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A sincere thank you to the 60% of eligible South Africans who voted on 29 May 2024, said both a South African community activist and an American political expert.
“Good job, but your work is not done,” they indicated.
“You now need to hold the new Government of National Unity accountable and you have to do it for yourselves and for the millions of your fellow citizens who did not bother to vote.”
“Democracy demands that its beneficiaries monitor the activities of the government officials,” said Godfrey Harris, American political expert and former staffer of 36th US President Lyndon Johnson.
Harris believes that if the new grand coalition government performs as its parties promised, it will preserve South Africa’s democracy and maintain Africa’s economic jewel for all to benefit.
Harris noted that voting is only one aspect of a citizen’s responsibility in a democracy.
“Staying involved with what the government is actually doing (and not doing) is also required,” he said.
At the same time, a South African community and environmental activist who is the managing director of Kalahari Earth Keepers International, Brain Miennies, agrees with Harris on the imperative that the citizens of South Africa stay involved.
Harris put it this way: “New governments are like tomato plants in the spring. They need a lot of tending lest weeds, lurking in the soil like corruption surrounding any government agency, find a happy place to do damage to the flourishing plants.”
Miennies said that he was pleased that the new minister of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment, Dr Dion George, and the Democratic Alliance now support community benefits from natural resources.
“We have all the natural assets [needed] to . . . generate sustainable jobs,” said Dr George. “We are naturally endowed and we need to use those assets [for] the benefit of the people/communities . . . because those resources belong to them and [at the same time] make sure we are not . . . destroying [our] natural heritage.”
Miennies has welcomed Minister George’s breath-of-fresh-air plans to distribute environmental benefits to communities. But Miennies is also aware of his duty to watch how the minister’s plans are implemented.
Minister George is not the only minister who has made promises to do great things for the South African voters who put them in positions of leadership.
Therefore, the million Rand question remains: To what extent is the South African grand coalition government going to be able to blend their manifestoes to meet the expectations of the voters who put them in office?
For Harris, the key is how citizens apply pressure to ensure that the government implements what has been promised, including, especially, the promise to curb corruption.
“Citizens should know that governments tend to slide downhill — tempting executives to engage in corrupt acts — the moment they feel no one is watching what they are doing,” said Harris.
“Just like mosquitos multiply in still water, so corruption festers in the darkness of government whispers.
“While the media used to shine a bright torch on what government does with taxpayer funds, that role has been shrinking rapidly.
“Newspapers, for example, no longer have the resources to do the work of uncovering criminal use of government funds.
“Ironically, it is the citizenry who have helped destroy the newspapers with their endless use of social media on the internet.
“Having done that, though, citizens now have the power of their own form of journalism to do what newspapers used to do—to find out the cheating and thievery that ruins the economic and political future for everyone, save perhaps, the criminals in a society.”
Harris noted that “citizens find the initial places to point their torch by asking pointed questions of the politicians.”
“The political parties can support this process by ensuring that the questions reach the right members of the bureaucracy. If the bureaucrats fail to answer the questions openly and comprehensively, then the politicians must raise the issue in Parliament.
“Voters organised into groups and asking their questions from a group perspective have a way of getting the attention that honest government is happy to give and dishonest government is anxious to hide.
Miennies said that he would be watching for the government’s help for communities co-existing with wildlife, including his Khomani San Community in the Northern Cape Province. He said, for starters, the Government should ensure that communities and hospitals significantly benefit from the medicinal products of plants and wildlife found in the wild.
Furthermore, he said that there was an urgent need to establish corporate governance systems in communities to address such issues as water, poverty, unemployment, fire-fighting to prevent crop, pasture and environmental destruction, food security, cell phone and Internet reception in rural areas and ways to fight criminals, including the poachers who steal wildlife and medicinal plants.
Miennies said that he knows that indigenous communities worldwide do not normally go to pharmacies to buy medicines as do city dwellers.
“The forests and protected areas are their pharmacies and government should give them the licence to harvest medicinal plants, sustainably.
Kalahari Earth Keepers International, he says, will engage with all spheres of government to ensure that these entities are assisted and that their systems of governance will not interfere with communities benefiting from the natural resources within the lands of their ancestors.
“Indigenous communities are the world’s best forest conservationists,” he said.
Notably, two South African researchers — Pranish Desai, a data analyst in the Governance Insights and Analytics Programme at Good Governance Africa and Mxolisi Zondo, a researcher at Good Governance Africa — recently urged South Africa’s coalition government to be accountable to the voters, in their published report.
“Over three decades, … many voters feel unable to directly apply pressure on national and provincial representatives outside of elections.
“Many citizens also sense representatives are more accountable to party leaders than [to] them.”
