Discourse and ‘Democracy’:
Some Signals from the South African Corpus of English1
Robert
de Beaugrande
Universidade Federal da Paraíba
and
Linda
Pearce Williams
University of Port Elizabeth
1.
What large corpora are telling us about ‘language’
Although
large corpora have been available for over twenty years, their implications for
our conceptions and theories of language have only recently begun to be
acknowledged. This delayed impact has been at least partly due to the
technology: corpora being still relatively small and the software for tagging
and parsing the data relatively modest. Yet the delay also reflects the gradual
and long-term evolution in the discipline of linguistics itself away from a
soberly formalistic and ‘purely linguistic’ description of ‘language by
itself’ (Saussure’s ‘langue’, Chomsky’s ‘infinite set of
sentences’, etc.) toward a socially democratic and ecologically oriented
exploration of language and discourse at the centre of human practices (see now
synthesis in Beaugrande 1997a). By using data from large corpora, we are now far
better equipped to discover and interpret the multiple modes of evidence which
might render the link between ‘discourse’ and ‘democracy’ an accredited
issue for investigation. This evidence demonstrates the rich interconnectedness
of language with the general and special purposes of human communication and
interaction, extending well beyond the boundaries of any one conventional
discipline in science or education.
One
of the most important principles emerging from corpus work is that, to
an impressive degree, a language is always in the process of being created and
negotiated. As a corollary, the order of language does not persist in any
static or ‘synchronic’ system — the ‘language studied in and for
itself’ long ago declared by Saussure (1966 [orig. 1916]: 232) to be ‘the
true and unique object of linguistics’— but undergoes
continual evolution. A significant margin of the selections and combinations
speakers and hearers perform are non-determinate
on the plane of the system, and are determined only on the plane of the actual
discourse.
This
principle has been widely overlooked by modern linguistics due to a curious
dualism: equating language
(‘langue’, ‘system’, ‘competence’ etc.) with order,
whilst equating discourse
(‘parole’, ‘speech’, ‘performance’ etc.) with disorder.
We thus find Saussure (1966 [orig. 1916]: 14, 9, 11, my italics) announcing that
‘language is a well-defined object
in the heterogeneous mass of speech facts’, whereas ‘speech cannot
be studied,’ nor indeed can it be ‘put
in any category of human facts, for we cannot
discover its unity’. The tenor was much the same when Chomsky (1965: 3f,
201, my italics) asserted half a century that ‘linguistic theory is concerned
primarily with an ideal speaker-hearer
in a completely homogeneous
speech-community, who knows its language perfectly’,
whereas the ‘observed use of language’ ‘surely cannot constitute the subject-matter of linguistics, if this is to
be a serious discipline’, because
‘much of the actual speech observed consists of fragments and deviant
expressions of a variety of sorts’.
The
italicised items project a dualism whereby an orderly, unified system
continually produces disorderly and disunified manifestations when speakers use
the language; presumably, hearers perform the reverse transformation from
disorder into order. Yet already as a mere thought-experiment, such a mode of
operation seems both frankly implausible and utterly counter-productive. And, as
has been repeatedly shown, large corpus data certainly display no such disorder;
they display instead impressively fine-tuned modes of order, although those
modes do not coincide with the idealised mode of order usually postulated and
sought by conventional linguistics. Sinclair (1997a: 4) has thus recently
surmised that ‘many of well protected assumptions of language analysis are
suspect and probably due for radical revision’.
To
appreciate why, we should recall how much effort modern linguistics from
Saussure to Chomsky has devoted to searching for an abstract, idealised (or
‘underlying’) order of language without deriving it from the evidence of
authentic discourse data. Today, after nearly a century of such research, the
various idealisations proposed to ‘underlie’ a language like English have so
far managed to account for only small portion of the regularities of any real
language like English and for a few well-behaved fragments of the ‘grammar’
or ‘syntax’. Fra from being uneasy at having achieved so little, linguists
now proudly present a ‘minimalist framework’ (Abraham et al. eds. 1996)
whereby the intent to account for the bare minimum is expressly advertised as a
hallmark of scientific status
Corpus
data can now help us to appreciate why this total account has had to be so
limited: a significant portion of the constraints upon the construction of
linguistic units, including ‘sentences’, are not determined either by
‘grammar’ or by ‘syntax’ in the senses conventionally assigned to these
two terms as sets of systems of ‘rules’; speakers put words in various
orders for many reasons, such as when things come to mind, what seems important
or interesting, whom they are talking to, and so on. Nor indeed are these
constraints determined by ‘morphology’, ‘lexicon’, or ‘semantics’ in
their conventional senses. Instead, the constraints emerge from the continual
interactions that co-ordinate those sets of selections and combinations
which are relevant to the actual discourse
(Beaugrande 1997a). So each discourse merges the contributions of the standing
constraints of the language
(e.g., English puts the Article before the Noun, not after it) with the emergent constraints within the evolving context (e.g., politicians
are debating how to transform a society from an ‘authoritarian regime’ into
a ‘democracy’; see section 2). Insofar as modern linguistics has sought to
formulate just the standing constraints, it could only construct a fuzzy and
incomplete vision of language.
