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South Africa’s elections on 29 May 2024 were touted throughout the world as a “triumph for democracy”. Never has a word kindled such expectations in nations and within peoples’ hearts over the past century as this evocation, and the image it conjures up. It is a great sell  - it sounds good and it assuages consciences.

Ancient Greece is considered to be the birthplace of democracy in its broad definition. This ancient  word derives from  demos – people and kratos – rule. In its minimalist form, rulers were elected through competitive elections. In a more expansive and modern definition, liberal democracy is a guarantee of civil liberties and human rights. That is the theory.

The ancient principle of democracy was famously defined as a modern concept during the dedication of the Soldiers Memorial at the Gettysburg Cemetery during the American Civil War by the then American president Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863. Extolling the sacrifices of the dead in the war, Lincoln declared that “these dead will not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth”.

Since those memorable words were spoken, democracy has become enshrined within Western culture. It was dispersed to other cultures through, inter alia, colonialism, economic expansion and international communication. In many instances it has been a handy tool towards the attainment of tyranny.

SOUTH AFRICA

The African National Congress (ANC) has utilised the word democracy to great effect in their path to power. The Freedom Charter was their political policy document offered to the people of South Africa in the mid sixties. It was a socialist pie in the sky, written by South African white communists, and was rejected by those who had developed this country to the first world standard it had attained at the time. No other Western people in any Western country would have accepted the principles of the Freedom Charter. It was a recipe for disaster for South Africa, which disaster eventually materialised under the ANC. It was built upon a socialist ideal (communism) which turned out to be an abysmal failure in other parts of the world, costing millions of lives.

South Africans would watch as European colonialists beat hasty retreats from a continent in the throes of brisk transfers of power to local Africans, There are only a few left which call themselves democratic but no one can take that state of affairs to the bank. One of the more ludicrous examples is the Democratic Republic of the Congo,  a  lawless entity where the country’s assets are smuggled out or stolen, where there are few roads or any other kind of infrastructure, where fake US dollars are used for local currency and where you can be shot in the street by anyone and no one asks questions. How democratic is that!

During this post-independence frenzy, European guilt consciences turned on white South Africa, and democracy was demanded. The ANC turned to terror (mostly against its own people) and the rest was history. South Africa’s population folded, and democracy came to South Africa in 1994 via the ANC’s barbarous violence.

ELECTION 2024.

For thirty years since SA’s 1994 “democratic” election, our country has been pillaged. Government-appointed party hacks were given jobs for which they were clearly incapable of performing. The very fabric of the country crumbled. Our railway system had, in many places, simply disappeared. Our education and health systems, our roads, our electricity supply, all collapsed. Yet the world’s Western media never reported on why the ANC had lost its election majority. References were made to generalities – the crime, unemployment, “allegations” of corruption,  but no real analysis of why SA’s democracy failed was proffered by the world’s media.

South Africa’s population is given as 57, 516, 665 according to www.electionguide.org . The ANC received 12,698,159 votes, 40% of the registered voting block. This is hardly a ringing endorsement  of their achievements. Yet that reduced support for the ANC was not explained as it should have been by the world media. This was after all a democratic election and the results, whatever the reasons and whatever happened to South Africa during those 30 years since 1994, were beyond scrutiny because the ANC was elected democratically in 1994.. Democracy could thus not be sullied, whatever the destruction it caused..                                       
What happened in South Africa is hardly a recommendation for democracy. But whatever the results and consequences of democracy, it is the buzzword on everyone’s lips. Nobody must criticise democracy.

DEMOCRACY IN ZIMBABWE

One of the most egregious examples of the tragedy of democracy was the coming to power of the then Rhodesia in 1980 of one Robert Mugabe, a revolutionary financed by the Chinese.  Shortly before his election, Mugabe promised white farmers their agricultural holdings would be safe and he even encouraged others to purchase farms, which they did. After all, he was democratically elected under the auspices of, particularly, the British government without whose help, together with other Western states and the United Nations, he would never have attained power.

He changed his tune after a post-independence election which he lost. His first move was to murder more than 5000 Matabele tribesmen from the south of the country (Mugabe belonged to the Shona tribe) with the help of a North Korean terror brigade.. He proceeded to expropriate commercial farmland, legally purchased, using unadulterated terror.  These tactics resulted  in resistance from the commercial farmers, in conflicts where many farmers died. A bush war resulted during which farm houses, crops and animals were destroyed and the country’s food production came to a virtual standstill. The country is now a basket case from which hundreds of thousands of hungry and unemployed Zimbabweans, both male and female, have streamed into South Africa, and who are still here. Many are in South African jails for stealing or worse, or they are working on the fringes of South African society as labourers on a day to day basis. This tragedy unfolded under the name of democracy.

It could have been so different. The few thousand white farmers of Zimbabwe were among the best in the world. They fed the more than 12 million people in the new Zimbabwe. They were so efficient that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Year Book of 1975 ranked the then Rhodesia second in the world in terms of yields of maize, wheat, soya beans and groundnuts, and third for cotton. Rhodesia’s Virginia tobacco was rated the best in the world in yield and quality. The country became the second largest exporter of flue-cured tobacco. Agriculture was the major source of the country’s foreign currency, providing employment for about a third of the country’s labour force. The country  was the bread basket of central Africa. It is now the basket case of central Africa, the direct result of democracy.

FRANCE

France is no longer the homogenous country it used to be. Within its population of around 65 million, there are more than nine million Muslims and millions of other foreigners of all ethnic origins. Paris and Nice are called “multicultural” cities, which situation has given rise to the growth of the rightwing National Rally (NR) of Marine le Pen. During the first runoff in the country’s recent election that party came first. Ordinary French citizens had had enough of multiculturalism. Paris has developed many ghettos, and tent slums are to be seen under the city’s bridges, in parks and elsewhere. This is repeated in big cities throughout France.

A concocted “united front” was then created to defeat the NR in the second round of the election. President Emanuel Macron, a bankers’ man and a dyed in the wool leftist, extolled a disparate far left concoction which included communists and hard line socialists, to coalesce and vote as a political block to rid the country of the “dangerous” RN.  The party of Marine le Pen was declared “a serious threat to France and French democracy”. The RN was demonised as a “monstrous” party. The media in France and in the United States (almost universally anti-Trump) declared that France had been “saved” from the “far right” scourge!. Imagine a party whose policy is “France for the French” being declared a danger to France’s future!

The far left block was called out by Macron to defeat the RN in the runoff. The RN came third in this skewed democratic stunt. There are now three disparate blocks in the French parliament, none of whom have a majority.  This is a coalition of politicians who dislike each other. The country is due for much political (and social) turmoil in the future. This situation is the result of a manipulated democracy.

Social media pictures of the burning streets of Paris, trash everywhere, and reports of police deaths at the hands of the rampaging far left street mobs on the day of the election results, certainly presages the future of France. So much for modern democracy!.