In recent years, the people of South Africa (and the world) have welcomed each new year with the hope that it will be better than the last. As with any resolution, it is not the desire but the action that counts.
Our extensive national failures call for significant intervention to help restore the democratic edifice. It is not enough to isolate and prosecute suspected parties. Our crises cannot be resolved by negative action. Instead of another state-led commission, the citizenry must be central to rethinking and then co-creating a new sociopolitical order that prioritizes positive and transformative action.
Renewal is not the task of a single political party. All those who have an interest in the nation must contribute to its substantial renewal. By doing so, citizens will be fulfilling their constitutional duty and contributing to the realization of a transformed, people-driven state.
The Constitution, founding text and pole star of the nation, gives the form and intelligence of the State.
After the long struggle of the South African people against authoritarian and repressive state power, it is the Constitution that establishes the power of the people. It gives expression to the goal: the people will rule.
By abolishing the previous system of parliamentary supremacy (rule of law), the enactment of constitutional supremacy (rule of law) has effectively dislodged power from the hands and whims of a ruling party. The Constitution orders all subjects of the State to be guided by the expression of its principles and values.
From this it follows that for any political action to be legitimate, it must be in accordance with the aspirational and transformative objectives of the Constitution. Too often it is neglected that it is not only the government that must pursue the ends to which the Constitution aspires.
Citizens are also charged, in the spirit and action of republicanism (after all, South Africa is a republic) to participate in democratic action. While there is much talk (rightly) of the failures of government, the republic is doomed when the citizenry remains mere seekers of rights.
The vote is the fundamental popular action that transmits representative legitimacy. It is a pillar on which the national order rests. If a majority confers legitimacy, then the 54.13% of the electorate who abstained from voting in the 2021 municipal elections effectively invalidated the South African political order. This determined political expression (which seems incredible given our long quest for political participation) symbolizes a crisis in our political system.
If this is not urgently addressed, the South African project risks falling apart. This failure not only suggests that the ruling party is no longer the popular force it once was. If power is not claimed through “the will of the people,” then it will be challenged through alternative and destructive ways.
Such a challenge will fundamentally change the basis and therefore the entire scope of the national political order. A fatal blow to the heart of South Africa as we know it.
We are already seeing excessive centralization lead to the exploitation of state resources by connected individuals. The role of politicians and political influencers has become a feature and a threat to South African democracy. The government’s statist approach has created a dependency on an overburdened state.
Power is never given; is always claimed. Herein lies the vital task of the nation. It is of paramount importance that the public debate and resolve the issue of the process and the national structure. The debate should be about state practice, the role of the government and the role of the citizenry.
For the South African state to be legitimate, the citizenry and the government must cooperate in its execution. Unlike apartheid, where civil society existed in opposition to the state, today this relationship cannot be purely antagonistic. Civil society must collaborate with the government. You must do so constructively and independently.
The role of the citizenry cannot be overstated. The Greek root of the word city (the state, in today’s political terms) and citizen are the same. Citizenship, therefore, means that one belongs to that geographically enrolled political community. As the city belongs to the citizen, the citizen belongs to the city. Both have a duty to serve the other.
Consequently, statism must be transformed into a citizen-led democracy. Instead of simply opposing the government, the citizenry should complement the government’s actions.
The South Africans have an advantage. We have a deliberative recent history and a Constitution that obliges the government to work closely with the people. This is the principle of subsidiarity, interpreted from article 156(4) of the Constitution. The principle calls for maximum efficiency in the application of government. Subsidiarity is about making efficiency the norm.
The government has a constitutional mandate to return power (decentralize) when there is a demand from the people and when said return is efficient. This is an important distinction to make. There must be an active demand, for which the people assume their civic responsibility as co-creator of the State.
While civil society has become less influential in the last three decades, the Covid-19 pandemic has lifted the veil on poverty and unemployment. Both the recognition and the participation of civil society organizations have increased enormously during the pandemic.
Taking into account the constitutional principle of efficiency and subsidiarity, citizen participation has an important potential to catalyze the structure of the State.
Citizens must take advantage of the national moment to deliberate and participate in the processes necessary to resolve crises. The manner and conduct of the process are important. It must be open, inclusive and robust.
For cooperative democracy to embody transformative constitutionalism, we need to do what South Africans came together to do in the early 1990s. We need to establish a new national choir. While civic organizations have different approaches to their interests, they must agree and then sing from the same proverbial score.
South Africans must come together to agree the details of this score. In the early 1990s, disparate groups, intent on ending apartheid and creating a better society, came together in different formats. While we can take inspiration from the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, civil organizations should look to join. Reform a patriotic front.
At a conference in October 1991, a wide range of organizations signed the Declaration of the Patriotic Front. Establishing a consolidated understanding of the country at the time, the statement articulated and then engaged the signatories in a course of action and expected results.
Although the substance of the new declaration will be different, much of the process, structure and organization can be drawn from the Declaration of the Patriotic Front. Neither the potential value of such a process nor its mobilizing force should be underestimated. Today there is a national longing for a new patriotic front.
The final paragraph of the old statement serves as a proper starting point. It calls “on our people, wherever they are, to unite and participate in this process that emanates from 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, civic organizations must come together to undertake a comprehensive and democratic process, give direction to a new national declaration, and then speak with one voice.
Dr. Klaus Kotzé is a senior researcher at the Inclusive Society Institute. This article builds on the content of the soon-to-be-published occasional article Realizing Constitutional Goals Through a Transformed, People-Driven State.
