3

The Value of Democracy

THE CENTRAL QUESTIONS I raise in this book concern the value of democracy. Specifically, how did political competition and the structure of government change once South Africa adopted truly democratic institutions that incorporated a previously excluded racial majority? Did the quality of people’s lives improve or deteriorate, and in what ways, during this period? And can we plausibly link such changes to democracy itself, to extract more general lessons about the prospects for democratic government in diverse and divided societies?

The portrait of the election campaign I painted in the prior two chapters revealed a wide range of perspectives on such questions. Of course, as South African voters went to the polls in May 2019, they were making a choice about what they wanted for the future. Yet, the moment also marked an important opportunity for them to look back and consider whether the prior quarter century of multiracial democracy had been a success. The long struggle against Apartheid government had been a quest for liberty, for freedom from domination by a minority, and to build a more just society. Did those who worked so hard to bring about change get what they wanted? Or were they experiencing a form of buyer’s remorse? Was this really the best solution to institutionalized White supremacy?

The ruling ANC party could not simply take a victory lap. The party’s leaders had long been confronting a string of protests of the kind I witnessed in Krugersdorp, frequently organized by their own members. The opposition parties, ranging from a Black nationalist left to White autonomists on the right, were relentless in their critiques. With a few exceptions, citizens seemed more inclined to discuss what had gone wrong than what had gone right. And as the campaign wound down, I considered the fact that in recent years, South African colleagues and acquaintances from a range of backgrounds had begun to express a surprising sentiment, one that occasionally appears in print in serious media outlets: “What this country needs … is a benevolent dictator!”¹

Ordinary South Africans had become increasingly disillusioned with democracy.² In one survey conducted at the end of 2016, 54 percent of respondents said they were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the way democracy was working.³ And by 2018, the share of “dissatisfieds” had grown to a full 57 percent of the population. In a summary report from Afrobarometer, whose survey data I analyze throughout this book, they cautioned, “Afrobarometer survey findings from mid-2018 show support for democracy weakening and acceptance of authoritarian alternatives growing.”⁴

It left me wondering: Was South African democracy actually at risk?

Listening to the rallies, the campaign speeches, and the incessant commentary on talk radio in and around Mogale City during the first half of 2019, one could not help but be struck by the distinct scent of frustration. Not just with the present but with the whole post-Apartheid project. Even the ANC’s own representatives seemed more apologetic than proud.

The expressed antipathies of White South Africans were already very familiar to me. As a White man, I have always had the easiest access to White South Africans. Many unabashedly told me that they longed for the past. “They made this country into a ball of shit,” explained one man, about my age, whom I met while dining at a restaurant in Muldersdrift one evening on my first trip to Mogale. He and his girlfriend were sitting at the table next to mine and they must have heard my American accent while I was placing an order, and like so many in the area, they were friendly and happy to share their political views and reflections with me. The culprit for the country’s decline, in this man’s view, was the Black ANC government. I would hear the same from most of the other White residents I met while touring the area and had heard the same for years in other parts of the country.

What I did find more surprising, perhaps even offensive, was the man’s suggestion to me to “ask the Black people around here. They’ll tell you the same thing, that life was better in the old days.” It would be like suggesting that African Americans preferred life under segregation.

On the other hand, only with solid data could I debunk such a claim. As part of my research, I conducted a Historical Memories Survey among adults in Mogale City—the results of which I detail in subsequent chapters—and asked citizens to compare their current overall quality of life (theirs and that of their family) to life in the Apartheid days. Is it better today? Worse today? Or about the same?

The White responses were fairly predictable: 55 percent said life was worse today. Many Whites truly yearned for the time of White rule. If a politician had appealed to them with the slogan “Make South Africa Great Again,” they would have embraced the message with open arms.

To my great disbelief, perhaps shock, it turned out that the White man I had met in Muldersdrift had correctly predicted Black public sentiment and I had been way off the mark in my skeptical reaction to his claims. In fact, a full 50 percent of Black residents surveyed said that life was better then, as compared with 40 percent who said things were better now.⁵ After months of talking to citizens and leaders around town, I had heard plenty of negative perspectives, complaints about government, crime, lack of jobs, and so forth.⁶ However, I had not expected that this would be the conclusion of so many in a random sample of forty-and-over adults from a municipality where Apartheid had been harshly enforced.