A
productive alternative outlook might be to define
‘language’ itself as a theory of human knowledge and experience, and to define discourse as the set of practices for working out the theory
(cf. Halliday 1994). But we should at once qualify these definitions by
stipulating that (a) a language is the richest and most comprehensive theory in
the whole history of ideas; (b) unlike a scientific theory, the theory within a
language allows for a huge set of competing alternatives without specifying
which ones might (let alone must) be true or false; (c) a language as theory
cannot be verified or refuted by controlled experiments, but only examined
regarding the preferences it entails for expressing things in some ways rather
than others; (d) the theory can always be modified by the practices of discourse
without being at all discredited or refuted. In turn, discourse practices are
not neatly circumscribed by the language as theory. Instead, they partially
confirm it and partly move forward its evolution to accommodate a rich variety
of contexts and circumstances.
Yet
discourse also constitutes a ‘theory’
about the objects and events constituting situations in the world, including the
situation wherein the discourse itself occurs; a neat correspondence between
what the discourse says and how the objects and events may be occurring ‘in
reality’ cannot be taken for granted. On the contrary, the several
participants may each be seeking to negotiate a version of ‘reality’ which
holds adaptive value for their own
goals, e.g., by giving the impression that those goals are natural, sensible,
necessary, and so on. Still, testing the theory of the discourse against the
practices with objects and events in a real situation is far more feasible and
commonplace than testing the theory of the language against the practices of
discourse on any large scale.
This
layering of relations among theory and practice suggests that all our
conceptions of language and of all its factors or components should be grasped
in terms of a dialectical interaction between theory and practice, and not as
pertaining only to theory, as in
formalist linguistics, or else only to
practice, as in behaviourist psychology (cf. Beaugrande 1997b, 1997c). Within a
true dialectic, the theory should account for practices, whereas the practices
should tune the constraints upon the construction and evolution of theories.
Of
special concern here is the dual status of meaning
as theory and practice. The meaning of a given word or expression needs to be
grasped as one element situated within the total language that constitutes a
theory of knowledge and experience, rather than just as one free-standing label
or pointer for one equally free-standing object or event in the world. We can
then explore how these meanings mutually constrain each other on the plane of
the discourse and not just how any one meaning might be defined in isolation in
terms of ‘reference’, ‘denotation’, and the other conceptions of
semantics. Again, we can assume that the several participants in a discourse
seeking to negotiate a version of ‘meanings’ which hold adaptive value for their own goals, e.g., by making them seem
obvious, transparent, commonsensical, and so forth. Much of the negotiating is
done without deliberate awareness to accommodate the remarkable speed and
efficiency of discourse processing, and relies on the self-organising
convergence of multiple constraints, as sketched above (see Beaugrande 1997a for
details).
Perhaps
the most important parameter in the negotiation of discourse lies between
inclusion and exclusion. In theory, a ‘language’ is by nature inclusive,
just as ‘communication’ in actual discourse implies a ‘community’ and
being ‘shared in common’ true to the etymology of the word. Yet precisely
because differing goals can favour differing realities and meanings, many
exclusive strategies have been elaborated for turning language and discourse
back against themselves and converting fundamentally inclusive media into
exclusive media, often without consciously acknowledging or intending the
conversion.
The
most obvious instances can be seen when groups of insiders
are formed and seek to exclude outsiders
by means of specialised language and discourse. The bases of such groups of
course differ substantially — geography, religion, philosophy, science, youth
cults, and much more — but they all modify their language and discourse to
make it distinctive in ways that tends to include themselves and exclude
outsiders.
Less
obvious but even more significant are the strategies for excluding people by
making them feel incompetent through stigmatising
their own language or language variety. These strategies are most widely
practised by speakers of some prestigious language or language variety as an
insidious means for safeguarding their own privileges without resorting to more
forceful methods that could galvanise resistance (Beaugrande 1997b, 1997c).
The
speakers and advocates of some prestigious ‘standard’ variety will
invariably claim that the ‘standard’ is more vital for communicating in ways
that are ‘clearer’, ‘more precise’, ‘more efficient’, ‘more
intellectual’, etc., than are other varieties, even when the main differences
are merely phonetic. The account sketched here suggests that the really
important factor is rather the advantages of ‘standard’ speakers to sustain
an unquestioned dominance in the negotiation of realities and meanings during a
discourse. Their versions sound more convincing, accurate, and accredited merely
by virtue of the ‘standardness’ of their language, whereas the opposite
holds for the versions of ‘non-standard’ speakers.
In
addition, the advocates of ‘standard language’ complacently assume that its
features are clearly and universally defined. Yet actual corpus data indicate
that its features are often fuzzy and disputatious. We should hardly be
surprised, since a language naturally tends to manifest clines and bundlings of
features as it evolves across times, places, and societies; and since numerous
and diverse groups wish to claim the advantages of dominance over discourse.
Indeed, fuzzy standards serve better than clear ones for impeding access of
outsiders who might attempt to acquire the standard (Beaugrande 1997b, 1997c).
The
point for us today is not to claim that ‘standard English’ and similar
notions simply don’t exist, or that we should not make ‘standard English’
accessible for those who need or desire it. The point is that we would be
undemocratic to call for ‘standard English’ and reward those who acquire it
when we cannot rationally define its features and make them reliably accessible.
To achieve that task, we will require comprehensive and authentic data about
what people actually do say and write.
