It seems clear that government has over the years sought to enable itself – whether it exercises this power or not – to silence civil dissent against its ideology and policy agenda. This cannot compute in a democratic constitutional state.
Business ought not be disappointed about what they should have seen coming a mile away, and with sufficient forewarning.
These measures, taken in isolation, would do harm to constitutional rights and freedoms, but taken together threaten the very rules of South Africa’s democratic game.
For all its positives, democracy has a faulty premise. It presumes, in error, that bringing together a group of people to vote or otherwise collectively decide on something, can create new rights and authority out of thin air.
The Cape independence movement is South Africa’s best catalyst for political decentralisation, which is in turn a necessary condition for secure liberty.
As decent people we need to respect the dignity, agency, and responsibility of individuals, which must mean that we allow those individuals to falter, to bind themselves to less-than-ideal agreements, and to fail in their endeavours.
Even if you were a committed communist, or a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party, what would you put in a constitution if it was guaranteed that your worst enemy would govern your country (and by extension, you) under it?
The appropriate way to have dealt with the lack of power supply in South Africa would have been for the price of electricity to rise in a competitive market.
The accusation of Israel being an ‘apartheid state’ is an emotional trick more than anything else, and it distracts unnecessarily from the very real wrong Israel’s government does do and for which it can be taken to task.
Some realpolitik and Machiavellian manoeuvring might be necessary for us to transcend the artificial barrier that has been constructed in the road to a flourishing future.