If even Black South Africans were unhappy with the democracy that they had struggled to produce over so many generations, might they consider something else?

Only a few years ago, the notion of citizens voluntarily forgoing democracy for authoritarian rule might have seemed radical and unimaginable, but these concerns have become particularly salient because for several years we have been witnessing a global retreat in democratic government.⁷ Seemingly stable democracies have given way to more authoritarian styles of rule. When my political science colleagues Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, and further developed their argument in a 2018 book, How Democracies Die,⁸ they provided a powerful wake-up call by connecting the dots to illustrate an emerging pattern: in the United States and in many other countries, the key foundations of democracy were being undone not through military coups or armed insurrections but at the ballot box. Citizens were increasingly choosing leaders who, in their populist bravado, were saying, “I alone can fix everything,” as Donald Trump said on the campaign trail in 2016. Given real and perceived problems in those societies, such calls were warmly received by many voters, and once in power, these leaders have worked to change the rules of the game to help entrench their power, undermining democratic institutions. And perhaps as both a cause and a consequence of such changes, even surprising numbers of Americans no longer take for granted democracy as the “only game in town,”⁹ imagining other types of political systems as preferable.

Many reasons have been offered for the more recent rise of populist authoritarianism that has caused something of a reverse wave away from democracy, but among the most compelling explanations is that large shares of citizens in democratic countries are increasingly dissatisfied with their lot, in large part due to persistent and growing economic insecurity alongside perceived threats to status owing to immigration and other demographic trends.¹⁰ Ethnic and racial diversity can provide fodder for frustration and scapegoating. Under such conditions, populists promise swift and assured gains, with little tolerance for “special interests” in the form of ethnic minorities.

I argue that the case of South Africa between 1994 and 2019 offers a compelling alternative to populist authoritarianism—a positive model of what democracy can offer truly divided societies: peace, the ability to influence leaders, increased material prosperity especially for the poor, and, ultimately, greater respect for human dignity. These were remarkable achievements in light of the country’s history, and the findings on dignity in particular help paint a fuller view of the value of democracy itself. While the rhetoric of everyday politics can be dismissive of the South African record, a more sober and considered evaluation reveals a democracy that has worked better than is often appreciated—by both pundits and citizens alike.

In the remainder of this chapter, I describe why the question of valuing South Africa’s democratic project is a critical one; I outline the approach I took to answer this question; and I summarize the central findings detailed in the subsequent chapters. I highlight the profound value and remarkable achievements of South Africa’s first quarter century of multiracial, democratic government in terms of what I call dignified development, while recognizing the enormity of the problems that remain and that new challenges have emerged.

Why Ask?

Throughout modern history, historians, philosophers, and social scientists have all reflected on the value of democracy for the human condition. In so doing, they have considered whether democracy is intrinsically valuable, simply as an expression of freedom. And they have asked whether it leads to better outcomes for society. For example, does democracy promote economic development better than other systems of government?¹¹ Is democracy good for the poor?¹²

Such questions are routinely asked and answered in more general terms, with respect to large numbers of polities. However, I focus on the value of democracy for the single country of South Africa. In this “case study” approach,¹³ I draw on many relevant comparisons, but I believe the narrowed attention is warranted. To begin with, South Africa is an intrinsically important case. Although only about the twenty-fifth most populous country in the world, the country’s plight has long been central to global political movements and ideas about justice and democracy. In the late twentieth century, perhaps no single political issue galvanized people around the world more than the idea that Apartheid government must come to an end. Apartheid, or apartness, was a full-blown system of social engineering relentlessly implemented on the southern tip of the African continent. It effectively relegated a Black majority to third-class citizenship. In turn, songs, plays, movies, and books captured the injustices of this system, and the very term “Apartheid” came to symbolize the essence of injustice, a retrograde form of internal colonial rule.

