People want governance - Disillusionment with government is a world-wide reality
www.witness.co.za DUNCAN DU BOIS
A recent international survey placed Kenyans at the top of the poll in terms of their optimism for the future. The success of the opposition alliance in smashing the ruling party's 39-year grip on power has rekindled Kenya's hope for the future - hope for better governance.
Kenya's political turnaround is significant for democracy and for governance. It shows that despite four decades of political baasskap and corruption, hope of deliverance remained in the minds of the majority of Kenyans. It also indicates that dictators like Daniel arap Moi can be removed from power and that they are not ordained to rule indefinitely. In 1991, Zambians celebrated when Frederick Chiluba replaced Kenneth Kaunda as president after 27 years. Ten years of Chiluba, however, failed to reverse the terminal decline that Kaunda had inflicted on Zambia. Will Mwai Kibaki, who once served as Arap Moi's vice-president, succeed in reviving Kenya's slumped economy and in transforming its corrupt civil service?
Closer to home, Zimbabwe's tragic situation cries out for governance and deliverance from tyranny. Although free elections in Zimbabwe would see the opposition MDC sweep to power, the damage caused by Mugabe's systematic rape of the country has so retarded it that tangible economic upliftment will take years. That is the shocking legacy of Mugabe's abuse of power. Although he died in 1986, Mozambique is still paying the price of Samora Machel's ruinous rule. While it now posts record economic growth rates, it is only progress to recover what once was rather than growth beyond that level.
Although Kenyans are jubilant now, only time will tell whether they have exchanged one oppressive government for another. The history of post-colonial Africa in this regard is not encouraging. As historian Basil Davidson stated in his book, The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the curse of the nation-state (1992): "The state was not liberating and protective of its citizens; on the contrary, its gross effect was constricting and exploitative "
Disillusionment with governments is not peculiar to Africa. It's a worldwide reality. Only 40% of Americans bothered to vote in the 2002 mid-term elections. Germans are anything but enamoured with the Schr‰der government, which seems to know only how to raise taxes while the economy stagnates and 10% of Germans are unemployed.
In Venezuela and Argentina, citizens seething with anger against their governments have taken to the streets in protest. Their plight is universal as governments serve themselves. It's become the purpose of their existence. From their arrogance and contempt for criticism, it is obvious that they see electorates only as a means to the gravy train as they pay lip service to good governance.
With the emergence of sophisticated power blocs such as the EU, the whole edifice of government has become more powerful, self-serving and isolated from those it claims to represent. Ask UK residents how they see their relationship with the European Parliament in Strasbourg. It's simply another tax at the price of another slice of national sovereignty. Governments have become closed, cloned clubs. They no longer function as Abraham Lincoln envisaged - being of the people, for the people and by the people.
Locally, the SADC is a case in point. It pays lip service to criteria like good governance, democracy and independent judiciaries, while it shelters rogues like Mugabe. Indeed, he enjoys protection and even favour from the SADC and the Non-Aligned Movement, while he terrorises and starves Zimbabweans. At the ANC's national conference in Stellenbosch last month, Mugabe's brutal regime was actually praised for being "progressive", which is newspeak for advancement of collectivist baasskap. Consistent with this mockery of the ideal of good governance is Mbeki's decision this week to support Libya's election to the chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, notwithstanding the Gaddaffi regime's involvement in international terrorism and its denial of human rights in Libya itself.
How long has the euphoria of the 1994 election lasted in South Africa? The same survey that placed Kenyans on a high of optimism found Thabo Mbeki's ratings at an all-time low. By-election results reflect a huge decline in voter turn-out for the ruling party. It's probably one of the reasons it was anxious to avoid the snap election the IFP/DA recently threatened to call in KZN. The same mistake of not "liberating its citizens" is being made in the new South Africa as elsewhere. Worldwide, what people want is good governance. Instead, they are being dished out more government, more bureaucracy, more centralisation, more control, less freedom - and all for more money. Ninety percent of the taxes this government collects are spent on maintaining itself. Exacerbating the situation is the nanny-state socialism to which the ANC has always been partial.
Doing nothing, as Edmund Burke warned over 200 years ago, is not an option because it facilitates the process of enslavement, in this case to big government. The solution lies, as Thomas Jefferson once said, in less government and in the devolution of power into the hands of the electors. Then, as is the case in the Swiss canton system, governance, rather than government, prevails.
- Duncan du Bois is a DA Durban Metro ward councillor. He writes in his personal capacity.
Publish Date: 24 January 2003