Past
attempts to defines language standard have been impeded by at least two major
factors. One factor was the prescriptivism
and proscriptivism of many self-appointed language guardians who saw
their mission in ‘improving’ the language over the ways it was used by
‘the common people’ or ‘the vulgar mob’; the usages they declared to be
‘bad English’ or even ‘not English’ were naturally culled from the real
usage of the language varieties they wished to stigmatise. These attitudes are
by no means extinct today, though they may be camouflaged behind an avowed
concern for ‘clarity’, ‘precision’, etc. etc., as noted above. But they
are clearly undemocratic and irrational in claiming that what large sectors of
the population really say is somehow not a proper part of the language. And the
solution is not to prolong the hopeless and fruitless crusades for stamping out
‘bad’ usage, but to promote democratic and rational attitudes about language
variation and language varieties (Gere & Smith 1979; Phillipson 1992).
The
other factor has been data limitations:
the wide disparity between the totality of what was said or written during a
given period (say a decade) and the amount an investigator or team could manage
to collect and examine. This disparity is now being dramatically reduced by
means of very large corpora stored in computerised data banks. To be sure, if a
language is always in the process of being created and negotiated, no
corpus, however large, can ever provide a complete
picture; yet steadily larger corpora can enable us to achieve
steadily closer approximations.
Within
this perspective, discourse about ‘language standards’ and ‘current
usage’ can finally be examined to see whether and how far the theory or
language policy makers, language educators, and so forth, fits the practices. We
can plausibly expect to find that the really clear-cut distinctions between
‘standard’ and ‘non-standard’ are by no means so numerous or general as
has been typically implied by the language guardians, and do not significantly
impair communication. For the vast majority of cases, the relevant distinctions
are made between group-specific varieties
characterised by such factors as age, social class, profession, hobby,
education, and place of residence, where prescriptive notions like
‘correctness’ and ‘grammaticality’ are empty and inappropriate.
Because
a very large corpus represents the versions of the language held by a very large
population of speakers and writers, we also no longer need to depend upon the
‘intuition’ and ‘knowledge of the language’ maintained by professional
linguists of the various formalist schools, who have asserted that their own
‘intuition’ as ‘native speakers’ provides them with ‘an enormous mass
of unquestionable data’ (Chomsky 1965: 20). Admittedly, a corpus cannot give a
complete picture of collective native-speaker-intuition any more than it can of
the language itself. But those who work with corpus will soon notice that
intuition is opportunistic: it cannot by any means predict all the options the
corpus displays but it can usually make good sense of them after the fact
(Francis and Sinclair 1994).
The
native speaker could thus be described as holding a competence that extends far
beyond his or her own performance even over a very long time. As we have
remarked, the speculative distinction set forth by Chomsky (1965) and others
tends to equate ‘competence’ with order, and ‘performance’ with
disorder. Corpus data suggest instead that ‘competence’ would be the
native speaker’s potential to achieve order, whereas ‘performance’
would be the manifestation of actually
achieved order. This ‘order’ is precisely not
the syntactic or semantic ‘well-formedness’ or ‘grammaticality’ defined
in most of formalist linguistics to be a property of ‘underlying structures’
and not ‘directly reflected’ in ‘surface structures’. It is a multiple order achieved by multiple
dialectics between system and instance, between competence and performance,
between regularity and innovation, and so on (Beaugrande 1997a, 1997b, 1997c).
Moreover,
the presentation of corpus data offers many opportunities to test one’s own
intuitions, whether of linguists or of more general language users: reacting to
a sample actual corpus data by describing the probable context of situation;
guessing what had just gone before or what is coming next; comparing the sample
to what you might say, and so on.
These,
then, are some of the things large corpora seem to be telling us about
‘language’, and some of the ways those things depart from conceptions of
‘language’ promoted by traditional language guardians and by modern
linguists who had no access to large corpora. We can thus appreciate
Sinclair’s surmise, quoted above, that ‘many of well protected assumptions
of language analysis are suspect and probably due for radical revision’.
2.
‘Democracy’ as an evolving term and concept in South African discourse
Now,
how might these wide-ranging deliberations about ‘language’ and
‘discourse’ in light of corpus data relate to with our programmatic title,
‘discourse and democracy’? For our own purposes, ‘democracy’ can be
straightforwardly defined as a mode of human interaction on the basis of mutual
equality and respect for human rights. The definition does not yield a clear-cut
border between ‘democratic’ versus ‘undemocratic’, but rather a gradient
between ‘more democratic’ versus ‘less democratic’. Ideally, a
‘democracy’ should be deemed authentic only where equality and respect are
accorded to all citizens, and not just
to a dominant majority or voting block. That ideal may sound a bit utopian,
since few of the officially proclaimed ‘democracies’ in the ‘modern
world’ have actually achieved it. Yet if ‘utopia is an unrealistic state to
aspire to’, ‘the desire to approach it as closely as possible is
realistic’ (Owomoyela 1996: 141). So democracy is best understood as a human
space with unlimited potential for real advancement: if we can never arrive at
utopia, we can always arrive at a closer approximation (Beaugrande 1997b,
1997c). ‘Democracy’ can thus be defined as a mandate
for steadily widening and deepening the inclusiveness of social practices to
bring them closer and closer to the fundamental theory of democracy. Mutual
equality and respect for human rights of a majority is clearly ‘more
democratic’ than for the rights of a minority, but can only be one step on the
way toward including steadily wider and more diverse sectors of the total
population, including all minorities.
