COMMENT: Not all South Africans agree that building a democracy is a priority. They are not alone. Doubt about democracy’s benefits is common, particularly in new democracies.
Not all South Africans agree that building a democracy is a priority. They are not alone. Doubt about democracy’s benefits is common, particularly in new democracies., tries to show that South Africans, like everyone else, need democracy not only because it is the only system that can allow people to control their lives but also because it offers the tools needed to fight for a fairer society.Those who suffered and died to achieve democracy did not waste their lives.
This is so not because the Constitution imposed on the country is an alien form of government that traps many of its people in servitude. Democratisation means overcoming the powerlessness, real and perceived, that prevents most citizens from engaging in the collective action that holds power to account and ensures that decision-making is as much as possible an expression of popular sovereignty rather than elite preference.
I argue against strategies that try to ensure that citizens embrace idealised replicas of Northern democratic form and assume that they must be “taught” to participate. I motivate for strategies that expand access to collective action — and so to a share in decisions, which is the essence of popular sovereignty — to the grassroots.
The vast majority of citizens were reduced to spectators as the minority who enjoyed access to organisation fought public power, ostensibly on behalf of the people.
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