The painful truth is that no political party makes a real effort to understand South Africans and how they choose to live their lives. They all try to impose their grandiose visions on us.Photo: Lindile Mbonzi
voice
The British Constitution is famously unwritten, consisting of a set of norms, laws and institutions developed over hundreds of years of existence of the United Kingdom and the other countries that make up this island nation.
Alongside the constitution, it is an important element of British political culture, particularly public debate. The United States may have better protections for free speech, but the quality of that speech often leaves room for improvement.
An example of this is political debates, including debates in the British Parliament. Few parliaments around the world are capable of hosting such substantive debates, such as the Rory Stewart and Jacob Rees-Mogg human rights case.
This extends to the political party level as well. Labor, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats all have internal cultures of public and open debate.
This appears to be motivated by a deep respect for the British Constitution, which states that the people are sovereign and that all powers exercised by the government ultimately belong to the individual people.
Despite a progressive constitution, no such culture exists in South Africa. Our political culture is one of opaque party politics. Inexplicable decisions are made by all major political parties without input from our people.
Britons recognize that the sustainability of government ultimately depends on the extent to which it is restricted to exercising only the powers to which it is legally vested.
In South Africa, the law provides a formal obligation to consult the public on legislation and other measures proposed by the government, but the lack of a culture of engagement between so-called leaders and the people makes this engagement a farce. It has become a thing.
The British government has made mistakes many times throughout its history and continues to make them today, but its system has somehow recovered from those mistakes in a way that few other countries can.
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government was a remarkable recovery from the failures that destroyed nearly every other state.
In South Africa, we are ruled by an elite that does not interact with us, but follows us, and that is a result of our constitution. The British people of today are not the same as the British people of 20, 50 or 500 years ago. A stable constitution can take these changes into account.
In South Africa, the law provides a formal obligation to consult the public on legislation and other measures proposed by the government, but the lack of a culture of engagement between so-called leaders and the people makes this engagement a farce. It has become a thing.
We, ordinary South Africans, are ultimately responsible for the political culture of our society. This culture influences everything from how the constitution is interpreted to acceptable means of citizen engagement with government. This can be seen as part of a deeper understanding of sovereignty as ultimately reflecting people and their shared culture.
Some social problems cannot be easily solved by law. It requires ordinary people to make decisions and make practical changes in their daily lives. Solving our problems legally does not create a lasting solution. South Africans will have to build the country they want.
read: Amendments to the Land Rights Bill would be a great injustice.
This starts with demanding more from those who claim to represent us: politicians and those who call themselves our leaders. They cannot simply hide the details of their internal party deliberations from us if they are later reflected in policy and negatively impact our lives as a whole.
To be clear, this is not an appeal to Congress to pass any legislation. This is an appeal to you, because only you can change the culture. By demanding more of yourself and explaining why it's important, you can teach your children to expect more. Don't think that this important work is done by teachers.
No amount of legislation will solve South Africa. Citizens have demonstrated their power by effectively, if not legally, lifting the lockdown. We need a renewed commitment to truth, rationality and science from all South Africans. It is foolish to think that this can be created by a system imposed from above. Effective institutions develop from the ground up.
To become even stronger, South Africa's intellectual class needs to wake up from its collective slumber. They continue to uncritically promote failed remedies to South Africa's problems, usually in the form of more interventionist government action and more “effective leadership.”
Public debate in South Africa often feels like a tired attempt to follow Western academic trends, such as critical race theory or even Marxism. Musings about privilege and colonialism are far removed from South African concerns. Lockdowns are one example.
By demanding more of yourself and explaining why it's important, you can teach your children to expect more.Don't think this important work is done by teachers
Pre-lockdown social media is one example. Since this was the latest internationally “progressive” middle-class initiative, it was almost universally supported by the unintellectuals. Lockdown opponents (of all ideological persuasions) were equated with genocidal maniacs.
All major political parties supported the lockdown. Some of them may try to deflect from this by changing the subject or pointing to subsequent efforts to roll back the lockdown, but the truth remains – South Africans All parties abandoned the lockdown when we needed them most. This was also true for large companies, including brands that many South Africans have a personal attachment to.
We now know that the lockdown has severely disrupted the way South Africans live, forcing normally law-abiding people to violate the lockdown regulations. That's more than 2 million people arrested for violating the rules. It is amazing that something like this could happen in a country with a history of apartheid, which failed for a long period of time for exactly the same reasons.
The painful truth is that no political party makes a real effort to understand South Africans and how they choose to live their lives. They all try to impose their grandiose visions on us. That is why we cannot allow the possibility of differing opinions within the same party.
It may challenge the idea that the party has God's law etched in stone and is trying to pass it on to us if we vote yes and obey.
Dhlamini is a data science researcher at the Free Market Foundation. The views expressed in the article are those of the author and are not necessarily shared by members of the Free Market Foundation.
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