South Africa is clinging for life onto elevating the integrity of constitutional democracy, to fend off many indicators of a simmering tendency toward anarchy and a drift toward being a banana state.
Sadly democracy is fast losing its grit and glory globally. It has certainly lost its sanctity. In this country it has betrayed itself in many ways. The widening gap between poverty and wealth is but just one example. The lunacy of Donald Trump demonstrated at global level that democracy has become a tool for psychological imperialism. In South Africa it has been a successful tool to entrench the imperialism of the privileged.
If the idiom is correct that ‘truth has no friends, and knows no popularity’, then hollow populism makes democracy an easy platform for white collar narcissists and popular anarchists. Democracy and the vote have become the new ‘opium of the people’, especially the poor.
More and more, it seems that South Africa needs a credible dictator to save us from our looming mess.