As the constitutional order advances and the inherent liberation promises endow our humanity with freedoms, South Africans must embrace the responsibility and obligations to safeguard the democratic order as a guaranteeing firmament. A new epoch began in 1994 when South Africans resolved to recognise the past injustices and establish social and economic justice as the basis upon which respect for human dignity would be the order of the day. Continually, the RSA society faces the cusp of various dimensions of the epoch, but this time, it is about the obligation to live the liberation promise devoid of its tormenting encumbrances.
The
thirty-year experience of being a non-racialising, democratising, equality and equity-sensitive,
and social cohesion-chasing society has radically transformed the relationship
between “we the people” and the democratic order we are
threading. At the same time, the developments in the freedom literacy of South
Africans and the growing human rights culture are endowing (us) the people with
the power to calibrate state power to be about them. The essential question determining
the future of the liberation promises in the Constitution, and much of the
democratic life in RSA is whether we, as an informed and empowered citizenry,
can use our public power to freely elect public representatives wisely.
The
emerging constitutional order-centric civil society movement, the political
party-led opposition complex, influential and sovereign individuals, and
organised business have already made headway in synthesising citizen obligation
to the liberation promise. On 16 December 2024, the President announced that
the National Dialogue would be convened, a step that triggered several
conversations about the content and character of the dialogue. As (we) the
people gain the competence to manipulate the Constitution in our favour on a
grander scale, we should expect those with power to react correspondingly. This
might result from the risk our constitutional literacy poses to their power,
which feeds off our ignorance.
Those
in the vocation of politics and trading with interests as the currency of
politics have already started to position how the new process of defining the
next thirty years is structured. For “(we) the people”, the impact of
the liberation promise will appear once we have arrived at a non-racial,
non-sexist, democratic, united, and prosperous society. The true meaning of such
a liberation lies in how it eradicates poverty, creates jobs for the majority
of us, and addresses inequality. This is the obligation our public power to
elect public representatives freely expects from those we elect. Modern-day
democracy is far better described as what those who participate in making it
work get out of it beyond its welfarist comfort zones.
Thinking
differently about using more state and civil society power and systems to make
our Bill of Rights far more respected, promoted, protected, and fulfilled is not only fascinating science but also an essential investment in the future survival of our democratic order.
There’s
something particularly haunting about the way our appetite for restitution and
retribution tends to treat acquired freedom by those who benefited from
colonialism and apartheid as not being full rights; we have made theirs less
sentient. This explains why the intersection of a truly recognised past and a
fully embraced human rights future has the potential to unlock South Africa’s
nationhood, offering a beacon of hope for the next phase of economic
development and growth.
Inconveniently,
yet true, the capabilities we are rapidly developing to make our (race, class,
ethnicity, or otherwise narrowly defined) world better also can make it much worse if we are not careful. Without our permission, our fates
as a South African society are deeply intertwined with each other, our
aspirations, and the common interests defining our humanity and our
increasingly interconnected world.
A
defining feature of freedom from oppression, however small, is that as the
frontiers of humanity’s knowledge and experience are extended, new mysteries
and expectations beyond the frontiers come into sharper focus. Equally, the cumulative
advance of democracy, a constitutional order, and the democratic order we are threading
require new leadership of society mindsets and civil society advocacy
mechanisms in symbiosis, of course, with theory, insight, and practice. Sovereign
individuals who have internalised the basis of the erstwhile liberation
movement to be a leader of society have an added obligation to defend the
correctness of creating a National Democratic Society wherever they find
themselves; it is a civic and national duty.
As
a nation about to enter into a dialogue, we should be open-minded about where
in the political, economic, and social control cosmos a better life for all
might emerge and what forms it could take and devote some thought to the new
frontiers it might have or spawn. The time has come that we and our progeny in
this democracy should cheer on the brave to see our constitutional order for
what it is and not what we wished it was because they will have a pivotal role
in spearheading the liberation promise world and determining what happens
beyond the whirlpool of status quo defence and restitution demands that are
chocking our potential as a democracy.
Suppose
we expect further dramatic advances in our politics and constitutional order
during the national dialogue process. In that case, we must be ready to live
with the questions we have thus far avoided answering. Depending on its
agenda’s structure, access, and transparency, the national dialogue must expect
new questions to be posed that it couldn’t conceive when it was
conceptualised.
Like
a driverless car operating on the algorithms designed to serve those giving it
instructions, the future that RSA constitutional and democratic order envisages
requires a leadership mindset that does not worry about the loss of control, of
pieces of its identity and, most importantly, of its prerogative arbitrary
power; instead one that is obligated to the liberation promises the founding
fathers and mothers of this democracy bequeathed to us. Fundamental to the
liberation promise is that (we) the people shall govern, based on the axiomatic
point of departure that no government can justly claim authority unless it is
based on the will of (we) the people. CUT!!!
ABOUT THE LEADER OF SOCIETY BRIGADES
This
brigade understands government as an agency of a state that institutionally
defines our sovereignty, nationhood, and value system. This brigade seeks to
defend the supremacy of the constitution and the sacrosanctity of the rule of
law as the context of all contexts in South Africa. Those in the leadership of
the political parties, civil society, and government are seen by this brigade
as South Africans operating on borrowed public power, whence when in
government, they are organs of state, and the state is not their organ.
This brigade is intergenerational; it is organised according to
the various generations, defining the different epochs of the struggle to
transfer power to (we) the people; such power is political, economic, and social
control to create a national democratic society. It should be organised as
student formations, worker unions, civic associations, and other specialist
formations that executed various dimensions of the struggle as it applies to
them. As this brigade became a force, questions of ethics, code of conduct, and
how to govern and manage became central to its agenda. This brigade should be commissioned
into the state, academia, private sector, and the diplomatic corps.
Many
of the first administration Mandarins under Nelson Mandela qualified as ‘Leaders
of Society Brigades’, which might account for some of the efficiencies as the
transition was constructed. There is no empirical evidence to show if leaving
politics and public service can be attributable to the decline in the number of
those who played the role of Leader of the Society of the Constitution. There
is, however, sprouts of evidence that the private sector outlook of society, at
a point, showed their arrival.
As the structural ambiguities of Parliament in conducting
oversight seem to be undermined by towing the party line principles across the
board, it will always be the conscience of parliamentarians with a 'leader of
society' mindset that the democratic order will rely on for its survival.
Whilst the ANC as a liberation movement is undoubtedly the custodian of South
Africa's liberation from apartheid colonialism, the 'leader of society brigade'
within it, which it should have curated and institutionalised appropriate succession,
has morphed into breeds of leadership the ‘leader of society mantle’ cannot be
bestowed on a significant number of them. The soul space of the constitutional
order and the governing complexes it now has should thus be troubled if the
centre is not dominated by the 'leader of society brigade'. In that way, when
the post-liberation political context gets more complicated and sophisticated,
and liberation beneficiaries become especially disadvantaged by the complexity
of freedom, the 'leader of society brigade' becomes the interior of society
that deals with the threat to the liberation promise in the Constitution.
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