. It is a powerful distraction for the Guptas whilst they systematically take control of our state institutions. It is a powerful distraction for the ANC while it buys time to find a solution to it's lack of moral leadership. It is a powerful tool in diverting our attention from the real dangers we face as a country.

What is most worrying is that people still buy this narrative, despite it having been exposed, most notably through the Bell Pottinger revelations. It reveals a great flaw in our human nature, that we are more likely to believe what we want to be true than what is actually true. It lays bare our inability to think critically and illustrates the lack of access many have to opposing view points. The crisis we need to solve as a country is not a race crisis. It is an education crisis. It is an unemployment crisis. It is a state-capture crisis. It is a governmental over-reach crisis. And ultimately, it is a freedom crisis.

Storm in a Teacup

In the midst of a political disaster zone, with the social grants crisis reaching it's climax, xenophobia emerging from the dark crevices of society and more corrupt and incompetent so-called politicians being nominated to and defended in parliament, the media, politicians and opinionists of our beloved country decided to release all of hell's fury on Helen Zille in light of some, well, pretty uncontroversial tweets.

This is what the most prominent of the tweets said:

"For those claiming legacy of colonialism was ONLY negative, think of our independent judiciary, transport infrastructure, piped water etc."

Of course what this means is that colonialism was a great thing and we should go back to the days of apartheid, so the hysteria of our radio personalities and twitterati is completely justified. Except that's not at all what she said. Let's break down her argument (luckily she made it in a tweet, so there is not that much analysing to do):

These are the premises:

• Colonialism brought development to Africa, for example, an independent judiciary, transport infrastructure and piped water.
• These examples of development are good things.

This leads her to the conclusion that:

• Some aspects of the colonial legacy are good.

No sober minded person could refute the premises, and the conclusion follows directly from them and so one cannot deny that either. Yet almost every analyst has twisted her statement to portray  her as a racist, pro-apartheid colonialism-defender. Even her own party has distanced itself from her. To refute these claims let's look at what she does not do:

• Justify the oppression under colonial rule.
• Justify land theft or slavery or any other negative aspects assosciated with colonialism.
• Justify colonialism at all, or even give an opinion on whether it was good or bad as a whole.
• Praise colonists.
• Even mention apartheid! Yet Zille, an anti-apartheid activist back in the day, is being accused of being pro-apartheid.
• Say anything racist, unless you believe facts can be racist, but even then it's a far stretch.

Acknowledging that some good came out of colonialism does not imply that colonialism as a whole is good. And she has made this known. My favourite argument by these hysterical Zille-phobes is the analogy with Nazism. "So if there are good things that come out of things that are, on the whole bad," one might say, "then there were good things about Nazism too!" Actually yes. The Nazis brought an end to the great depression. Do you then mean to imply that the end of the great depression was a bad thing? The notion is utterly ridiculous. The end of the great depression was a good, whether or not the Nazis killed 6 million Jews. Furthermore it does not justify the holocaust or any of the other evil acts perpetrated by the Nazis, just as saying that the development brought about by colonialism is good does not justify the evil done under that ideology.

Absolutism. The idea that if something or someone is part bad they must be all bad. That is what it boils down to. It is a fallacy, but it has become very prominent in the world today, especially between opposing ends of the political spectrum. Look at Donald Trump for example. According to InfoWars he can do nothing wrong, but according to CNN he can do nothing right. But the fact is, that whether you support him or not, you can, and should, acknowledge that he does both good and bad. And it is the same with almost everything.

My biggest worry with this matter is that people don't have the ability to think for themselves. Many latch on to what Fikile Mbalula or Eusebius McKaiser say and take that as the truth without analysing the story themselves. And it is this lack of critical thinking that keeps corrupt and incompetent leaders like Jacob Zuma and Bathabile Dlamini in power. Hopefully more and more of us can learn to think critically, to create a better South Africa.

Assessing the Budget Speech

So I was pretty close with my predictions on the budget, though they weren't too hard to call for anyone. One thing that did surprise was the new tax bracket: 45% for those earning more than 1.5 million. We'll get back to that one though.

In the immediate aftermath of the budget speech there was nothing but praise for Gordhan for masterfully negotiating the political tightrope he had found before him. But I think there has been enough analysis on that. I want to focus on what the budget actually means for South Africa.

Perhaps the most notable point is how much emphasis Gordhan puts on reducing the deficit, but while doing almost nothing about it. There was no sign of spending cuts, not even the same admonition to end wastefulness that was given last year. Instead there were increases in social grants (which, as it stands, may not even make their intended destinations) and billions more thrown at education. Now I can sense the immediate protests of "But we need more money for these things!" I'm afraid though that if we keep raising the debt to finance welfare, we will get to the point where it will be impossible to pay for these things at all. Especially in an economy that is growing at hardly above 0%. As much as we want to be charitable, we need to be sustainable to survive. And a budget deficit, especially in our economic climate, is not sustainable.

The little that was done to address the deficit involved raising taxes. unfortunately this is a self-defeating method for such an aim. Having a balanced budget is simple. Income must equal expenses. So if expenses exceed income we can either reduce expenses, which Gordhan hasn't done, or we can increase income, which for the government is tax income. But this is where Gordhan went wrong: increasing the tax rate is not the same as increasing tax income. In fact, the very opposite is true. Often decreasing the tax rate leads to an increase in tax income in the long run. Why? Decreasing the tax rate attracts investment, investment brings economic growth and economic growth results in there being more money to tax.

This is where the new tax bracket comes in. Instant logic argues that 4% is not that big a difference, especially for people earning more than one and a half million a year. If someone can pay 41% surely they can pay 45%. Looking more deeply one may consider that for a lot of people that 4% could be the straw that breaks the camels back. There is only so many times you can take just a little bit more before all the little bits add up to a whole lot. And 41% is already a lot. So that 4% could well drive many people out of South Africa, to countries where they both earn more and keep more of what they earn. And you may say, "Oh, it's only 100 000 people that are affected, and only a fraction of them will leave anyway." But remember, these 100 000 are the people who contribute most to our economy. They are doctors, lawyers, engineers, and especially businessmen and entrepreneurs, the people who have the potential to grow the economy and create jobs. We have already been experiencing a mass exodus of these people and can't afford to lose any more. Marginalising the wealthy has a negative affect on all of society.

Unfortunately a budget that is good for our economy and for the people of South Africa is impossible in this political climate. So taking that into consideration, I too shall have to render my praise to Minister Gordhan for the budget he presented in such trying circumstances.