Our privilege, yours and mine, comes with duties

Where are we after 30 years of democracy? There is good news, and bad news. The bad news is that our democracy is in peril. Despite heartening successes, the famished termites of state incapacity, corruption, criminal syndicalism, deception, lies and disorder are gnawing at its pillars and foundations.

But before confronting the termites, we must not overlook some successes. They console us, without complacency.

First, we have a thriving media, of which the Sunday Times is an important part.

Also courageous online investigative platforms, including GroundUp, Spotlight, amaBhungane, and Daily Maverick — none of which seek commercial recompense. All our media are vulnerable (as the decision to close many of Media24’s Afrikaans print newspapers shows). On the dark side, abuses of media power do occur — though for most publications (with the exception of the IOL group), corrective mechanisms offer some redress. The point is that the media remains quite astonishingly free in South Africa: you can say and publish things that, in countries a few hours’ drive from where we celebrate tonight, could entail assassination (as in Eswatini, Tanzania and Mozambique), or violent arrest, assault and imprisonment (as in Zimbabwe, much of Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia).

Second, despite increasing funding constraints, civil society and non-governmental organisations remain redoubtable. Pro bono legal activist organisations ... as well as impressive think-tanks and research outfits ... stoutly support the rule of law.

There is a vast gulf between the way in which most people in our country live, and the way we live, you and I, those of us tonight at these banqueting tables. It is intolerable that we, a middle-income country, allow children, anywhere at all, to go hungry

Third, the judiciary: with rare exceptions, our judges are honest, courageous and outspoken — and committed to the rule of law and the supremacy of the constitution.

I would add, fourth, a business sector whose leadership has shown readiness to pitch in to guide and repair governmental failings.

And, on this splendid literary awards evening, we rejoice in our country’s vibrant literary tradition, which helps us understand our history and the present through both fiction and nonfiction.

But back to the hungry “termites”. Foremost is the peril of criminal syndicates operating at all levels of government. I am not talking about venal corruption, like requests for “cooldrink” money, at traffic stops or roadblocks. I am being euphemistic: criminal networks may well be inside the cabinet and in other high offices throughout the government. These sustain densely organised, extractive criminal activity, operating with high complexity and efficiency — cash-in-transit heists; construction mafias, cross-border smuggling of vehicles and people; artisanal mining; autoteller bombings; firearms distribution and sales; copper cable and rail-line plundering; kidnappings; and the increasing horrors of widespread extortion. These criminal industries are yearly worth tens of billions of rand. Their intricate logistical networks exist, and flourish, only because of high-level police and political cover.

These syndicates pose a present peril to our constitutional order. They are well served by some legal practitioners — who seek to advance their interests by undermining the institutions of the law and democracy. Their favoured tactic, cynically implemented, is to sully the judiciary with loud, bullying and manipulative rhetoric, while obstructing criminal accountability. Judges now recognise this threat — judge Visvanathan Ponnan in the Supreme Court of Appeal and judge Omphemetse Mooki in the Gauteng High Court have recently shown singular courage in confronting disingenuous legal stratagems.

As in Donald Trump’s America, we face a calculated onslaught on the legitimacy of the institutions of democracy: these include the judiciary, electoral processes and the constitution itself. These institutions must of course be scrutinised — but criticism aimed at proper functioning is a world apart from cynical lies and distortions that aim to eliminate impediments to criminal looting.

But we don’t lose heart. All this is remediable, provided we have powerful commitment and leadership from the very top, resources and conspicuous arrests, arraignments, trial processes and convictions.

But the greatest threats to the constitution and the rule of law are all around us, outside our lavish dinner tonight. They are poverty, marginalisation and exclusionary elitism. The World Bank records that South Africa’s post-1994 progress towards reducing poverty came to a halt in 2011.

That is a significant year, to which I will return: it is when the Zuma assault on state institutions started taking hold. The result of the Zuma presidency is that more than half of our population (55%, or 30-million people) live below the national upper-bound poverty line.

A quarter (almost 14-million people) experience food poverty. Plus our staggering inequality. Among countries that render reliable statistics (and many of the worst offenders don’t), South Africa has among the most unequal distribution of resources and wealth in the world. There is a vast gulf between the way in which most people in our country live, and the way we live, you and I, those of us tonight at these banqueting tables. It is intolerable that we, a middle-income country, allow children, anywhere at all, to go hungry.

Yet they do. In the Eastern Cape, severe acute malnutrition among children has more than doubled over the past 18 months. This is not only morally intolerable; it is a mortal peril to the rule of law and the constitution. Poverty and dispossession of this extremity are a godsend to those who seek to destroy our democracy and plunder our resources.

