Democracy in South Africa?

A news article today described how a Venda woman was fined by the local tribal chief an amount of R850 for the offence of bearing a child out of wedlock.  The article was more concerned by the hardship the woman faced as a result of having to borrow the money from a loan shark in order to pay the fine, with the child support grant of R350 per month being just sufficient to pay the interest on the loan, and it made practically no reference to the injustice of the system that permits a tribal chief, more often than not a barely-educated man who relies on a patriarchal system of tribal custom and culture, rather than a documented and democratically-approved system of laws and Courts.  The fact that this system is allowed to exist in South Africa, where the Government constantly tells the people that we have a democracy that is guaranteed by ‘the best Constitution in the world’, demonstrates just how hollow that claim is.  A critical element of a democracy is that all people are equal under the law (unmarried women, as well as the men who are the fathers of their children), and that every person has recourse to the Courts for enforcement of their rights under those laws.  Unfortunately, the woman in Venda does not have those democratic rights.  It appears from remarks made by the Speaker of Parliament that Jacob Zuma, the State President, is not subject to the laws that apply to the rest of the citizens (with the exception of those unfortunate enough to be subject to the tribal laws and customs), and nor is Mangosutho Buthelezi, a Prince of the Zulus, and who knows how many other political and royal dignitaries, all in accordance with the unwritten rules that seem to govern the South Africa democracy.

Another article concerns the meeting of the University Council convened to discuss the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes, which appears to offend the sensibilities of certain Black students, as well as the visiting dignitary, the Honourable State President of Zimbabwe, a man who has shown himself to be amongst the least honourable and the least democratic of State Presidents.  The Council of the University of Cape Town, the home of the heart transplant as well as numerous other medical, scientific and industrial advances in years past, met to consider the demand of the students, under the threat of a rabble of such students, of whom fewer than 25% will graduate (while the rest go into politics and other forms of crime).  The meeting was allowed by the students to continue for about an hour before the rabble forced their way into the Council Room to demand that the Council decide to remove the statue.  The decision, predictably, was made to remove the statue to avoid offending the sensibilities of the Black students, notwithstanding the fact that Rhodes donated the land on which the University stands and made a huge endowment to enable its founding.  It is noteworthy that the decision was made under duress, enforced by an unruly mob which had demonstrated its willingness to enforce the demands made by Mugabe by violence if the decision did not accord with the demands of the mob.  This act of cowardice by the Council, and the precedent that violent and unlawful action is able to achieve the satisfaction of the demands of the small number of rabble-rousers who instigated the unthinking support of the uneducated and unthinking masses provides a very poor outlook for this formerly noble institute of learning, and will certainly go a long way to downgrading the respect for the degrees it will hand out in the future.

The picture that emerges from these two incidents is frightening.  The country is clearly ruled by mobs and by an unelected ‘royal class’, people who have no responsibility for their actions to the electorate.  It is a picture that bears a frightening resemblance to the communist revolution in Russia and the ascendance to power of Adolph Hitler in Germany.

It seems to be safe to say that democracy in South Africa, if it ever really existed since 1994, is now dead.