The seemingly all-embracing power of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) needs to be tempered by a strong alternative to ensure that South Africa’s democracy ”is strengthened and protected”, says official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon.
Writing in his weekly internet column, he challenged former President FW de Klerk’s view that whoever was elected leader of the ANC in December this year will determine the destiny of the country for the next 30 to 40 years.
”Unlike so many deer caught in the proverbial headlights, South Africans in fact have a very real chance to influence such events, by helping to build a strong alternative to the ruling party. There is nothing like the possibility of losing power to concentrate the mind of any leader,” argued Leon, who steps down as leader in May.
Leon noted that the National Assembly’s speaker, Baleka Mbete, had urged South Africans to ”deepen the debate”.
”All of us — not just the members of the ANC — need to join this conversation, so that no matter who is chosen to lead [the ANC] will be duty-bound to enact the founding compact of our nation.
”Rather than sitting on our hands, as De Klerk suggests we do, it is time we raised them high.”
De Klerk’s analysis also missed the point, he argued. ”He portrays the citizenry of South Africa as hapless and helpless, standing on the sidelines of the real action.
”Referring to the new leader’s long reach over the future, he observes that ‘those of us who are outside the ANC alliance will have little or no say in this process, which will nevertheless determine the environment in which we will all have to live and work for the foreseeable future’.
”Yet the passive citizenry De Klerk posits is not what our Constitution envisaged, or I might add, one he promised to his own constituency in 1992. Despite its often contradictory provisions, that document spells out that we agreed as a nation to a set of inviolable principles, which demand our stout and wakeful attention.
”To strengthen our democracy, then, we need to save the state from the party. We desperately need to revitalise the core institutions of our democracy — Parliament, the chapter nine institutions and in particular, the judiciary — and to animate civil society to play its rightful role in ensuring the new president operates within a robust, informed and incisive public arena.” — I-Net Bridge