In
theory at least, a ‘language’ should be a highly democratic system including
the large community who possess it and share it among themselves. Moreover,
unlike wealth or property, a ‘language’ can be shared with an indefinite
number of new speakers without that community having to give up any of its
possessions. Similarly, discourse should be a democratic activity insofar as it
includes a wide range of speakers who are competent in the language. But in
practice, just as language and discourse can be perversely deployed for
exclusion, as remarked in section 1, they can also be rendered undemocratic to
foment divisions among groups or between insiders versus outsiders. And this
recourse can be expected particularly in societies where a ‘democratic’
constitution guarantees human rights for all races, genders, religions, and so
on, but where the elites still fall back upon language as a pretext to preserve
their special privileges.
Few
ordinary speakers probably appreciate the extent to which discourse abounds with
decisions either toward or away from ‘democracy’; certainly, most speakers
are unlikely to have been sensitised toward these decisions by conventional
language education (Beaugrande 1997b). Yet at a deep level of awareness, many
speakers and hearers are keenly attuned to subtle signals of equality and
inequality in actual discourse practices.
The
greatest challenge of all for language policy and language education would be to
instil a lively sensibility and determination to support democracy in and
through discourse and to put its theories of inclusion into practices of
inclusion when the society is highly diverse in its cultures, languages,
language varieties, religions, and so forth. Precisely such a challenge has been
resolutely taken up by the government of South Africa since 1994. There, a broad
consensus has been consolidated for transforming the society from an
‘authoritarian regime’ into a genuine ‘democracy’ (cf. sample [10]
below). The new Constitution is a veritable model of democratic theory (cf.
samples [6-7, 9]), surpassing even the Constitutions of many older and more
familiar ‘democracies’ such as the USA, where ‘Equal Rights Amendments’
to the constitution have been repeatedly voted down by the electorate and the
legislatures or vetoed by a Republican President. If South Africa can put this
theory into correspondingly democratic practice, it will set a historic example
for other nations in transition.
One
valuable resource for exploring the social, political, and cultural evolution of
South African society during this crucial stage might be found in the South
African Corpus of English, which has recently been established at the University
of Port Elizabeth under the supervision of Chris Jeffrey. This corpus was
originally inaugurated as part of the International Culture of English (ICE)
under the direction of the late Sidney Greenbaum at University College London,
which planned corpora for a geographically widespread cross-section of local
Englishes: not just England, the USA, and Canada, but also the Caribbean and
Jamaica, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Kenya-Tanzania-Zimbabwe, Nigeria, the
Philippines, and South Africa (Greenbaum 1991). These corpora would provide, for
the first time in history, a base of authentic data about local varieties of
English that have hitherto led a contradictory existence of being used by large
populations but not appropriately recognised as valid alternative language
systems.
These
corpora might allow us to explore how the meaning of key terms, such as
‘democracy’ and ‘democratic’, is being continually worked out in
discursive practices. One heuristic we might apply to the Corpus of South
African English (hereafter CSAE) would be to examine the collocational
tendencies or collocabilities,
defined as the preferences of discourse participants regarding how
lexicogrammatical resources are typically selected and combined during
discourse, as we can infer them from the actual ‘collocations’,
defined as an array of interactive linguistic choices that are distinctly more
likely than average to occur together (cf. Firth 1968: 186, 111, 182f, 106ff,
113; Greenbaum 1974), e.g. ‘multiracial
democracy’ in [15] or ‘committed freedom
fighter’ in [58]. Still, no matter how large a corpus becomes, we will
always encounter some ‘patterns for which there is some evidence, but
insufficient to make a conclusive case for significance’ (Sinclair 1991: 491).
Admittedly,
the Corpus of South African English is still rather small. Like the other ICE
corpora, its original target size was one million words, but it has since been
increased to around three million. The current corpus comprises the ICE
material, plus material from the Independent Online News Service and the Mail
and Guardian Online on the Internet, the home pages of South African political
parties, and a collection of spoken data for which we deeply indebted to Sue
Watermeyer, who was trained by the well-known sociolinguist Raj Mesthrie at the
University of Capetown. Having over 700,000 words from spoken data from private
conversations, class lessons and lectures, business transactions, legal
cross-examinations, parliamentary debates, and broadcast interviews,
discussions, news, and sports commentaries might be highly significant for
seeing how terms like ‘democratic’ are used outside public spotlights. In
future research, the data such as those presented below might productively be
factored according to political settings and historical periods, as well as
sources, registers, audiences, and possibly even individual speakers or writers.
Meanwhile,
the present report must obviously be regarded as a programmatic exploration,
intended not to draw firm conclusions about ‘South African English’ but
merely to indicate what we ourselves intuitively judge to be interesting
evidence such a corpus can offer about the discourse of a society undergoing a
sweeping transition. We still need far more data from a far wider range of
sources and regions before we can address, let alone answer, such key questions
as how ‘democracy’ will be defined in practice and not just in theory.
