Ini Yona?

IyiniYona Le Democracy : Demystifying the notion of Democracy locally and globally

Start with the Oxford dictionary definition:

Democracy  di-mok-ruh-si/ .noun (plural: democracies) 1 a form of government in which the people can vote for representatives to govern the state on their behalf. 2 a stat governed by elected representatives. 3 control of a group by the majority of its members.

ORIGIN – Greek  demokratia.

Democratic - 1relating to supporting democracy. 2 based on the principle that everyone in society is equal.

“The true spirit of America is rooted in the fundamental principle called democracy – freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, etc. For this reason alone, America has served as the model form of government for Europe and the rest of the world.

We must of course, understand that the democratic concepts espoused by America’s Founding Fathers applied only to “free white men of means,” and not Africans, Native Americans, women and the poor. The Founding Fathers believed that man could know God through reason and the refinement of the intellect. This was the quintessential spirit of democracy. They believed that every mind was capable of enlightenment. It was therefore unnecessary to have an authorised figure of the church to dictate revelation… This was the reason for the Founding Fathers insistence on the separation between church and state.” – Anthony T. Browder*(Exploding Myths: Nile Valley Contributions To Civilization)

“The primary requirement is wisdom which may or may not reside in persons of any age. But what is wisdom, what is folly, and who is to judge? This question has never been satisfactorily answered. No judgement on the score receives unanimous support; no judge is deemed competent by all. Faced with this dilemma, modern Man has arrived at a most extraordinary solution. He has postulated that the validity of an idea may be measured by the number of people supporting it. The most complicated and vital issues are decided in this way – questions of war and peace and nationalisation of industry versus private enterprise, defence budgets and a whole host of matters on which many wise men feels unfit to comment. But the multitude assumes to ‘know’ and is allowed to act, all too often disastrously. The masses fling governments out and bring governments in to do their bidding in matters of the most complex nature they do not and cannot comprehend. The system is called DEMOCRACY. It can only be justified on the assumption that ten fools are better than nine sages.” – A.T. Culwick( Who Shall Inherit The Earth?, 1969)

NB. Although I found Mr Culwick book inherently biased against Black people, which is to say that it reads like one of the racist tomes that White society used to convince themselves of the inferiority of Black people, I nevertheless chose to use this quotation as it aptly describes in layman’s terms what is meant by the system of democracy. I also chose to use it as a counter-balance to the diametrically different description given by the Afrocentric Browder.

This investigation of democracy has some serious implications with regard to my Pan African objective of re-introducing Black Consciousness as a necessary antidote for the suffering people of colour. I am specifically dealing with Black people due to the self-evident fact that they are the major victims of White Supremacy and neo-liberal institutions which hide behind the tattered veil of democracy.  This has been the case ever-since Our initial contact with the Eurocentric world and although much has been done to eradicate systematic racism and overt slavery, the economic and spatial conditions prevailing upon the Black world clearly show that democracy does not work for everyone. Not only does it not work for the poor locally and globally, it also calls for a thorough revolution of how well-meaning ordinary people think of it.

There are many individuals and institutions who earnestly believe that the only way to bring about justice in our troubled world is to first democratise all aspects of our lives. In my opinion this is amounts to lazy thinking and displays the thoroughness of the deceptive democratic propaganda machinery. Black Consciousness therefore is not just an elixir for all the worlds problems, but it is a necessary shift in the mental attitudes of all humanity and it can work as a redeeming feature in all our efforts to free ourselves from the tyranny of the ‘powerful’.

There are too many examples of how tyrants pay lip service to this system in order to fool the people. But as the famous Reggae Artists the Wailer’s so aptly sang it “You can fool some people sometimes/ But you can’t fool all the people all the time/ Cause when they see the light, they’ll stand up for their rights.”

So essentially what I am attempting to do is to shine the light of Consciousness in the paths of those who need it the most, and to those who strongly believe that they still require the dim-light of democracy, so be it, let them be satisfied with its results.

Here’s an example of how racism and ancient hate is justified using this very elaborate and insidious system. Editor of The Thinker, a journal for ‘Thought Leaders’, Aziz Pahad writes:

“Israel is not a democratic state. Zionism is essentially about creating discriminatory rights for Jews and non-Jews. This affects everything – including access to jobs, economic activities, housing subsidies, education and health. Israeli Palestinians having “equal rights and democracy” in a Zionist State is therefore a contradiction. The fight for a secular Israeli state with equal rights for all is another important terrain of struggle. (p.15. Israel, Apartheid Perfected, Aziz Pahad, The Thinker, Vol. 33. November 2011)

-          Maseko Menzi