Over the course of three decades, students at American and other foreign universities followed the lead of their South African counterparts, protesting and staging massive “sit-ins” inside and outside administrative offices to demand divestment from companies doing business in South Africa. Even a youthful Barack Obama cut his teeth in public speaking by railing against the Apartheid regime as a student at Occidental College in 1981, an opportunity he used to also shed light on racial issues in the United States.¹⁴ The organizers of major sporting events, including the International Olympic Committee, barred South Africans from competition. The South African government and its privileged White citizenry became global pariahs, while its Black citizens, and especially their famed political leaders—who sat in jail or lived in exile—earned the empathy and support of allies around the world.

Sometimes for good and other times for bad, outsiders have always played an important role in the South African story. Citizens and political leaders from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, and particularly from countries across the African continent, were all intimately involved and/or interested in the long-standing conflict over Apartheid-style government. Depending on their political orientation and their own views on America’s racial order, American political leaders took different sides in support of or against White government.

Moreover, while South Africa may be somewhat extreme in the extent to which it combines enormous ethnic and racial diversity along with high levels of income and wealth inequality and a history of conflict, it is not alone in these regards. American history echoes many strands of South Africa’s, an idea expertly documented by George Fredrickson in his classic text, White Supremacy.¹⁵ Not just the United States but also Israel, Australia, Brazil, India, Kenya, and many other countries face similar conditions for building cohesion and prosperity given the overlap of diversity and inequality. The degree to which South Africa underwent an extremely deliberate political transition offers possibilities for thinking about how to address such challenges in other contexts. For those interested in the making and breaking of racial boundaries, ultimately one must confront the South African example.

As we know now, the formal Apartheid system was dissolved through the removal of discriminatory laws and institutions in the early 1990s. Nelson Mandela went from prisoner to president. South Africa was welcomed back into the global community with open arms, and external scrutiny turned toward other hot spots around the globe. Like dozens of other countries at approximately the same time, South Africa adopted a set of democratic institutions to select its leaders and make its policies.

Against this important backdrop, a wide range of interested observers deserve to know what happened. Was it simply “case closed” in the sense that there was a problem, it was fixed, and now it’s time to move on? Given widespread interest, it is important that we get this case right with respect to the success or failure of democracy writ large. Whether South Africa is a case of success or failure has enormous implications for how we think about the promise of democracy more generally. A key concern that motivated me to write this book was my own appraisal that the more recent political history has been mischaracterized.

In fact, a dominant narrative argues that the post-Apartheid period has been one of great expectations followed by profound disappointment. In summary form: thankfully, Apartheid finally came to an end; the greatest anti-Apartheid leader, Nelson Mandela, was elected president and ushered in a momentary period of calm and forbearance. But after his one term in office, the country descended into a sea of corruption and incompetence, leaving South Africa, as it is today, at a dangerous precipice.

South Africa’s leading scholars and analysts have painted an increasingly grim picture of a still young democratic order, which cannot help but contribute to a sense of dismay about the possibilities for democratic development. For example, Xolela Mangcu, a South African sociologist and journalist, penned his condemnation of the new order in a 2014 book titled The Arrogance of Power: South Africa’s Leadership Meltdown.¹⁶ This was a sequel to his 2008 book, To the Brink.¹⁷ Alex Boraine, a White politician who helped negotiate the terms of the country’s historic democratic transition behind the scenes and worked closely with Archbishop Desmond Tutu to manage a national reconciliation process in the aftermath of Apartheid, was initially bullish on what could be accomplished. Nonetheless, in his 2014 book What’s Gone Wrong? South Africa on the Brink of Failed Statehood, he shared the notion that things are simply falling apart. Both Mangcu and Boraine recount examples of venal politicians acting in narrow self-interest to the detriment of the greater public good. For example, according to Boraine, “If corruption were an event in the Olympic Games, the ANC government would be festooned with silver and bronze—and perhaps a few gold medals as well.”¹⁸

Anton Harber, former editor of the leading South African newsweekly, the Mail & Guardian, documented his riveting and powerful investigation of the politically, economically, and socially dysfunctional township of Diepsloot, which lies on the edge of Johannesburg, not very far from Mogale City. In it, he makes the case: “You want to see South Africa … come to Diepsloot.”¹⁹