Now
let us look at some CSAE data on the central terms ‘democracy’
and ‘democratic’ themselves. Not
surprisingly, these terms returned plenty of attestations — 184 and 244
respectively — although we can safely disregard the 65 occurrences of
‘Democratic’ in self-chosen names of organisations, usually political, where
the meaning is conveniently non-committal or merely pretentious (e.g. for Mr
Mangope’s dubious ‘United Christian Democratic Party’). The remaining data
do provide us with numerous productive signals of how the term is being
contextualised in South African discourse. At least three familiar conceptions
could be detected:
(a)
a doctrine of equality in
human rights and in personal and civil
liberties;
(b)
a political system of ‘majority rule’
by means of a secure electoral machinery with multiple
parties and universal voting rights;
(c)
an economic system of free enterprise and equal opportunity in the
economy and the job market.
At
the start of this section, we proposed a definition of ‘democracy’ centred
squarely upon the first conception (a). The assumption that all three
conceptions are fully compatible and have in fact been successfully integrated
in the ‘modern Western’ societies of Europe and North America is a popular
and reassuring notion, but one South Africans might well regard with extreme
caution. ‘Majority rule’ in conception (b) is by no means a safe guarantee
of equality in human rights; history provides a daunting gallery of
demonstrations of how a majority can dole out harshly undemocratic treatment to
minorities. Surely few South Africans would suggest that the institutionalised
racism in the USA prior to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s was
‘democratic’ just because it happened to have been approved there by a white
majority. In the South African context, at all events, the supreme test for the
new ‘democracy’ will be for all of the groups, sharply divided by a long and
troubled history of conflict, to grant each other the rights and respect each
group wants for themselves. As we shall see, the CSAE data indicate a wide
spread of attitudes and expectations about this test.
Even
greater caution should be exercised about the full compatibility of democracy
with an economic system of ‘free enterprise’. Martin and Schumann’s (1996:
311) prodigiously researched exposé of ‘globalisation’ summarises the
current situation in these terms:
Now
what the founders of the post-war welfare states had learned from bitter
experience is becoming ever more clearly visible: free-market economy and
democracy are by no means inseparable blood-brothers, who harmoniously nourish
prosperity for everyone. Instead, the two central guiding models of the old
industrial states of West stand in constant contradiction to each other.
Some
prominent authorities in economics and political science (e.g. Reich 1993;
Barber 1996) has marshalled evidence that the linkage of these two conceptions
may well have been a transitory historical accident during a specific stage of
‘modernisation’ requiring a wide expansion of participation in production
and consumption of modestly priced mass commodities, whereas current conditions
since about 1980 favour a converse concentration upon high-priced elite
commodities. In parallel, the real control over the so-called ‘free market
capitalism’ is now reserved for overpowering multinational corporations and
managements. Aided by circuitous tax havens and write-offs, they not only
contribute little or no tax-base to support democratic institutions like public
education and social security in their host countries, but liberally extract
public tax monies in the guise of the ‘investment incentives’ whereby
prospective hosts are forced to bid against each other for production plants and
to reduce or abolish worker benefits, safety measures, pension plans, pollution
controls, and so on (Martin
& Schumann 1996).
In
view of these considerations, the representation of the three conceptions of
‘democracy’ in our CSAE data may offer some noteworthy signals of current
and future developments.2 The conception of equality in human rights
was well documented in contexts supplying a brisk range of concepts (called
‘cornerstones’, ‘principles’, ‘values’, etc.), including
‘human rights, justice, peace,
economic development’ [1], ‘non-racism,
non-sexism’ [2], ‘social
justice and fundamental human rights’ [3], ‘universal adult suffrage, a
national common voters roll, regular elections, and a multi-party system’ [4]
or ‘renewal, sport,
youth, tolerance’ [5]. Some data even signalled a feeling of having set
a historical milestone in the advance of ‘democracy’ [6-7], albeit with
minor uneasiness about ‘tension’ [7] and the ‘crime rate’ and ‘corruption’ [8] (compare the ‘life and death
struggle against crime’ in
sample [58] below).
[1]
lists of ‘cornerstones’ — more than 20 in all — including human
rights,
democracy,
justice,
peace,
Africa,
economic
development.
[2]
to further the interests of the practitioner in the field of adult continuing
education and training. AETASA [Amalgamated English Teachers Association of
South Africa] is committed to the principles of non-racism,
non-sexism,
democracy
and
sustainable
development and further believes
that historical
imbalances in the
provision of adult
education and training should be addressed as a priority.
[3]
establish a society based on democratic values,
social justice and fundamental human rights; Lay the foundations for a democratic and open
society in which government is based
on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law
[4]
Universal adult suffrage, a national
common voters roll, regular elections,
and a multi-party system of democratic
government, to ensure accountability,
responsiveness and openness. Supremacy of Constitution
[5]
historic moment with friends internationally while we
celebrate
worthwhile
things like renewal,
sport,
youth,
tolerance,
and
democracy. <P> One of the
mechanisms for success is the South African resolve to hold a uniquely developmental Games in
Capetown.
[6]
but also discrimination based on gender,
sexual
orientation
and
religion. Ironically, while the
historic
‘cradles
of
democracy’
still
agonise
over
an
Equal
Rights
Amendment, the South African
constitution guarantees women equal rights.
[7]
Accept contradictions, tension
Two
years
after
the
arrival
of
political
democracy, South Africa boasts
a
model
liberal
democratic
constitution
which
has
few
peers
in
the
world
community.
