Diversity Killed Democracy in South Africa. By Flip Buys.
Since 1994, there have been 12 elections (six national, six local) where the votes were overwhelmingly based on identity instead of policy. As democrats, we must accept that a multi-party democracy has not worked in South Africa and will most likely not work in the future.
As in other heterogeneous countries, South Africa is a demographic democracy where the composition of the population counts more in elections than the performance of parties. …
Too much diversity:
South Africa, with its multitude of races, languages and cultures, is a former colonial region rather than a natural country. Prof. Samuel Huntington of Harvard warned that “ideology is a weak glue to hold people together who would not otherwise form similar ethnic, racial and cultural communities”. …
Nation building is a totalitarian project that requires the forced standardisation of the population. Unity and reconciliation are thus reduced to absorption in the majority. In contrast, state-building is a project to create space for diversity in a geographic region larger than Germany, Italy, Britain, Greece, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium combined. In addition, our population is even more diverse than Europe’s. …
The Afrikaners cannot leave, so what future do they have under Zulu rule?
Many people are rightly asking whether there is still a future in South Africa. … Most people cannot move overseas. The question is thus not whether people should stay, but how and where. …
Afrikaners do not long for the past under the [National Party], but do not look forward to an eternal future under the ANC’s rule. We do not want to be above or below other communities, we strive for equality. We are not anyone’s rulers or subjects.
We are only striving for normality, not for outdated systems and strange ideologies. A normal existence is where we have the freedom to make and implement decisions ourselves, and where the past is not used as a weapon against your future.
Normal is where you can sleep safely with open windows or where you can walk down the street with your family at night. It is normal to get value for your tax money, with working services, a free economy, where the rule of law is exercised, and your children have hope for the future.
One of the most important lessons to be learned from the unrest is that the security, prosperity and freedom of achieving minorities will always be at risk in a situation where the majority has all the political power and a minority the economic prosperity. This is especially true where a government does not want to make the poor richer through economic growth, but wants to make the “rich” poorer by forced redistribution.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
