What a day!

I need to write this while it’s all fresh. What a day! This morning I woke up and turned on the TV, to see John McCain giving his speech conceding defeat on the US presidentlal election. I must say, what a gracious speech it was. If nothing else, McCain is a good loser.

Then about 20 minutes later, I watched Barack Obama’s victory speech. By that stage I was in an airport departure lounge, and there were quite a few of us gathered around the TV. I don’t think of myself as particularly sentimental, but I couldn’t stop a few tears from rolling down my cheeks. His speech was so fitting, the occasion so momentous, I couldn’t help but be moved.

The faces of the people in the crowd in Chicago reflected not just happiness but idealism, and hope. Goodness knows we need some ideals in today’s world, we need some heroes. Obama is now the focus of that need. Even as I savoured the moment, a part of my mind was already sceptical. Obama now carries the ideals and hopes not only of Americans but of many around the world. Will he live up to the heavy expectations that have been placed on him?

Please, please let us not be disappointed, as we so often are by our leaders. I recall, for instance, the scenes of jubilation in Kenya when Mwai Kibaki was elected president. Four years later, that jubilation had turned to bitter cynicism. In South Africa the hopes placed on the ANC have in many cases also faded all too soon. Let’s not have that again.

In a sense it doesn’t really matter. This moment, this day, will have a lasting positive impact, no matter what follows. As an American friend of mine has put it — African American men today see themselves re-imagined. The proliferation of negative images of black men in America, as prisoners, as drug dealers and so on, now have an extremely powerful counter-image. In a sense, the image of Africa, too, is changed. What impact is this having on youngsters, who now can imagine a world of possibilities they never before thought possible? Obama has broken the glass  ceiling for black Americans in the most powerful way.

Today, the USA, too, is being powerfully re-imagined by the rest of the world. Suddenly, the nation associated with George Bush, with war, with aggression and mindless conservatism, has transformed itself in this one act. Will our jubilation be justified, or will the strictures of office, the demands of the military-industrial complex force Obama into the mould of so many predecessors. Let us hope and pray not.

But again, I am hopeful, because this is not about one man. Obama’s campaign succeeded because it transformed the nature of electoral politics in America. It relied on an extensive network of grassroots-based organisations and individuals. It build on a model of citizen involvement and activism. The youth have been energised and re-engaged in politics by this election.

As Obama’s speech indicated, this is just the beginning. There are huge crises to tackle — a faltering global economy, two wars that the US is involved in, new forms of international instability. It will not be easy by any means. Obama can’t do it on his own. Individuals naturally have weaknesses and failings, but one of the huge strengths of the president-elect is his strength as an organiser, his realisation that he needs a strong team. In this case there is  a network, a movement that’s been established. In this sense, change has already happened.

Keep democracy, scrap elections

I am becoming disillusioned with democracy. Elected leaders, all around the world, seem to be getting worse and worse.

In London they’ve just elected Boris Johnson, a bigoted buffoon, as mayor. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi was recently re-elected as prime minister. This is a man who is notoriously corrupt, and who in his previous terms in power ran the government like his private business empire.

Here in South Africa, many of us spent last year terrified of the prospect of a Jacob Zuma presidency. But lately, Thabo Mbeki has revealed himself to be so bad that Zuma is beginning to seem like a better option. That this is so, just shows how far our standards have dropped.

Of course it’s our fault as voters, for electing every-more inept leaders. But it’s not like we have a great choice. The calibre of candidates seem to be declining year by year, so that now electorates are faced with choosing the least bad person, rather than the best one. In any case, money and PR spin have long removed any semblance of real choice from the electoral process. No wonder the idealistic youth are sickened with what they see, and stay away from politics.

More and more I agree with the person who said that the very  fact that someone wants to be elected, should automatically disqualify them. Hardly anybody seems to go into politics anymore with noble intentions — they go into it in a quest for power for money, or both. These are just the people who should be kept far away from the reins.  And the few people who may start out with some moral fibre and a backbone are either quickly corrupted by the whole dirty system, or they leave in disgust.

In my view, democracy is broken. And I have an idea about how to fix it. We need to look to the jury system that exists in some countries, and to the techniques used by public opinion and market researchers.