[8]
citizens today are proud to be South Africans. Perhaps it is because
all
South
Africans
have
helped
to
bring
about
a
democracy
and have participated
in
its
rituals. It may also mean that in
spite of the disastrous crime
rate, the gravy train accusations and the
perennial reports of corruption
We
shall return to overtones linking democracy to ‘economic
development’ later on.
Predictably,
the CSAE data signalled a conscious determination, ranging from mild to intense,
to turn away from the past [9-15], e.g. via a ‘shift’ [10] , a ‘new style’ [11], a ‘reinstatement’ or even a ‘quantum
blast’ [12]. The terms for invoking the past also ranged from mild and
abstract, e.g. ‘divisions’ [9], ‘authoritarian past [10], ‘huge
problems’ [11], ‘exclusive privileges’
[12], to concrete and intense, e.g. ‘accumulated
racist muck’ [13], and
‘massacre of the innocent’ [14].
Amid this chorus of voices, the admonition of ‘FW’ (i.e. de Klerk) [15] of
might sound like an invitation to forget the past when his ruling Nationalist
Party busily tried to plant apartheid behind every bush.
[9]
constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to heal
the divisions of the past and
establish a society based on democratic values, social
justice and fundamental human rights;
Lay the foundations for a democratic and open
society
[10]
of your staff. There needs to be a shift
from the mentality that we inherited from our authoritarian
past toward a democratic mentality of
self-empowered reflexivity. When it comes to the ideological paradigm shift
[11]
that a developing country with the
complexities
and huge problems of ours should
develop a new style
of
participatory
democracy
not
to
frustrate
or restrict the majority
but
to
involve
more
parties
at
leadership
level in
the decision making
[12]
the learned professor has heard of the wise words ‘justice delayed is justice
denied’. That is what the new democracy is all about — a
reinstatement of social
justice
for
the
majority
and a diminution of
exclusive privileges for
the white minority
[13] for much too long. Contrary to the professor's view, what
is imperative is a quantum
blast
of
democracy
strong
enough
to flush out the Augean Stables
of three centuries
of accumulated racist
muck
[14]
people had to consolidate their victory.<P>
"The task is to shift the balance of
forces irreversibly in favour of peace, democracy,
and
development.
Real heroes and
heroines will emerge from the battle
for peace, democracy and development
and not in the massacre of
innocent and unarmed
children
and
women,
old
men
and
women," he added.
[15]
Now that South Africa had established a
non-discriminatory multiracial
democracy, South Africans had to come
to
terms
with
their
cultural
diversity
and stop looking
for
apartheid
behind
every
bush, says FW.
A
shift of such magnitude brings with it a vital mandate for education both as an
explicit subject and a methodological orientation [16-17]. The ‘boom in
English teaching’ [18] when many schools are being slashed by rationalisation’
(samples [44-45] below) may seem an irony of history if we recall the earlier
vision of English as a language of resistance to the Afrikaner regimes (cf.
reports and references in Smit 1994); also, calling it the ‘new
lingua franca’ sounds quaint when it has been aggressively promoted as such
world-wide for well over a century.
[16]
The South African Institute For Distance Education (SAIDE) is a dynamic NGO
[non-government organisation] committed to increasing
democratic access to knowledge, learning and skills through the adoption of open
learning principles and distance education
[17]
like to enrol as full-time or part-time students for a Ph D, M Ed or B Ed, with research specialisation in the area of democracy,
human
rights
and
citizenship
education. <p> Who should
apply? Teachers, curriculum specialists, publishers, materials developers and
researchers with an interest in human rights education in teaching for democratic citizenship
[18]
English to foreigners becomes a big
business <B>15/6/97</B> By Karen Mac Gregor, Education Editor
<P> Democratic change has sparked a
countrywide boom in English teaching, with demand for South Africa's new lingua
franca increasing rapidly
Again
predictably, concerns about the ‘fragile’ quality of the new system have
been raised, e.g., whether voting rights will be effectively used [19-20],
whether political parties will transcend racial divisions [21], whether proper
time schedules can be maintained [22-23], whether democratic concepts will be
‘learned’ and ‘understood’ and not just reduced to ‘buzzwords’
people hardly ‘understand’ [24-25], and whether the rights of the rest will
be respected by the voting majority [26-27]. Interestingly, at least some voices
recognised the lesson of history, cited above, that a majority may abuse its
‘natural” right to prevail’ [26] and
enforce a ‘winner-takes-all approach’ [27]; and that a majority ‘referendum’ on a complex
human issue like ‘capital punishment’ is quite ‘superficial’ [28], the
more so in a country once notorious for its ‘hanging judges’.
[19]
Democracy is a fragile concept and if it is to
work, it is vital that each registered voter makes use of this fundamental right
[20]
There are still all sorts of problems to be resolved before people use their democratic right to
elect their representatives to local councils and there is a whole
education programme still needed
[21]
If the support of political
parties
is not
going to grow across all ethnic
and racial
divides our democracy will become
more
and more polarised
more
and more one dimensional
and sterile
[22]
While every effort must be made to meet
the deadline to ensure that our transformation to full democracy is not unnecessarily
delayed, extreme caution must be exercised
to
ensure
that the fundamentals of a new society for which so much
has been sacrificed, are not compromised
[23]
Again the media reported last week that Schlemmer felt democracy
was moving
too
rapidly
in South Africa. At what speed
must a positive influence move to eliminate
a
scourge?