Foreign scholars have frequently amplified this “glass mostly empty” view of South African democracy. For example, the British university professor Nic Cheeseman analyzed the range of African experiments with democratic rule since the 1990s in his important book, Democracy in Africa (2015). With respect to South Africa, he describes only what has gone wrong since 1994—pointing out real disappointments in terms of government AIDS policy, xenophobia, and other foibles (as I also recount in the chapters that follow). One would not be able to read that book and fathom that almost anything had been accomplished during the period of ANC government.²⁰

From the Zambian economist and best-selling author Dambisa Moyo²¹ to the British journalist and political analyst R. W. Johnson²² to the foreign correspondents covering South Africa at the New York Times and other leading international news publications, close observers inside and outside the country have identified a range of problems that contribute to a shared understanding of collective failure.

And White South Africans—those who left the country, as well as those who stayed—are frequent interlocutors to American and European audiences. Many of them have promoted what I call the “Specter of Zimbabwe” theory to anyone who will listen. That is, they point to the country to the north, once known as Southern Rhodesia, which was also ruled as a White settler society with an Apartheid-style government. It is a country that similarly experienced a war for liberation and a transition to Black rule a little more than a decade earlier than South Africa did. Under President Mugabe, the country, now called Zimbabwe, went from being a robust exporter of agricultural products to one characterized by hyperinflation, food shortages, corruption, and wide pockets of state failure. And according to this formulation, South Africa is going down the same path. In this final analysis, it is hard not to detect a racist logic—that Black rule inevitably leads to failure. The subtext is often, “You may not have liked Apartheid, but it was better than this” and sometimes more explicitly, “This is what happens when they take over.”

And on the day of the 2019 election, when I interviewed dozens of voters around Mogale City, many angrily raised concerns about jobs, lack of basic services, and crime. They were particularly incensed about the persistence of reports of government corruption. Viewed together, very different commentators—ranging from unapologetic Apartheid beneficiaries to former anti-Apartheid activists, from all racial backgrounds—have painted an alarmingly negative portrait of the state of South Africa.

In turn, my point is that such a picture can be dangerously misleading if it is presented on its own with the implicit or explicit caption, “This is what democracy delivered.”²³

To be clear, I do not dispute the veracity of reports of bureaucratic failure, malfeasance, violence, or abject poverty. I have sat through load-shedding power outages myself; on many trips and tours of South Africa, I have observed the persistent inequality and squalor of many parts of the country firsthand and have analyzed the data confirming broader problems. On various trips, I have worried about my own personal safety, cognizant of the prevalence of violence. I know and trust many of the journalists, scholars, and civil society organizations that focus on these problems.

Rather, my concern is that if we take a larger macro-historical perspective—trying to summarize what happened after one of the world’s most anticipated political transitions—we need to present such facts in context regarding what happened in the past and what has been feasible given local and international constraints and challenges—and, most importantly, with respect to what has gone right. In this sense, I follow more in the footsteps of the late Hans Rosling, who urged us to consider the big picture of global human health and development in order to recognize that even when things sometimes seem to be getting worse, they are actually getting better.²⁴

Ultimately, the final judgment about whether the evidence illustrates a case of a glass half full or half empty is in the eye of the beholder. However, I believe that the influential group of interlocutors I just described has overwhelmingly focused on the problems and largely ignored the accomplishments evident in post-Apartheid South Africa. Perhaps this is not surprising given the tendency of human judgment to be characterized by “negativity bias.” That is, the devaluing power of bad things tends to be greater than the redeeming power of good ones.²⁵ Relatedly, we do not expect news outlets to report on the millions of airplanes that land safely—only on the ones that do not, even though those extraordinary stories of statistically outlying events can contribute to a false sense of insecurity.

