OPINION | Arguably, no time since we ushered in democracy has there been such a fierce battle to capture that valuable voters' X by the poll contesters.
Participation in our democratic system certainly entails more that casting an"X" next to a beaming face of a politician at every five-year interval. Yet as critical and fundamental as what happens inside the voting booth may be, what we do outside is just as crucial in making our democracy work for us, if not more.
I would therefore submit that chief among the things we do outside of the ballot box is to be aware that representative democracy is a constant and deliberative system transmitting the aspirations and needs of a society while acting as an accountability instrument between the society and those to whom it has given power to govern.
Certainly without any attempts at being exhaustive, democracy is about the engagements on such and more, it is about standing up and demanding to be heard and counted, it is about the lives we live every day, it is about the protection of our aspirations and beliefs. Democracy is about a woman feeling safe while commuting to work and about a child not having to cross a raging river without a bridge on his way to school in the middle of winter.
The appalling levels of untruths that we get fed must be rejected. Democracy should be about"the wheels of progress revolving relentlessly""based on the majority principle", enabling people to"develop a hope" for a positive present and future, to quote Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela, and Steve Biko respectively. To achieve that will take a collective effort.
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