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.
Taken together, these laws and bills represent an almost comprehensive package that existentially threatens the continued free and open nature of South Africa’s public discourse.
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.
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.
This article was first published by BizNews on 5 October 2023 The behaviour of some members of Parliament and other office-bearers in government leaves the observer with
The corporatist state is the biggest threat to individual liberty that has emerged since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Perhaps like at the turn of the twentieth century, it is once again time for a concerted effort to be made towards finding a better system of governance.
If you want to know what people think and want, try selling it to them.
Any reasoning that attempts to collectivise individual agents with their own agency, decision-making competence, and divinely guaranteed liberty is bad reasoning.
