The democracy for which so many have worked and fought for in South Africa is likely to prevail, veteran South African liberal politician Colin Eglin argues at the end of his memoirs, Crossing the Borders of Power.
But, he says, there are dangers to democracy and it cannot be taken for granted.
Eglin, who launches his book at the Cape Town Press Club on Thursday, looks at leadership issues in depth — including his own period as leader of the opposition Progressive Federal Party (predecessor of the current official opposition Democratic Alliance) in the late 1970s and mid 1980s under apartheid.
He notes that the developments of 2005 and 2006 ”should have alerted South Africans to the fact that our new democracy” is not safely entrenched.
The first is what he describes as the ”somewhat bizarre events” in the months following the statement by high court judge Hilary Squires — in finding Schabir Shaik guilty on a charge of corruption — that a mutually beneficial symbiosis existed between Shaik and former deputy president Jacob Zuma, and President Thabo Mbeki’s dismissal of Zuma as deputy president.
Noting the emotions, protest and demonstrations of support for Zuma while Mbeki and his government were attacked by prominent members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party, he says the fault lines in the body politic ”were exposed, along with the potential for an emotionally driven division in the wider society along the lines of ethnicity, culture, personalities, policies and political power”.
The second event was a brazen attempt by the African National Congress (ANC) majority in the Cape provincial government to try to seize power in the Cape Town city council after the ANC had been voted out of office.
Noting that Helen Zille, of his old party, the DA, had been elected executive mayor, he says that the ANC, which held power at national level in all nine provinces and in most municipalities — including five of six metro areas — ”refused to abide by the result of the election in the one metro council where it had been voted out”.
”Faced by Mayor Zille’s [whom he describes as a staunch liberal] resolute defence of the constitutional status quo and the prospect of losing at the Constitutional Court at the end of a protracted and divisive constitutional dispute, the ANC abandoned its attempted power grab.
”The immediate danger was over but the forebodings for the future remained,” notes Eglin.
Eglin, who was the longest-serving MP when he retired as a DA MP in 2004, reports that in his final speech to Parliament in March of that year, he said the greatest threat to ”our new democracy” was widespread unemployment, pervasive poverty and the widening gap between the rich and poor.
”The situation has since worsened: despite the economy growing at a faster rate, unemployment has increased, widespread poverty has persisted and the gap between rich and poor has widened. Ironically the government’s black economic empowerment policy has contributed to the widening of the gap, by creating a new rich elite, often of persons with strong political connections.”
”These factors are having an impact, turning people away from the values that underpin our constitutional system and eroding confidence in our democratic institutions. They are driving people towards populism as a cure for their problems, In short, they are undermining our new democracy.
After 36 years of service in Parliament altogether, Eglin has certain reservations about constitutional structures, ”owing to the failure of those operating within their framework to deliver services required by the people”.
”The shockingly high level of violent crime — robbery, assault, murder, rape and child abuse — has revealed the extent to which the entrenched values of respect for property, life and human dignity are being ignored,” argues Eglin.
He is particularly indignant about the nature of the representative system that sees MPs as appointees of their political parties — rather than by the people.
The dominance of a single political party, the ANC, ”whose leader is head of party, head of government and head of state has resulted in an increasing centralisation of power and growing intolerance of the political interaction between government and opposition essential to multi-party democracy”.
Eglin, who led the Progressive Party for much of the period when Helen Suzman served as its sole representative from 1961 to 1974, argues that the Constitution does not entrench the party list system, stating instead that the electoral system should in general result in proportional representation.
He said the list system was included in the Constitution as an interim measure for the 1994 and 1999 elections but was used again in 2004.
”I believe that the government and Parliament should take steps in time to introduce a system that makes provision for directly elected MPs in the next election in 2009,” said Eglin. — I-Net Bridge