Moreover, democratic practice frequently incentivizes negative over positive appraisal because by design, democratic government opens up channels for dissent and for challenging the exercise of power. Even when they are not governing, opposition parties and social groups, abetted by an open media, can cajole and pressure the government to rethink or revise its policies. Critical dialogue can help citizens to imagine what to even wish for. These are virtues. However, in so doing, democratic practice feeds a degree of discontent. It puts a spotlight on problems, particularly on malfeasance, and it gives special attention to those who are suffering and/or articulating their frustrations. And with the advent of social media, such tendencies are broadcast and shared with greater speed than ever thought imaginable. While such sharing of information plays an important and positive role in driving accountability and social justice, it can lead observers to focus on shortcomings over progress. In turn, social and political commentators must, at least on occasion, take stock of a fuller substantive and historical record in a more holistic manner.

In fact, one of the inherent challenges of democracy is that because it is rooted in competition and transparency, citizens and actors are privy to more information about the failings of government performance and leadership, contributing to depressed perceptions relative to what they might experience if facing otherwise similar problems in systems where information and critical voices were absent. One is freer to complain louder in a democracy. Political competition, the media, protests, activists, courts, calls for redress, and dissenting voices are not the problem in South Africa. They are the essence of democracy.

Fiery words from political actors—including those that tell the ruling party or president, “Democracy is broken”—may reflect just the opposite. Critical political discourse in democratic practice needs to be separated from evaluation of the quality of democracy itself. This is a subtle but important point. Throughout my research on democratic South Africa, I have found people shouting, more or less, that “everything is awful here,” which would not be possible in strictly authoritarian countries from North Korea to China where everyone must say, on fear of prosecution, “It’s great here.” With respect to the latter, one scholar has aptly observed that the sudden collapse of the East European communist regimes caught many observers by surprise because under this form of authoritarian rule, citizens did not publicly express their views—rather, they engaged in preference falsification.²⁶

For democracy to survive, citizens must ultimately be convinced of its value. And it is certainly conceivable that democracy might not work best. Many organizations—households, firms, universities—operate successfully without truly democratic rules for leadership selection or everyday operation. We should not promote democracy simply as a matter of blind faith. Even the most ardent defenders of democracy point us to certain key limitations, which often prove frustrating to citizens. Two of the most important modern theorists of democratic development offered warnings at the onset of the “Third Wave” of democratization, of which South Africa was a part, concerning what might go wrong and what citizens might prefer instead. Describing several paradoxes of democracy, Larry Diamond observed that in trying to represent diverse interests, democratic governments often move slowly; and compromise can undermine the prospects for effective solutions.²⁷ And Robert Dahl pointed out that citizens may frequently wonder whether they would do better with informed “guardians,” who are experts at governing because of their superior knowledge or virtue, rather than those who convince the citizenry of their credentials.²⁸

Despite real and perceived problems, we must remind ourselves of democracy’s value, and that value may differ somewhat according to the arc of a country’s political development. Democratic retreat will surely continue unless the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits of the democratic project can be credibly established and communicated. Yes, we need to recognize what has gone wrong. Nonetheless, South Africa has the potential to demonstrate to democracy skeptics the world over what is possible in a highly unequal, diverse, post–civil war polity. To focus solely on the disappointments is to miss the bigger picture.

How to Know?

If we are not going to rely simply on the subjective judgments of citizens and local observers and commentators, how does one evaluate the success of a democracy?

Indeed, the motivating query for this book—has the post-Apartheid democratic project been successful?—is imprecise and unanswerable without more direction. The first response to that question must be, “Compared to what?” If you were asked whether twenty-three minutes is a good time for a particular road race, it would not be possible to answer that until you knew how long the race was, under what conditions it was taking place, and who else was running. Importantly, one would also want to know what was expected of that runner before the race began. In the same way, my own conclusions about successful democratic development are based on attempts to establish reasonable benchmarks across time and space.

Because the outcomes are complex and not easily measured, I use a wide variety of data sources, ranging from my own personal interviews and observations across several decades, a wealth of secondary sources, newspaper archives, more than a dozen individual-level large-sample surveys, including a few I conducted myself, and administrative data from the South African government, research organizations, and various international organizations. Where possible I try to highlight convergences and divergences between these different sources of data and the relationship between subjective perceptions and outcomes that can be measured more objectively.

To assess democratic performance using such data, I deploy a few key strategies.

