Lorenzo Davids|Published6 minutes agoWhy we must demand an inconvenient democracy for all

Lorenzo Davids is the Executive Director of Urban Issues Consulting. For democracy to work, it must be inconvenient for everyone. The fact that 1994 was celebrated so intensely and for several years was the early warning sign that we did not understand democracy.

‘Rainbow nation’ was such a cute phrase; it gave us a high we had never experienced before. But it was fake. It did not challenge us enough.

It did not extract enough from us. It did not cost us enough. It made us feel like, “Oh wow, I can do this.

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This is not too bad. Pack away the baked beans, darling. I’ve invited Vusi and his wife over for dinner, you know, that reconciliation thing, we’re doing that tonight.” I wish we were harder on each other.

Braais and BBBEE are not reconciliation nor restitution. We spoke to each other like long-lost cousins, and not as recent enemies. Perhaps the recalcitrant Afrikaner and the PAC were the most honest people around 1993, for they both refused to settle for a comfortable democracy.

Systems are breaking down everywhere, and people are prisoners to historical trauma and pain because of conversations and confrontations that never took place. Convenience continued uninterrupted for those who had the power and still do so today. The pre-94 White elite and post-94 Black elite, who have benefitted from both Apartheid’s existence and its subsequent abolition, all have a very convenient power, conferred on them by democracy, to make every other South African believe they are idiots for not feeling great, heard or understood.

Why are there more than 168 dedicated Holocaust museums, about 750 Holocaust memorial and documentation centres and more than 10 000 Holocaust memorial sites globally? Because genocides are important issues to talk about – all the time. Why are we in South Africa not more insistent that we talk about the traumatic experiences of living under colonisation, Apartheid and the failures of this democracy?

Why are we officially ignoring it? Because the people with power – white and black – simply have no need to do so. Their convenience, pre- and post-apartheid, has remained safely in place.

You have heard the responses to the call for a National Dialogue: “We don’t need a national dialogue; we know what must be fixed!” Really? You know exactly what people feel, think and have lived through and suffered in this country? You say that unaware of your enormous privilege today?

So you know the trauma and land loss, loss of loved ones through murder by the State and economic loss and lingering anger of still powerless people? That arrogant attitude about the loss black, coloured and Indian people suffered over multiple generations is exactly the reason why we must insist on talks about reconciliation and restitution in this country.

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