The jury system works on the premise that people should be judged by their peers. And behind that is the assumption that a pretty much randomly- group of ordinary people are competent to understand the issues involved, and to come to reasonable judgments.

So why not choose parliaments and governments in the same way? Present-day democracy is representative democracy. Representatives of the people sit in parliament and make decisions on the people’s behalf. At present we choose our representatives through elections. But this isn’t working, so let’s scrap elections. Why can’t the people’s representatives be chosen through a random process — every x number of years, through a random process, x number of representatives are chosen. It’s like the Lotto. If your number comes up, you have to go and serve in Parliament for a term. When your term is over, you are released and can go back to your life. For the sake of continuity, every year only 25 or 30% of the representatives are changed.

This would still be representative democracy — the chosen representatives would just be chosen in a different way. To see how it will be representative, we can look to the sampling techniques that market researchers use. They select a random group of people, but in a structured way, so that the make-up of the group mirrors exactly the make-up of the broader population. It’s random in that every member of the broader population has an equal chance of being selected. In that way, they can get pretty reliable knowledge about the views of the entire population, by only speaking to about 2000 or so people.

So why don’t we choose our public representatives (let’s stop calling them leaders) in this way, and mandate them to discuss the important issues and make decisions on our behalf?

This has actually been tried. American political scientist Professor James Fishkin has already undertaken several experiments along these lines, using what he calls ‘deliberative polling’. (See for example http://cdd.stanford.edu/polls/docs/summary/)

So, what are the benefits?

No more elections would mean no more campaigning, election violence, worrying about ‘free and fair’.  It would mean the end of political parties and the end of long-serving parliamentarians. It would thus cut out key motivators of and opportunities for corruption. It would mean the end of cronyism. Very importantly, it would also ensure equal representation. Instantly, 50% of Parliament would be women. A proportional number would be young, and old. Numbers of black and white would reflect the population. About 10% would be homosexual, and so on. What’s fairer than that?

The ‘jury’-like process means that those who are chosen in this way would probably be reluctant to do so, as it would mean disrupting one’s regular life to serve in Parliament.  Parliamentarians should not benefit excessively, as this would create an incentive to corrupt the process of selection. In fact, perhaps each person should get a salary linked to what they were earning in their everyday lives and careers.

This would have two benefits — although serving in Parliament would disrupt a career path, it wouldn’t lead to any financial losses. Secondly, this would avoid the problem that occurs now, where elected representatives become fat cats who lose touch with the concerns of their constituents. The rich would remain rich, the poor would remain poor. They would thus represent the perspectives and interest of rich or poor people respectively. But because there are many more poor than rich people, Parliament would tend to make pro-poor decisions.

But there should be some incentives to serving in Parliament, so that people also don’t try to corrupt the process in order to get out of it.  This benefit need not be financial. At any rate, ex-Parliamentarians from whatever background would be on a fast-track to good jobs, as their 4-year term would have served as an education in decision-making and a crash-course in leadership

One objection to this idea might be that a randomly-chosen group such as this would not necessarily be equipped to understand complex issues of public policy — to deliberate on them and make good decisions.

My first answer to this is that most of the current bunch chosen through elections, aren’t doing such a great job anyhow. Any randomly-chosen group of people is unlikely to do worse, and may well do better. And anyhow, democracy is already based on the belief that every citizen is capable of making informed decisions — at least once every 4 or 5 years.

But my more reasoned response is that we already have examples of randomly-chosen ordinary people being able to understand and make reasonable decisions on complex issues. The jury system works on this premise. It doesn’t always work well, but it works well enough for several countries to remain confident in it. Fishkin’s experiments in deliberative polling also indicate that ordinary people do a pretty good job of coming to grips with and making decisions on complex public issues.

Some may say this may be true in the developed world, where average education levels are higher — not in places with low average education levels, and high levels of illiteracy.

But this is nonsense. We also have examples in developing countries proving that the average person is perfectly capable of coming to grips with complex issues, no matter their level of education. This example is the work done by the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, and similar organisations such as the Treatment Advocacy and Literacy Campaign in Zambia. Through training in treatment literacy, thousands of ordinary, often poor and poorly-educated people have been able to master extremely complex medical and scientific information. Sometimes to the extent that they put ill-informed doctors and nurses to shame.

