In recent years, people in South Africa (and the world) have prepared each new year with the desire to do better than the last. As with any resolution, it’s not the desire but the action that counts.
Our growing national failure requires significant intervention to help restore the democratic edifice. It is not enough to isolate and prosecute suspected parties. Our crisis cannot be solved by negative actions. Instead of another state-led commission, citizens should be at the center of rethinking and then creating a new sociopolitical order that prioritizes positive and transformative action.
Reform is not the task of one political party. Everyone who has an interest in the country must contribute to its renewal. In doing so, citizens will fulfill their constitutional duties and contribute to the completion of a reformed and people-driven country.
Constitution, the basic text and lodestar of the nation, according to the form and intelligence of the country.
After the long struggle of South Africans against authoritarian and repressive state power, the Constitution established the power of the people. It gives expression to the goal: the people will rule.
While abolishing the system of parliamentary supremacy (rule by law), establishing constitutional supremacy (rule of law) effectively removes power from the hands and will of the ruling party. The Constitution directs all subjects of the state to be guided by the expression of principles and values.
Thus, for political action to be legitimate, it must comply with the aspirational and transformative goals of the Constitution. It is too often forgotten that it is not only the government that must achieve the aspirational goals of the Constitution.
Citizens are also charged with the spirit and actions of republicanism (South Africa is a republic, after all) to participate in democratic action. While much is (rightly) made of government failure, republics are doomed when citizens continue to seek only their rights.
Voting is the fundamental popular act that legitimizes representation. It is the pillar on which the national order rests. If the majority gives legitimacy, then the 54.13% of voters who did not vote in the 2021 municipal elections will effectively cancel South Africa’s political order. This decidedly political expression (which cannot be trusted given the long-standing pursuit of political participation) symbolizes the crisis in our political system.
If this is not resolved soon, the South African project could be dismantled. Not only did this failure show that the ruling party was no longer the popular force it once was. If power is not claimed through the “will of the people”, it will be challenged by destructive alternative means.
These challenges will change the foundations and thus the entire scope of the national political order. A fatal attack at the heart of South Africa as we know it.
We have seen that unscrupulous centralization leads to the exploitation of state resources by connected individuals. The role of politicians and political influence has become a feature and a threat to South African democracy. The government’s statist approach has created a dependency on the overburdened state.
Power is never given; it is always claimed. Here lies an important task for the nation. It is very important that citizens debate and resolve issues of national processes and structures. The debate should be about state practice, the role of government and the role of citizens.
For the South African state to be legitimate, the citizens and the government must cooperate in its execution. Unlike in apartheid, where civil society was in opposition to the state, today this relationship cannot be antagonistic. Civil society should cooperate with the government. You have to do it constructively and independently.
The role of citizens cannot be overstated. The Greek roots for the words city (state, in today’s political terms) and citizen are the same. Citizenship, therefore, means that a person belongs to a geographically defined political community. As the city belongs to the citizens, the citizens belong to the city. Both have a duty to serve the other.
Therefore, statistics must be transformed into a citizen-led democracy. Instead of just opposing the government, citizens should improve the government’s actions.
South Africans have an advantage. We have a recent deliberative history and a Constitution that mandates government to work with the people. This is the principle of subsidiarity, as interpreted from section 156(4) of the Constitution. These principles require maximum efficiency in government applications. Subsidiarity is about making efficiency the norm.
The government is constitutionally obliged to devolve power (decentralization) when there is a demand from the people and when the devolution provides efficiency. This is an important distinction to make. There must be an active demand, where the people take their civic responsibility as co-creators of the state.
While civil society has become less influential over the past three decades, the Covid-19 pandemic has swept away poverty and unemployment. Recognition and engagement with civil society organizations has increased during the pandemic.
Considering the constitutional principles of efficiency and subsidiarity, civil engagement has a significant potential to strengthen state structures.
Citizens should take national time to consider and participate in the process needed to resolve the crisis. The form and conduct of the process is important. It should be open, inclusive and strong.
For cooperative democracy to embody transformative constitutionalism, we need to do what South Africans did in the early 1990s. We need to create a new national choir. When civic organizations have different approaches to their interests, they must agree and then sing from the same proverbial song sheet.
South Africans need to come together to agree on the details of this score. In the early 1990s, different groups, who wanted to end apartheid and create a better society, came together in different formats. While we can take inspiration from the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, civil society organizations must unite. To re-form the patriotic front.
At a conference in October 1991, various organizations signed the Patriotic Front Declaration. Setting the collective understanding of the country at that time, the declaration was spoken and then dedicated to the signatories for the actions and results they envisioned.
Although the substance of the new declaration will be different, many ways of process, structure and organization can be drawn from the Declaration of the Patriotic Front. Neither the potential value of such a process nor its mobilization force should be underestimated. Today there is a national desire for a new patriotic front.
The closing paragraph of the declaration used to be an appropriate starting point. It calls “to our people everywhere to join and participate in this process that comes out of our conference to create a nation that will be at peace with itself”.
To realize the transformative goals of the Constitution and give effect to a people-driven state, civil organizations must come together to carry out a comprehensive and democratic process, to give direction to a new national declaration, and then speak with one voice.
Dr. Klaus Kotzé is a senior researcher at Inclusive Society Institute. This article draws attention to the content of a paper to be published entitled Achieving Constitutional Objectives Through a Transformative and People-Driven State.