Facebook Comment from Norman Buchalter:
Well done Dennis. Look forward to hear how we democrats on the ground can assist. Seems we need a major effort to "turn" the voters and ruling Party who are in denial into seeing how real democracy 2 works. Being on a seesaw and a slippery slope in the new RSA - hope you've got some real rockgrip takkies to repaint the depressing landscape quickly and constructively!! All strength to your efforts!
Blue Lights in Jeopardy
Norman, great thanks to you and apologies (my theme song) that you too got lost in Facebook for weeks before this highly inept Facebook-navigator bumped into you there.
Let me assert one thing on the "ruling party" factor. When D2 comes up for examination by people with power (a time that is a little accelerated by your comment, and by every bit of interest displayed) the first response will obviously be "ah, here is another impractical brainwave by some eccentric in a suburban study, trying to find ways of excising the minorities from their accountability to the nation".
That response is entirely expectable, and legitimate, in light of the history of off-the-wall political panaceas.
However, D2 will keep coming back. When it does finally penetrate that will be because it fills one particular condition in a way that I don't believe any prior "better way" approach has ever done. It does not depend on somehow reducing the clout of the humble, little-educated, rustic person. D2's entire case is that on a correct foundation the vote of the least literate citizen becomes a plus both to the calibre of government and to that citizen's moving up in the world.
Insofar as ANC leaders do in reality seek what they claim to seek, namely a better deal for the people with lousy deals, they will – not straightaway, but inexorably – see D2 as the real way of achieving that.
Insofar as some of them will say "omigod, our blue lights and puffed-up status is in jeopardy, along with our back-door empowerment deals", know that those guys are going to lose out. Again, not tomorrow or the next day, but inexorably. In a phrase I would have forgotten but that Ian Campbell-Gillies sensibly urged me to emphasise it: a popular political leadership can forever say "reject Plan X, because it gives the other people more power than is good for you our followers." But they can not for very long say "Reject D2, because it gives you our followers more power than is good for us your leaders".
Right now D2 looks and smells like your standard White Man's Trick (except to your Standard White Man, who immediately perceives a plot to let squatters nationalise his living room). When it gets properly scrutinised it will meet support from diverse categories of leadership – leaders of well-off people who want a future to look forward to, and leaders of ill-off people who want those people becoming better off (as opposed to wanting them to stay in the mud so that big mouths can acquire fame by shrieking of injustice).
Don't overuse the denialism thing. They have no monopoly on denialism. And insofar as it's a factor, it's because there's no way out on the present political foundation.
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