True test awaits

Barney Mthombothi
Thursday, 24 Mar 2011

South Africans tend to describe themselves or those things dear to them in superlative terms. We have the best constitution; the best judicial system; we hosted the best soccer World Cup. We even crow about our climate. It’s our own form of exceptionalism.

It’s funny that we don’t cast an admiring glance at our failing education system, our rotten hospitals or the criminal gangs who’ve turned our homes into our prisons.

Ah, but your land is beautiful. Alan Paton made what was a refrain by visitors to SA into the title of one of his books. It used to be music to the ears of apartheid apologists, an alibi of sorts. It gave them an excuse not to dwell on inconvenient matters.

Times may have changed, but the narrative hasn’t. We wax lyrical about the beauty of our newborn child, our democracy. It’s a miracle, we enthuse. And the world, on the whole, seems to agree with us. We have a democracy that looks fantastic on paper. It has yet to be tested. It is still skin-deep, I aver. It has yet to be internalised. In reality, SA is still a de facto one-party state.

I’ve often asked friends a simple question: would the ANC hand over power were it to lose an election? Most of them say they can’t see it happening. I tend to agree with them. The evidence is all around us.

The test for the endurance of our democracy will come when the ruling party loses an election and gracefully accepts the outcome. Until then, everything else is mere conjecture. Read more ...