First, we need fair comparisons. I try to understand what has been achieved relative to the past (especially as detailed in chapter 4) and compared with other countries that share important similarities (chapters 6–8), especially, but not only, other African and other Upper-middle-income countries. Given South Africa’s political history and using the experiences of many other countries as the basis for expectations, I show that a lot more failure is what we ought to have expected. As a highly unequal society with a harsh history of oppression by a White minority and a long tradition of violence across groups throughout its history, the hard reality is that violence and bloodshed could easily have been the defining features of post-Apartheid South Africa. Indeed, we need to think about the proverbial dogs that didn’t bark to appreciate the history that in fact transpired: genocide akin to Rwanda’s or Yugoslavia’s, economic collapse akin to Venezuela’s, or actual state failure akin to Zimbabwe’s—the latter two countries faced inflation, currency collapse, and food shortages.

Second, it is useful to fix some goalposts, lest we create a framework of shifting expectations in which success is not theoretically possible. We can be guided by prior declarations of hopes for a successful democracy, particularly as made by those who enjoyed popular support during periods of political resistance. For example, liberation leaders set forth demands and expectations in the Freedom Charter of 1955 and in the final negotiation for a new democracy, as detailed in the preamble to the 1996 constitution (discussed in chapter 5). Across more than forty years, a key set of hopes remained remarkably consistent, including to develop a democratic and open government, to improve the material quality of life for citizens, and to build unity while redressing past indignities. During these periods, and even earlier in the twentieth century, liberation leaders placed a heavy focus on the protection of basic human rights.

Finally, with respect to these various perspectives, we need to consider a diverse range of actors and stakeholders in their lived realities to assess how they have participated in and have been affected by the new political dispensation. In this respect, while I do consider the national picture, I also decided to focus my attention on a single municipality, about which I had no preconceptions of its successes or failures, and which I selected as a plausible reflection of the larger South African story. There is a saying that “all politics is local,” but in South Africa, it might be more apt to argue that “all politics is national,” in the sense that national issues are constantly played out in local arenas, both through centralized political parties that control local government positions and, perhaps more importantly, because the everyday concerns of South Africans frequently relate quite directly to the country’s national history. And this is certainly true in the place I studied, Mogale City Local Municipality.

Of course, Mogale’s story, like South Africa’s story, like that of any place, is unique in certain ways. But a focus on this one area—a case within a case—allowed me to dig more deeply into the lives of South Africans, to learn how they relate to one another and why they express the views and take the actions they do. I wanted to hear how people discuss issues, form their attitudes, participate in politics, and simply coexist and to examine the extent to which old patterns have changed or stayed the same, within the confines of a relatively well-bounded geography. Because I was largely unfamiliar with this municipality prior to conducting the research for this book, it allowed me to test ideas that I had generated from observations of other locales in South Africa.

And while Mogale City Local Municipality is neither the economic nor the political capital of South Africa, and not even one of the country’s major metropolitan municipalities, its story is both representative of and in some cases surprisingly central to the larger national picture, including in the ways various forms of racial and ethnic conflict played out here, the building of Apartheid, and its eventual fall.

Like much of the rest of Africa, South Africa is rapidly urbanizing, and approximately two-thirds of South Africans now live in urban areas. About half of all South Africans reside in midsized local municipalities, ranging from 100,000 to 700,000 people, and Mogale City sits right in the middle of that range. And in recent years, South African politics has become more competitive, particularly in urban areas, a pattern also reflected in Mogale City where in the 2016 local election the ANC lost its competitive edge, slipping below 50 percent of votes cast.²⁹

My hope was to find a place that might be a plausible microcosm of the larger South African story. And in Mogale City, I found just that: Mogale is ethnically and racially diverse. However, its demographics do not quite reflect the overall national picture. As shown in table 3.1, although the White population is still a minority in Mogale, its population share there is substantially larger, while the Coloured population is substantially smaller (virtually nonexistent), relative to the country as a whole. Much of this disparity owes to the fact that Coloureds live disproportionately in the western part of the country, and Whites are more concentrated in urban areas, especially in Gauteng Province—which contains a quarter of the country’s population and where the racial demographics are much more similar to Mogale’s.