The risk is that you and I, swathed in the comforts we have reaped from these 30 years of democracy — the one-in-five of us who enjoy private health care, who have access to local and international travel, whose bellies are full, who live in households crammed with appurtenances, whose children attend suburban or elite schools — are isolating ourselves, that we are cocooning our moral consciences, anaesthetising our political warning systems.

You may recognise here a resonance with president Thabo Mbeki’s “two nations” speech a quarter-century ago — though I supplant his race-based perspective with a not-quite-post-racial class approach. The point is not just that our democracy has disproportionately benefited those of us, black and white, in the better-resourced nation — but that our benefits endanger our democracy.

Just 10 days ago, in Chris Barron’s Q&A, SACP general secretary Solly Mapaila stated that “this constitutional democracy has been hijacked by capital in collusion with the political elite”. In the same edition, a voice of ethical standing, Mazibuko Jara, cautioned that “it should be plain that what we have is unequal, unstable and unsustainable”. One should add that sequestering of constitutionalism’s benefits is not universal — some constitutional values have travelled far and deeply.

A striking instance is LGBTQ+ equality. Not only within the urban and political elite, but throughout South Africa, rural and urban, township and suburb, acceptance of diversity in sexual orientation and gender identity has become [entrenched].

I think, with grief-laden respect, of the gogos who protested outside a bail hearing after a young working-class man from Kuruman, Thapelo Makhutle, who identified as gay and transgender, was murdered. With blankets pinned around their waists, the gogos held up placards proclaiming “Gay rights are human rights”.

Again, in rolling out ARVs, building houses and providing social grants, our democracy has without question altered lives for the better. These and other penetrating instances mean that no-one can persuasively claim that the democracy and the constitution belong solely to the elite.

Yet this is not enough. The perils that elite compaction and solipsistic, self-involved exclusion present to democracy remain. A vivid instance arises from the prisons work that is currently my main job. At the start of our new democracy, we, the elite, the media, the intelligentsia, the writers — abandoned the hard work of systematic law enforcement through capable and honest agencies. Instead, we embraced the chimera of long and harsh sentences. While the police and prosecution services lapsed into failure and corruption, we chose to cram more offenders into bigger prisons.

In 1994, fewer than 500 sentenced prisoners were serving life sentences. Today there are more than 18,000. After democracy, from 1995, until 2011, murders steadily decreased. Then — two years after Jacob Zuma became president — catastrophe. Zuma’s government appointed cronies, many with known criminal links, to pivotal state institutions. His government deliberately laid waste to crime intelligence, crime control and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).

Zuma appointed a criminal, Mr Richard Mdluli, to head crime intelligence. He and his confederates destroyed its crime-countering functions, looted its coffers and extinguished a vital resource against violence and disorder. The result, from 2011, was a significant increase in all forms of crime. As sentences have become longer, and our prisons more and more overcrowded, crime has continued to rise. According to Jacques Pauw, whose searing analyses are often spot on, crime intelligence is still in the hands of those who protect criminal gangsters in the police and the political hierarchy. The way to reduce crime is to rebuild crime intelligence, to strengthen effective policing, to pour resources into effective and efficient prosecutions. The lure of long sentences is a dangerous distraction from this tough task.

Behind our high walls, private health care, private security, private schooling and private shopping, we run the risk of leaving undone the hard work of practicable solutions. Instead, we create the peril of a grievance-fuelled popular revolt against our entire democratic system. We must do practical and radical things to counter this — not leaving these only to the government, but starting with our own lives.

We create the peril of a grievance-fuelled popular revolt against our entire democratic system. We must do practical and radical things to counter this — not leaving these only to the government, but starting with our own lives

One way to start is through voluntary middle-class wealth sharing. Every single day our country offers us opportunities. Do we share enough of our wealth to make an impact on enough other lives? Structurally, we can support what Jara with notable caution calls a “modest but meaningful” wealth tax — we should support this, not only for its functional impact, which will be considerable, but also for its symbolic importance to our fragile democracy.

And amid the noise of unaffordability, we can support expanding the social relief of distress grant to begin to approximate a basic income grant. We must prepare ourselves, the media must help prepare us, for constitution-saving, rule-of-law-saving adjustments to our hoarded comforts and privileges.

Improving access to health care for the majority is a fraught imperative. Even the most efficient and uncorrupt version of national coverage will entail some sacrifice of quality and convenience for we who have private health care.

Effectively confronting inequality is uncomfortable and will entails personal sacrifices — but if we wish to save our democracy, it is imperative.

Next week, a grievance-fuelled populist backlash could entail the destruction of American democracy — one enabled, as here, by cynical manipulation, lies and distortions. But we have the chance to grasp the truth in the grievances that beset our own democracy. Through practical individual interventions, we can take deep into ourselves the truths that target our insularity. We cannot do less.