[24]
Our entire society is
on
a
steep
learning
curve trying to build a new
democracy and we must take steps to tighten
financial
controls,
discipline
offenders
and strengthen
our
institutions.
[25]
I’d like to conclude uh Mr Chairman <#> Uh the
buzzword of the day in our country
is
democracy
<#> It is truth <#> It
is reconciliation
<#> It is nation building <#> You don’t
understand those
concepts and you don't understand
how to operationalise those concepts
[26]
the sense of common community,
of ‘we-ness’, is very fragile and
certainly not strong for what the ANC
calls ‘an ordinary democracy’, ie, where a
simple majority
has
got
the
‘natural’
right
to
prevail.
[27]
divided and
polarised country like South Africa should not take over
the typical European
and
classical
form
of
democracy. Instead of the winner-takes-all
approach we argued that a
developing country with the complexities and huge problems of ours should
develop a new style
[28]
Superficially, the referendum which will test
public opinion, presents itself as the
most democratic instrument to
determine the future of capital punishment.
A
particularly sensitive issue in the overall ‘transformation to full
democracy’ [22] is the new role of the media like press and radio. Recalling a
past of ‘hiding and misleading’ [29], the data signalled a desire here too
for ‘diversity’ and ‘openness’ [30] and for ‘liberalisation’, the
latter naturally alluring to ‘foreign investors’ hungry for ‘commercial radio licences’
[31] in our era of monstrous media conglomerates (Barber 1994). Yet caution
was expressed about media becoming exploitive and intrusive enough to occasion
new modes of ‘injustice’ [32].
[29]
how the apartheid state's control of the airwaves attempted to hide and mislead
people about the horrors of apartheid. A democratic state requires a diversity
of voices to be heard so that citizens can make informed
decisions.
[30]
The demand
for
diversity
of
voices
in a
democracy needs to
be translated into a diversity
of
radio
and
TV
stations. This means opening
the
airwaves to a range of broad
[31]
to soothe the impatience of foreign investors who have
been eyeing South Africa ever
since the first moves towards
democracy in 1990 promised a
liberalisation <p> <p>
Matisonn hopes that the first independent commercial radio
licence
[32]
To allow a trial by the media would be
a great injustice. We would be undermining
a cornerstone of our new democracy: innocent until proven guilty.
The
widespread linkage between democracy and economic growth or development found in
our CSAE data may not be surprising, since we may have noticed it already in
several data samples [1-12, 5, 31]. Among the more transparent instances were
[33-38]. Some data might create the impression that the ‘business’ community
needs to give its permission for democracy to succeed [36-38] — probably a far
less absurd prospect than you might imagine if ‘economic development’ is to
be the yardstick of ‘democratic’ progress (compare samples [1-2]). Notice
the favourite capitalist message (akin to Reaganism and Thatcherism) that the
goal of ‘business’ and ‘economic stability’ is ‘a better future for
all’ [35] and not just for the
rich, although the situation to be ‘stabilised’ in South Africa currently
consists of sharp economic inequalities that naturally promote instability. At
least the ‘trade unions’ are well aware that special efforts are urgently
needed if a ‘live economy’ is to
sustain ‘democracy
in workplaces’ [38] and that
the Foundation’s pious proclaimation of
‘Growth for All’ [39] should be critically viewed against similar
slogans of Reaganism and Thatcherism, cited above.
[33]
the resources and potential of a country and those of its people will
not be available for a coherent programme
of
reconstruction
and
development. The linking of democracy
and
development
and the emphasis
on a
people-centred approach are a
deliberate strategy to pave the way for a new
democratic order
[34]
to address long-neglected problems of development and reconstruction. <P>
There is a new emphasis on the need
for democratic government in Africa to go hand-in-hand with economic advance.
[35]
Social stability and the
prospect
of
a
better
future
for
all, are the bedrock not just of a
stable
democracy, but also of a stable
economy. <P> For business,
opportunities
abound
[36]
possibly attracting
business
support. At the very least it
would inject dynamism into the
democracy we have set up.
[37]
Initiative is an organisation formed by 130 companies to enhance
the
business
contribution
to
Growth,
Development
and
Democracy in South Africa. A key
element of its programme is to work through its members to create
local economic development
[38]
as business and employers we
say spread the culture
of
investing
in
our
people <#>
Investing in our live
economy and bring
democracy
to
our
workplaces <#> Let us make
no mistake <#> Strong and democratic
trade
unions
are
permanent
and
desirable features
[39]
Labour’s head-on response to the
South Africa Foundation's Growth for All strategy
is evidence of attempts by the democratic movement to get its act together and regain lost ground.
Just
one occurrence in the current CSAE touched openly upon the antagonism between of
‘democracy’ versus ‘capitalism’, and only to attenuate it in ways that
would be congenial for the journal ‘Finance
Week’:
[40]
flinched when Manuel quoted market mover billionaire George Soros as saying
unbridled capitalism
was the enemy of democracy. What Soros
actually said, Finance Week summarised, was that excessive
individualism
in
the
pursuit
of
wealth would
By
contrast, a frank picture emerged several times when we queried the key-word ‘rationalisation’.
In theory, the term ‘rationalisation’ sounds reassuring by association with
‘rational’, a trait most people would like to believe they possess and a
reasonable imperative for business, as suggested in [41]; and it apparently
sounds more soothing and ‘neutral’ than ‘privatisation’ [42], not to
mention honestly realistic terms like ‘lusting for profit’ or ‘siphoning
money from workers to shareholders’. But most of our CSAE data indicated that
most of its practical consequences are, on the contrary, alarming [43-47].
