Democracy. Say it out aloud, spell it out: D-E-M-O-C-R-A-C-Y. I thought I knew what it meant. I've even had to dig out actual dictionaries (you remember, the one's that look like books, which involved the deaths of trees and so forth) to ensure my understanding of this word, this concept hasn't gone astray. The Oxford dictionary defines it as: 'Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.' Got it! So When President Jacob Zuma bemoans how all us seem to want to have a hand at running the country,you know, like a democracy should, traditional definitions of the concept become blurry... more so to him than us. If I had R5 for every time I heard Zuma mangle this word and its meaning in his many bumbling, awkward speeches I wouldn't have to keep writing columns on how Zuma has mangled and abused the concept. Indeed the word has been battered to such an extent, perhaps the traditional definition of democracy doesn't stand anymore. Maybe a new edition of what I've always regarded as a trustworthy dictionary, the Oxford, is due. A new Zuma-esque dictionary where words like freedom, rights and choice can be spruced up and given entire new meanings. In the case of the word 'freedom ' Zuma could even suggest a new word - free-ish: A feeling where one wrongly believes they are free to think what they want. The word 'rights' could be Zuma-fied to mean: A just claim or title, whether legal, prescriptive, or moral for only a select few who obey blindly.
Indulge me for a second or 20 as I take a stab at propitiating the president with my own stab at the art of bending semantics. Democracy: Government by an elite grouping of society, usually closely affiliated with the government of the time; a form of government in which the power is made out to be vested in the people, but can be taken away from the very same people by a government as it pleases; a form of power which should be exercised by the people or by elected agents chosen for them under a disputed and imperfect electoral system. It's wordy, I know, but it seems to roll off the tongue. More importantly it's a definition which Zuma may be more comfortable with. We all want to run the country he moans at a memorial service for soldiers killed in a distant civil war. Shock and horror! To think we should want to be afforded that basic right of speaking out against the state when we feel genuinely aggrieved! God forbid we try to make suggestions on how government can best govern South Africa! Banish the thought of criticising the powers-that-be on how they are burning our tax money!
Government and the ANC have templates for every kind of criticism levelled against them. If it's not lashing the media for urinating of dead soldiers graves, it's labelling ratepayers as criminals for threatening to withhold their rates due to local government mismanagement. If you dare compare how the country at times resembles pariahs like Zimbabwe, you are automatically called neo-colonialist or unpatriotic or something like that.
On at least two occasions in parliament Zuma has contorted and distorted the concept of democracy, mangling it into an elephant man-type shadow of it's real definition. During one such particularly memorable parliamentary debate last year, in true Zuma fashion he bumbled his way through his (mis)understanding of democracy, 'In a democratic situation, it is the majority that prevail. I can't change the
rules because you want to make a particular point. You can't then say, smaller
unions must then be compared to the bigger unions in the same way.' I recall my ears started burning by that stage as slack-jawed I listened as the man who supposedly runs the country told off smaller trade unions saying they don't enjoy the same privileges and rights as their bigger counterparts. This informal lesson in semantics stemmed the bloody union rivalry which fueled the deaths of from 34 striking mineworkers, gunned down by a 'new, democratic' police force (no longer in service) which has come to resemble more of a paramilitary grouping under Mr. Democracy 2013's watch. But fellow citizens, don't even harbour the thought of criticising Zuma on this point, that would be undemocratic, according to him, his party and his administration.