What They Got: Dignified Development

In the remaining chapters, I will show that the heroic, multigenerational effort to build democracy in South Africa has been extremely successful and delivered important returns to that society. In just twenty-five years, elected, Black-led governments have made remarkable gains in terms of dignified development. That is, citizens have been made more visible and have been increasingly recognized for their equal value as humans through the various institutions of democratic practice, which in modern times have included constitutional commitments to material benefits and respectful treatment for all individuals. Moreover, the logic of political competition has created incentives for elected officials to provide related policies and practices, and this has vastly extended the share of the population living in a manner that could be recognized as a dignified existence. Previously, a majority of the population faced humiliation at the hands of a government controlled by a racial minority.³⁰

Let me be clear that what I mean by democracy is a political system in which all adult citizens can participate in the selection of leaders through elections and enjoy the opportunity to influence how government works by means of representation and civil expressions of their wants and needs. In this sense, democracy is about process.

While my central claim is that democracy has favored dignified development in South Africa, I cannot conclude that the routinization of democratic practice is sufficient for this outcome as a general rule. The world is filled with many democratic polities, replete with competitive elections, in which large numbers of citizens feel neither respected nor autonomous. However, a degree of democracy is almost certainly necessary: the sublimation of any real popular choice concerning political leadership or government implies a fundamental lack of respect for citizens’ views and judgments.

Relatedly, economic growth is generally neither necessary nor sufficient to experience bouts of dignified development. As we’ve seen in recent years all around the world, the components of economic growth may be unequally distributed in society, offering little for those who face undignified or humiliating treatment; and in fact, if growth exacerbates inequalities, it may have a deleterious effect on dignified treatment. Moreover, redistributive policies and practices in the form of transfers within and across countries may effectively improve the quality of life for many, even in the absence of growth. To be clear, equitable growth can be an engine of dignified development, particularly as people crave jobs, material goods, and the rewards associated with investment. However, if we prioritize a concern for human dignity, the notion that all humans are inherently valuable and deserve respectful treatment, we should not assume that economic growth ought to be the key outcome of interest and that it will naturally benefit the least well-off. While I share the generally optimistic portrait of the value of democracy documented by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson in their influential work, Why Nations Fail, I soften their focus on material outcomes such as prosperity in order to bring respectful treatment into our field of vision.³¹

Finally, dignified development is clearly related to broader notions of human development, including health, material well-being, and education. Among others, the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, the acclaimed philosopher Martha Nussbaum, and the United Nations Development Program³² have all described human development in terms of human capabilities, which in turn are critical sources of independence and autonomy. Although these are key components of a dignified life, most research on human development continues to portray citizens as independent and almost atomized individuals. To understand whether people are treated with respect by other citizens and by government, and protected from humiliation, we must also focus on social relations, including patterns of inclusion and exclusion in everyday life.

My goal here is not to develop a complete theory of the conditions under which democracy affects dignified development—nor to test such propositions on a global scale—but to focus on this relationship in the particular case of South Africa. In the chapters that follow, I describe the evidence to support this particular claim and conclude by reflecting on whether the pattern might hold in other contexts.

I start, in chapter 4, by describing the shaky historical foundations for both democracy and dignified development on the eve of the South African transition in the early 1990s. Subsequent gains should be seen against the remarkable indignities leveled in the prior three centuries of this diverse and divided society. Because it is a human tendency to adjust to current conditions and to recalibrate expectations, it is important to properly set the stage for the democratic era from the perspective of what came before.

Next, in chapter 5, I turn to a description of the particular democratic institutions adopted in South Africa in the mid-1990s. Although laws and formal documents do not fully describe democratic practice, they are critical and necessary components and, in many ways, the most transportable aspects of democratic government that can be recommended when needed. By contrast, one cannot will another polity to have a particular set of leaders or mix of civil society organizations, even if those play central roles in democratic success. I am less concerned with the effects of the specific actors at the center of political life than with the processes that have constrained their behaviors.