The system that I propose would in place Parliaments that are at least as competent as ours are now, but most likely they’d be a whole lot better.

This post first appeared on the Citizen Journalism in Africa website: www.citizenjournalismafrica.org

A crisis by any other name

Originally posted on the Citizen Journalism in Africa portal on 14 April 2008 (www.citizenjournalismafrica.org),

Last week I wrote a comment in response to a blog by Sandile Memela, on the South African blog site, Thought Leader (http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/sandilememela/2008/04/09/why-mbekis-quiet-diplomacy-is-the-best-solution-for-zimbabwe-and-the-rest-of-dark-africa/). Memela’s blog was a defence of Thabo Mbeki’s ‘quiet diplomacy’. I ended my outraged response with the comment that in contrast with President Mbeki’s lack of action, Zambia’s President, Levy Mwanawasa was showing real leadership by calling a summit on Zimbabwe.

Well, it turns out my comments were a little premature. Yes, President Mwanawasa was showing more leadership than Mbeki, but clearly not enough. The SADC summit did issue a statement expressing concern about the situation in ZImbabwe, and calling for the election results to be released ‘expeditiously’ — but this seems to me rather wishy-washy and not nearly strong enough to ensure that strong action is taken right now.

By all accounts, the SADC heads of state were locked in discussions until 3am on Saturday morning. No, not hashing out the details of a high-level delegation to Zimbabwe, or possible measures to be taken against Robert Mugabe and his cronies, but debating whether the use of the word ‘crisis’, was appropriate. Apparently theologians during the Middle Ages used to have heated debates about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. The SADC summit’s agonised deliberations over the use of a single word seem to be to be just as useful and practical. As a guest on our national radio station, SAFM put it this morning, “if people are being harassed and even tortured because of their political allegiances, that is a crisis. When inflation is so bad that most people can’t afford to buy food, that is a crisis. In South Africa, we are experiencing problems with electricity supply and regular black-outs, and we refer to that as a crisis. So why is Zimbabwe not a crisis?” (I was in the car so couldn’t write down his exact words — but this is in essence what he said.)

But in the end, who cares what you call it — a dire situation, a crisis, a big big problem — the question is:  what do we do about it? Let’s have some concrete proposals of clear steps that need to be taken, with timeframes and dates attached, and consequences to be faced — not simply statements of concern.

But at least a statement of concern is more than anyone’s likely to get from Thabo Mbeki. “Crisis, what crisis?”, blared the headlines on Sunday, quoting our esteemed president. Not only does this make me spitting mad, but it makes me very, very worried. When I was a practicing journalist I had the occasion once or twice to attend press conferences addressed by Mugabe. I used to marvel that unlike other leaders, he didn’t try to put a spin on negative news. He just denied it outright. Where other leaders would say, ‘yes, this happened, but it’s not our fault because…’, Mugabe would just say ‘it never happened. The media lied. The photographs were doctored. It never happened.’ What worries me deeply now, is that our own head of state seems to be adopting the same denialist behaviour.

Of course, he has done it before — in the face of the huge HIV/Aids…um…crisis. But I thought that perhaps that was an exception, a special case, motivated by complex factors that many writers more intelligent than I have tried to explain, over the years. Now it is becoming clear that denial is a habit of his. I mean, even Jacob Zuma is starting to look better — at least he had the sense to criticise the delay in the release of the election results. What, Jacob Zuma looking like a better alternative to what we have? Now not only do I fear for Zimbabwe, but I fear for South Africa.

What also worries me about much of the public debate here about ZImbabwe, is that people talk as if it’s about whether Mbeki (and other leaders in the region) should back either Mugabe or Tsvangirai. Some writers have, for example, commented that Mbeki is reluctant to support Tsvangirai because the MDC grew out of the unions, and the parallels between this and Zuma’s backing from the unions in SA are worrying for him. This may be true, but it misses the point. It’s not about personalities. It is the people of Zimbabwe, and the ideal of democracy that need support.  Mbeki and others with power should be insisting that democratic principles and practices be upheld, and that the choices of the people of Zimbabwe must be respected.