Keyword: Democratic Alliance

On the State of Democracy in South Africa

Steven Friedman - South African democracy spans two very different worlds. In one, people complain loudly but enjoy full democratic rights – in the other, most remain unheard and battle for the right to speak. In both, life is difficult for those who do not conform. Among political scientists - and many of the South Africans who can speak - it is fashionable to label this country’s democracy a ‘party dominant system’. Democracy, is, in this view, limited by the iron grip of the...

Riot Police in Parliament

Picture: President Jacob Zuma courtesy GovernmentZA/flickr Richard Pithouse - When the ANC raised Jacob Zuma above the rule of law and the scrutiny of parliament they repeated, on live television, an aspect of the logic with which the subaltern classes are routinely governed. The democratic rights that have been enjoyed by the middle classes over the last twenty years are frequently denied to people who inhabit zones, like the former Bantustan or the urban shack settlement, where different rules apply. In these zones, despotic forms of power are not uncommon....

If the Democratic Alliance Ran South Africa

Picture: Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille courtesy Democratic Alliance/flickr. Glenn Ashton - The Democratic Alliance (DA) in power and Zille as President. What would South Africa be like? There are lessons to be learned from Cape Town and the Western Cape, which have been under DA control since 2006 and 2009 respectively. The party extended its majority by absorbing minority partners including the Independent Democrats (ID), handing its erstwhile leader Patricia de Lille the mayoral chain. There was a predictable outcry in 2009 when Zille appointed a white, male-dominated...

The Future of Whitopia Lies in a Gentrified Race Discourse

Picture: DA leader Helen Zille and leader of the DA in the Johannesburg City Council Mmusi Maimane courtesy Democratic Alliance/flickr. Mandisi Majavu - The Democratic Alliance’s (DA) official position on the Employment Equity Amendment Bill reveals, among other things, the irrelevance and the inadequacy of classic liberalism in addressing racial justice in post-apartheid South Africa. The Party Leader, Helen Zille, characterises the bill as “Verwoerdian social engineering”.  Zille’s reasoning is that “there is nothing progressive about coercion that enforces racial quotas…” Zille’s...

Promise & Peril at the Turn of the Tide

Picture: Mamphela Ramphele (Agang) and Julius Malema (Economic Freedom Fighters) courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Richard Pithouse - (T)he horses have vanished Heroes hop around like toads - Pablo Neruda, Right Comrade, It’s the Hour of the Garden, Chile, 1973 Writing after the French Revolution Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, noted that “while the drama of great political changes is taking place” people “openly express universal yet disinterested sympathy for one set of protagonists against their adversaries”. Kant did not deny the limits, or even the horrors of the French...

Necessary Illusions: Postcolonial Untold Myths and Legends

Picture: Helen Suzman and Nelson Mandela courtesy cortland.edu Mandisi Majavu - As Noam Chomsky once wrote, the vocation of “historical engineering” is as old as history. White liberalism has developed this vocation into a science, and one of the tools that liberals deploy when carrying out “historical engineering” is ethnic solipsism. This is why today the French revolution is globally recognised as an important historical event, whereas the Haitian revolution is not foregrounded in the study of the development of the 18th century social...