Then, I describe the emergence of dignified development during the post-Apartheid period, and I attempt to show that the very nature of democratic representation—especially South African institutions that are structured on the principle of proportionality—has provided opportunities for people to be heard, to be recognized, and to be valued. Political parties have been forced to seek out the previously marginalized to earn their votes. A protected judiciary has allowed those who have not been treated fairly to seek justice. And the logic of democratic politics has helped to reinforce the notion that citizens are not subjects. In no case is the record in Mogale City or in South Africa writ large an unqualified success. Yet, there is much to celebrate.

In chapter 6, I detail the challenges and trends in democratic practice itself. A key goal of generations of political activists and liberation leaders was simply a democratic polity open to all, irrespective of race, gender, or any other category. From this perspective, democracy is not simply a means to an end but an outcome that is intrinsically valued.³³ Against tremendous odds, South Africans developed a robust democratic system that in many ways is a model for modern, liberal democratic orders. And despite warnings that the ANC would overtake the country with a one-party state, the system became more competitive. The attempt to build democracy out of division clearly succeeded. Citizens have been able to choose their leaders, to influence policy, and to hold elected officials accountable for poor performance. Although politicians and bureaucrats have inevitably attempted to engage in various corrupt practices, democratic institutions have shined a light on such practices and, at least to a degree, constrained the behaviors of political leaders.

In that chapter, I reflect on the contradictions of democratic process and the realities of everyday violence. While democratically elected governments may use violence or threat of violence to maintain order, ultimately, the promise of democracy is that differences of opinion can be resolved through elections, deliberations, court judgments, and other nonviolent means. As I discuss, several scholars studying South Africa and other countries in the Global South have introduced the notion of “violent democracy” to draw our attention to the co-occurrence of the phenomena. While agreeing with the need to keep a careful eye on violent behavior, I view the proposed terminology as a case of modifying the definition of democracy to a point that it sheds its core meaning.³⁴ Instead, I opt to evaluate how the extent and patterns of violence have changed since the advent of multiracial democracy. And if politics gets to the point where citizens are no longer able to make choices or to provide input free from the direct influence of violent pressures, we will have to declare that the country should not be described as a democracy.

In chapter 7, I focus on material outcomes. The poorest and most vulnerable have benefited from the provision of basic services and infrastructure, including access to water, electricity, sanitation, and housing, to social support grants, and to improved health care and education. To be certain, expectations have quickly ratcheted up, and citizens have good reason to decry waning quality and to demand universal access, but these cannot minimize the fact that in many areas of social and welfare support, South Africa is a global leader, and democratic practice has underpinned and reinforced these policies. Democratic pressures in the form of elections, the media, and courts have all weighed on elected government officials to deliver, even as they frequently have been tempted to divert material resources toward themselves.

In chapter 8, I look more directly at the nature of human interactions. To what extent have citizens and government officials treated one another, especially the most vulnerable, with respect? And how do people perceive such treatment? Apartheid and the centuries of institutionalized White supremacy that came before were examples of harsh indignities, and while related to the other points made in prior chapters, the increased scope of respect extended to people who were so deprived has been a remarkable transformation. As I discuss, one way of creating a sense of shared worth is through the idea of shared belonging, for example, through some degree of unification, such as nation-building.

I conclude by returning to the 2019 election—where I left off at the end of chapter 2—assessing the results in light of the findings highlighted in earlier chapters and other cases, including the American record in the aftermath of segregation. Although I am a social scientist, and I marshal various forms of largely descriptive social scientific evidence, the questions posed in this book cannot be answered definitively in the manner that social scientists generally prefer. First, I can only describe plausible links between democratic practice and the key outcomes I describe, but I cannot definitively show that such outcomes would have been different under an alternative political arrangement. Moreover, the question of whether democratic practice, with all its warts and wrinkles, does deliver real value in a divided society is a subjective one, and my goal here is to present what I think is a fair picture for arriving at an answer. In no way can I conclude that democracy will always have salutary effects in South Africa, let alone the same effect in other societies. Others may read the record on dignified development in a different way, and arrive at a different final tally, one that puts more weight on current deficits, especially with respect to unemployment, inequality, and violence. Notwithstanding these important caveats, my own conclusion is that the first quarter century of South African democracy serves as a positive model of what is possible in the future and for other divided societies.