Tomorrow, about half of the adults in South Africa will vote to decide whether a party supported by a quarter of them will mismanage all of us for another five years. Funny old thing, democracy.
Of course, those of us who admire democracy’s ideals still believe that it’s the least bad form of government, but even we have to admit that it’s feeling the squeeze.
Autocracies now outnumber democracies around the world, and even where democracies persevere, populism is on the march, its pointy shoes whiffling across red carpets as it claims to understand the grievances of the people it mocks in private.
The poster children for democracy, once held up as shining examples in a world freeing itself from the chains of imperial or totalitarian bondage, are looking ropey as hell.
India, the world’s largest democracy, is flirting with electoral autocracy, where, as in Russia and many states across Africa and the Middle East, democratic rituals are performed but everybody knows the outcome of elections a year before they’re called.
In the US, a country whose president used to be called “the leader of the free world” before the free world realised that its leader is either Rupert Murdoch or whichever coder is tweaking the Facebook algorithm that day, voters have to choose between an exhausted sock-puppet of the broken Washington machine with its forever wars and baked-in resistance to change, and a compulsive liar, found guilty of sexual abuse, whose company committed tax fraud on a gigantic scale and who will almost certainly pave the way for autocracy or even theocracy.
In shagged-out Britain a dazed electorate has watched the Tories squeeze out a succession of prime ministers each smaller and more wretched than the last, like a collection of Russian dolls if Russia dolls were made of hypocrisy and untreated sewage pumped into the Thames.
And this is to say nothing of the catastrophe in Gaza, where the US condemnation of the International Criminal Court continues to show that the enforcing of the democratic “rules-based order” is largely contingent on who’s breaking those rules.
Meanwhile, many unflappable opponents of democracy seem to be doing just fine. Saudi Arabia continues to prove that western sports fans will endorse literally any tyranny if enough golfers and footballers say it’s fine, while in China the state enjoys the trust and support of an overwhelming majority of its citizens.
And why wouldn’t it? The oldest Chinese can remember a country mired in poverty, under the bloody boot of Japan. Today their grandchildren live in futuristic cities and the Pacific cowers under the shadow of the Chinese military. Why would anyone waste time fighting for a system that has split the US down the middle and inflicted Boris Johnson and Liz Truss on the UK?
Tomorrow we will give ourselves another chance, even if it’s just five more years to grow a professional and transparent government-in-waiting that is ready to run South Africa when the ANC finally, inevitably, gives up the ghost
No, democracy is being tested hard, and in some cases it is revealing startling vulnerabilities.
Last week a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that two out of three Americans are concerned about the possibility of political violence after the US election. This is not an irrational fear. Despite Donald Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election being refuted in countless courts, and Fox News having had to pay a vast settlement for spreading it, the current front-runner has made it the centrepiece of his campaign, pouring fuel on the anti-democratic fire by frequently referring to jailed or waiting-trial January 6 protesters as “hostages” who will be pardoned on his first day in office. His base is sure the Democrats will try to steal the November election. Democrats know that MAGA Republicans will do the same.
Discrediting the institutions of democracy to subvert them is not a new tactic, but Trump has done it particularly well over the past four years, and back in January, when Jacob Zuma accused the Independent Electoral Commission of being corrupt and biased in favour of the ANC, many of us noted that he was adhering closely to the Trumpian playbook.
Zuma continues to do so. On Sunday night, the IEC tweeted its concern that Zuma’s MKP was posting videos on social media of IEC staff moving ballot papers around and claiming it was evidence of vote rigging.
The difference between the US election and the one happening tomorrow, however, is clear, and, I would suggest, something we can be proud of.
Tomorrow, we will vote in an election still overseen by the better angels of our nature. Zuma will play the victim, and there may be the standard mutters from other parties, but two things will be true, and both of them are blessings.
The first is that, barring any last-minute disasters, tomorrow’s election will be free and fair.
The second is that a majority of South Africans will accept it as such.
The likely outcome — another five years of ANC misrule — will disappoint or anger or depress many of us; but of all the things we fear, bloodshed will not be one of them, and neither will the usurpation of the electoral process.
Democracy will continue to prevail in South Africa. Flawed, perhaps, for as long as we don’t have direct representation; frustrating, certainly, if it keeps the ANC in power. But tomorrow we will give ourselves another chance, even if it’s just five more years to grow a professional and transparent government-in-waiting that is ready to run South Africa when the ANC finally, inevitably, gives up the ghost.