[41]
employees along the new strategic objectives. His problem is clear: "We
have inherited over 16 000 workers; rationalisation is not just about numbers,
but rather about creating high levels of
efficiency through appropriate skills.
[42]
privatisation would provoke
knee-jerk opposition from the labour movement and that a more
neutral word, such as rationalisation, would be more
palatable.
[43]
Job cuts, plant closures, disposals
and mergers have abounded as global players attempt to rationalise their
businesses and become more focused.
[44]
The teachers were unanimous
that the uncertainty over
rationalisation had taken its toll on
morale and that this was manifesting
itself in classrooms and affecting their work.
[45]
In terms of the rationalisation programme 6,000
teachers are to lose their jobs in Western Cape schools this
year.<P> Staff cuts do not end
there.
[46]
In these days when public medical services
are being severely compromised by the rationalisation of funds and
facilities, there are many loyal, committed professional medical personnel who
are worthy of special commendation
[47]
Mr Lionel Woldson, general manager of the Child
Welfare Society in Cape Town, said yesterday: "We've rationalised to
the point where we can deal only with
abused and neglected children under the age of 12.
[48]
The police service overspent R604-million,
mainly because of the rationalisation of police
services.
If
‘rationalisation’ has indeed ‘become more focused’ [43], then evidently
focused hardships upon the victims it targets: teachers and their pupils
[44-45], the ill or disabled [46], and ‘abused and neglected children’ who
have committed the offence of being ‘over the age of 12’ [47]! We were
fascinated to see a major exception where ‘rationalisation’ brings huge
increases in expenditure in ‘police services’, doubtless being beefed up to
repress the waves of crime and violence that mass lay-offs have consistently
been observed to trigger in other nations. What clearer evidence could we find
for the real attitude of business and capitalism toward human rights and respect
for ordinary citizens than the eagerness to kick them out of their jobs and to
surround the victims of economic inequality with more and more ‘police
services’?
What
conclusions might we draw about the general modes and attitudes of South African
citizens regarding the course of their young ‘democracy’, as far as our very
limited data sampling might offer some signals? A diversity of voices spanned a
wide range: real optimism that more has been achieved than has been properly
‘communicated’ or than the ‘constant carping’ would suggest [49];
subdued optimism of learning from past mistakes [50]; ‘terrible doubts’
[51]; and pessimistic visions of failure and stagnation [52-55], the latter
often gauged precisely in terms of ‘economic policies’ and
‘investments from overseas’ [55], which are probably much on the minds of the
‘privileged chattering classes’ [49] and of the residents of ‘palaces and
fortified mansions’ [51].
[49]
the idea that little has
changed for ordinary people owes more to the
failure of bodies charged with communicating the achievements of the democratic
Government, as well as the constant
carping of our privileged chattering classes, who appear more terrified than
thrilled by the prospect and reality of change. South Africa's democratic
transformation, the hyperbolic touting of
its miraculous character notwithstanding, has indeed been exciting
[50]
From the faults come lessons, however, which may help establish the culture of democracy and may ensure
fewer problems next time. <#> A report by the Community
Elections Evaluation Group, which analysed the November local government
elections, seeks to do
[51]
the people who lived in palaces and
fortified mansions would relieve their
suffering? <#> Terrible doubts obsessed my mind as I
thought: Democracy may merely be a
trick
by those
who want to
hoodwink
the
populace.
</p> <#> <p> I was indeed puzzled
by the bizarre claim that we
were about to
enter
a
paradise
of
democracy: all we had to do was vote
for those we believed would do the job.
[52]
constituencies unfamiliar with the body
politic emerging from apartheid structures. Rightly or wrongly, the advent of
democracy has largely not been seen to deliver
on
election
promises. In Northern Province,
people are still galled
[53]
Dr Vincent Maphai, the executive director of the HSRC, notes that the political
honeymoon of South Africa’s new democratic government has faded much faster than was the case with Zimbabwe and Namibia after
their independence.
[54]
not delivering on housing. <#> The disillusionment of voters gulled by fanciful
election
promises
is a
common feature of democracy, but South
Africa's troubled society may lack
the reserves to roll
with punches like these.
[55]
the government's constitutional plans have failed
because their new constitution is
taking us further
away
from
true
democracy <&> The
government's economic policies are failing
because there are no significant
investments
from
overseas
Pessimism
also surfaced regarding the doubtful integrity of political agents:
[56]
I felt that I was, had been, and will continue to be a committed freedom
fighter. <#> What would a mere vote mean? <#> For me, the very
idea of democracy had
been debased
by those
who shouted
the
word
and were either
dictators
or simply inept
leaders.
[57]
nepotism and
corruption are not
trivial issues, and those in government better be quick in grasping this
fact. Our democracy will be seriously
undermined if those in leadership send out the signal that the name of the
game is to look out only for yourself
[58]
nepotism played a major role in the sad saga of how that country
snatched national degradation and poverty out of the jaws of great potential and
vast resources.<P> Our democracy's
current
life
and
death
struggle
against
crime will certainly not
be won by a government perceived to be corrupt
and incompetent
[59] not doing what a