As Luke said, we need to express dissent. In South Africa we have a
government that actively undermines the very foundations of democracy, by
defying the courts, by endlessly appealing court decisions against them, by
willingly causing our economy to ‘decolonise’ to junk status, by fomenting
not only xenophobia and denying it in one breath, but by creating
‘alternative facts’ hate speech against whites, the latest manifestation of
their new mantra of ‘white monopoly capitalism’ that must be destroyed at
all costs.
Almost every day we read about the abuse of power and the further draining
of our democratic capital, such as the following article:
“The ANC has become like Zuma. Corrupt, greedy and stubborn. A bunch of
political pickpockets. Tsotsis. Plunderers. When those that freed us begin
to act like oppressors, it is time to send them to blazes. The ANC doesn’t
deserve us. And we don’t deserve Zuma’s ANC. It is time to push the ANC
from its throne, and if in the process they bleed, let them damn well
bleed, because heaven knows we have had enough of the Gupta virus that
devours our society.” (Monday 15 May 2017: Johann Maarman, the sub editor
of the newspaper *Die Burger*).
Democracy has been usurped by politicians, who have forgotten that
‘democratic’ means not only open egalitarianism, but also self-rule – rule
by the people for the people, and the mere fact that we elect
representatives to do our bidding on our behalf does not give them the
right to become autocratic and repressive. That is one of the reasons that
most of the opposition parties in SA have come together to form a new UDF -
United Democratic Front - to vigorously protest against the weakening of
our brand new democracy.
I fully agree with Luke’s view on what a democrat stands for, and his
statement “democracy produces reliable decisions due to its tendency to
maximize the cognitive diversity of the people involved in public
deliberation” points to the very strong link between democracy and design,
something I will take up in my response to Ezio and Victor.
Johann
>
--
Dr. Johann van der Merwe
Independent Design Researcher
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