Democracy: Its questionable birth and drama

South Africa is an interesting country in many ways including that it is rich food for thought. It is not even fast-food for thought but deep food for thought, a philosophical object. The Republic is an interesting subject of political and philosophical reflection, in many ways. 

I must begin by dethroning the durable fallacy that democracy in the sense of good governance by popular and public consent is a precious gift that was brought to the Global South by colonialists in their vaunted civilisational and modernisation mission. 

All societies, before conquest and colonisation in the Global South, had their own concepts and practices of what was understood as good governance by popular consent. It is, therefore, a colonial myth that we must all find time one day to be grateful to colonialists for colonising our societies and gifting them with ideas and practices of good governance by popular consent. 

In actuality, I am tempted to ask that we must all find time and energy to be angry that colonialists took away and destroyed our forms of good governance by popular consent and replaced them with their own dubious system that, among other faults, creates a tyranny of the majority over the minority.

The birth of the idea and practice of democracy in ancient Athens is understood. What is not understood by everyday scholars and other interlocutors is that right there in Athens where and when democracy was born it was most suspected and most critiqued as a system of government. In that way we can observe the dilemma where Greek philosophy that is supposed to have given birth to the idea of democracy was foundationally suspicious and critical of the same democracy. 

Socrates, the man who is largely understood to be the father of Greek philosophy or its most acclaimed ambassador, was at best suspicious and at most contemptuous of democracy. Socrates, by the way, believed that democracy was a skill that could only be practiced well by trained and educated people of which larger parts of populations in the world are not. To Socrates, as represented in Book Six of Plato’s book, Republic, democracy was an elite affair that had nothing and should not have anything to do with majorities and populations but philosophers that are always a minority in any society. 

Governing a country was to Socrates comparable to steering and captaining a ship in the wild seas, it requires skill and knowledge. The metaphor of the “ship of state” that political scientists toy with is a Socratic invention. Not only governing but also voting itself was understood by Socrates to be a delicate issue that should not, in any society, be left to the uneducated and untrained. 

Socrates vehemently argued that voting should be isolated to educated and wise people that would vote wisely, not the plebians and commoners as the hoi polloi were called at the time. If indeed democracy is a Greek baby, then it is a questionable baby in that some prominent Greek thinkers foundationally questioned and critiqued it as imperfect and sometimes dangerous. The same Socrates, through his student Plato, also bemoaned the excess of freedom and anarchy that is given life by democracy in any setting where it is practiced. Elections in the view of Socrates, are a lottery of man and the freedom they grant is “undiluted freedom” that can intoxicate the weak-minded in society. 

In a democracy, rulers behave like subjects and subjects behave like rulers, complained Socrates. Sons swap places with their fathers in disrespect as freedom is taken to its very limits. Socrates warned that democratic freedom taken too far leads to the same slavery that democracy was meant to prevent in the very first place. 

What is enough for this brief conversation is not to agree or disagree with Socrates, but just to understand that democracy was foundationally suspected and questioned in Athens where it was supposedly born. It is also enough for me to drop the reminder that we are discussing western democracy, not other forms of good and popular governance that our societies had before conquest and colonisation. What those systems of good and popular governance were is a subject, I think, of another day. 

One other interesting observation is that Socrates’ contempt for democracy and the idea of votes and majoritarianism might have been prophetic in his life. When, in 399BC he was brought to trial before a jury of 500 Athenians, a narrow majority voted for his death, and he was crucified with bitter poison. Votes literally killed Socrates. 

When someone philosophically remarks that something or an issue is pornographic, they mean that it is obscene, extreme and spectacular. 

Sexual pornography is the idea of making something strictly private become public and spectacular and therefore, excessive and obscene. 

The South African political experiment with liberal democracy and democratic constitutionalism is in my view approaching drama and spectacle. One only needs to watch the drama in the South African multi-party parliament to understand my opinion on this. 

One can also observe how the country, because of its democratic experiment, is classified as the leading “protest republic” of the world. 

Protest is South Africa’s second if not first name. As President Cyril Ramaphosa faces a democratic test after being sued by a former intelligence leader, and a joke circulates in the social media: “South Africans you are too much; you protested and demanded that Zuma must go because he stole our money, now you are protesting and demanding that Ramaphosa must go because his money was stolen, what do you want?” There might be a little more than humour in that small online joke.  Without apologising for tyranny, despotism and authoritarianism, I seek to suggest that we might revisit the Socratic habit of taking a second and even a third look at democracy, especially at its dramatic levels. 

Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Mabusabesala Village, Siyabuswa, in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. Contacts: [email protected].