4 December 2008, 09:51

By Bennie Bunsee

As our country goes through a serious political crisis, it is important to understand what democracy means today in a modern world with a modernist culture.

Left, right and centre in politics, all speak in the name of democracy while meaning different things.

The United States and Britain practise democracy in their own countries, and imperialist policies abroad. Society's hard-won democratic freedoms over the centuries are very often abused in the name of democracy, by sectional vested interests promoting their own goals at the expense of public interest.

Every democratic freedom that society won, from the Magna Carta in Britain to the Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, was won through intense struggle over decades.

From various forms of feudal despotism and authoritarianism in different countries and societies, we have marched from the whips of monarchs, landlords, tribal chieftains, religious overlords denying the fundamental human rights of their citizens, to the democratic freedoms we have today.

In the course of this march, the struggles of oppressed nations and communities, women, slaves, religious heretics, suppressed writers, struggles against poverty and other socioeconomic deprivations have defined our modern notions of democracy.

The highest function of the democratic superstructure of society is to serve the public interest, "the greatest good of the greatest number".

It is encompassed in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's concept of the "social contract" and those of the Enlightenment - humanism, rationalism and science, stemming from the European Renaissance against the Dark Middle Ages, dominated by an obscurantist Catholic religion. But it must be remembered that European enlightenment was built on African slavery and the colonisation of the countries of the South. The two went hand in hand and it is a legacy we are still trying to overcome in the context of the North-South divide.

Socialism is described as a higher form of democracy, as society struggles to overcome the rigours and restrictions of a capitalist order that creates a blatantly unequal society and denies the majority the basic material freedoms of a decent life and equal opportunities.

In fact, this freedom to survive decently is so fundamental to human existence that all the other freedoms are meaningless without it.

It is the lack of this freedom that is the great subversive force in society, consigning millions to poverty and misery.

Our country is building a modernist democratic culture, based on democratic rights, in a diverse society, with a non-homogenous culture of competing ethnic interests which we still have to overcome.

As in India, which is described as a multi-ethnic, multireligious and multinational country, democracy and democratic freedoms are essential in our country.

They are not luxuries. They must be the fundamental bedrock of our society, without which our country will founder.

One of the great dangers to the functioning of democracy is the kind of Stalinist democracy, in the name of a working class-led struggle, that Cosatu and the South African Communist Party (SACP) are trying to impose.

They are the core organisers in the takeover of the ANC.

The communist system, it is now acknowledged, collapsed because it was both anti-democratic and undemocratic. Some of the worst crimes were committed in the name of communism - 60 million Russians died in the Gulag Archipelago.

China is an undemocratic country and there is severe repression for dissenting views. So is Cuba.

This is not to minimise the social welfare achievements of these states.

Cosatu is not a political party, but several of its officials are members of the SACP, and it uses the muscle of its membership to support the machinations of the SACP.

The SACP is unable to become the government of the day on its own standing. So it rides on the national sentiments of the African and black peoples formulated around the ANC.

It subverts the democracy of the ANC. This results in the politics of manipulation, threats, expulsions of those with dissenting views and interference in the independence of the democratic institutions of the country, as with the Scorpions and the threats made against the judiciary. The minuscule SACP, in attempting to take over the ANC, is the source of the divisions in the ANC.

As a national movement, the ANC must be allowed to follow its own dialectic of development in a multiracial society, through its own discussions, debates and dialogue.

The intrusion of the particular interests of the SACP dismantles that democracy, as it does not reflect the organic development of the ANC's policies.

Joe Slovo believed that socialism in South Africa could only come through the ANC. Would he have accepted what is happening now? Socialism can only be built through democratic means.

The rule of law, independence of the judiciary, freedom of the media, bill of rights, independence of our democratic institutions, freedom of expression, assembly and protest must all be respected and built upon.

It is time the SACP separated from the ANC and spoke as a communist party, instead of camouflaging itself as the ANC with all its manipulative politics.

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