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To understand South Africa today, we must recognize that people can endlessly focus on a country’s problems while living in a state of denial.
It is a well-established custom to wring our hands over issues that are supposed to spell the end of negotiated democracy in South Africa. It started just months after the first election in which all adults could vote in 1994. It has grown over the past decade and dominates the national debate, which is the prerogative of the minority who have access to the media.
Right now, violence in KwaZulu Natal province, attacks on justice by former President Jacob Zuma and his supporters, and an unemployment rate of 34% are the immediate causes of dismay.
But, as the issues change, claims that the country is in deep trouble are routine.
Despite this, the national debate – which is confined to an elite comprising around a third of the population – is in denial.
How can this be?
The debates’ misfortunes diagnoses denounce what works in post-1994 South Africa while ignoring or distorting the stubborn and very real issues that prevent democracy from realizing its potential. In particular, blaming the ruling African National Congress (ANC) became a substitute for dealing with deeply rooted issues that would remain whoever governed.
How does denial work
To illustrate how this type of denial works, the three issues currently in the spotlight are all real – but far too real to be blamed only on certain politicians.
Violence is the result of an incomplete path to democracy, which means that the security forces are deeply fractured and corrupt networks will use violence to protect their territory.
Read more: Violence in South Africa: An uprising of the elites, not the people
Yet it is blamed solely on the incompetence or poverty of the police. And the ANC is blamed for both.
Attacks on judges are treated with concern despite the fact that they do not pose a threat to constitutional order. They have little credibility in the national debate as they are clearly ploys of desperate politicians to escape corruption prosecution. Their credibility is further undermined by the fact that those who denounce judges never hesitate to go to court when it suits them.
But a real threat to the justice system that has been evident for years – in which grassroots citizens whose living areas are plagued by violence are eager to see legal processes and courts fair – is barely noticed in the now routine rush to blame ANC politicians.
The unemployment figures have prompted numerous denunciations from the government. But there was no similar reaction in 2003 when the rate was 31%. This went unnoticed as the economy was doing well for the minority who could benefit from it. Since they dominate the debate, he simply ignored the reality.
Nor has anyone pointed out that unemployment has been rising for 50 years and that the lowest number of unemployed in the past two decades was higher than that of the Netherlands during the Great Depression.
The debate revolves around denial of the reality that unemployment is a deep-rooted and long-standing problem.
The denial does not necessarily directly target the party in power. Thus, a predominant theme is criticism of the political system despite the fact that it largely functions as intended for the minority whose voices are heard.
Steps are underway to change the electoral system “to ensure more accountable government”, despite the fact that local government already has the system to which the debate wants to move and is widely recognized as a site of very little accountability.
A series of hearings at the Zuma-era Corruption Commission of Inquiry launched a scheme in which parliament is said to be flawed for failing to hold the ANC to account. The search is on to find legal solutions that will force it to do what the third of the debate participants want. Secret ballots are demanded for parliamentary votes in the hope that lawmakers will do what the debate wants, not what the parties that citizens have voted for.
None of the proposed changes would make democracy work better – most would weaken it. Switching to an electoral system used by deeply unpopular municipalities will not solve anything; Encouraging lawmakers to hide from voters when they vote will strengthen elites and weaken citizens.
The whole point of parliaments is that they give decision-making power to the party that obtains the majority. Rules to be curbed that will bring the country back to a minority regime, and not to a better future. South African democracy works well for those who can make their voices heard – so much so that, in a country where it was once common to fear that the ANC was in too much control, it is routinely denounced by anyone who wants to be taken seriously by the debate .
Why this frenzy to fix what is not broken? Because the political system will not satisfy the debate as long as it lets the ANC rule. Supporters of a modified electoral system claim that it would weaken “party leaders”. The same goes for those who want to force parliament to do what they want and those who want lawmakers to be allowed to deceive their constituents.
In all three cases, “party leaders” is the code for the leadership of the ruling party.
Dealing with deeply rooted issues
The key point here is not that the ANC should not be held accountable. Trying to make sure that the party in power does what the citizens want it to do is an essential feature of democracy. Voters are rude about the ruling party is a democratic habit.
The ANC has a lot it should be held accountable for: it didn’t create most of the role models it is criticized for, but has done far too little to change them and often seems happy to just live with them. .
But there is a huge difference between holding a ruling party to account and making it an excuse not to face deep-rooted issues. Focusing on the ANC gave the third an excuse not to face difficult realities.
South Africa is a country plagued by many problems, only one of which was solved in 1994 – the fact that 90% of the population were denied citizenship rights. His problems regularly create crises that could be an opportunity to deal with deeply rooted problems. But opportunities are regularly wasted by a national debate that sees blaming a political party and its current leaders as a practical way to shirk responsibility for addressing these realities.
As long as this continues, the problems will persist because the prospect of solving them will be drowned out by furious denial.
Steven Friedman does not work, consult, own stock or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has not disclosed any relevant affiliations beyond his academic position.
By Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg
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