Beware: We are walking into the dark

When strongmen with nationalistic and populist tendencies dominate politics, we must be worried

- Jo-Mangaliso Mdhlela

The state is a bond of citizens built on reason and morality. These were the words of the 20th century sage and first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomas Masaryk.

His raison d’étre, he told the world through his work as a philosopher, was to help, in a small way, to ensure that people became less tolerant of bad governments and to strive to establish strong constitutional orders with all their attendant freedoms.

Reason and morality, he wrote, are central to creating good states and upright, peaceable communities guided in all their ventures by social justice for all people, without exception.

Implied in his words was that good Constitutions are antidotes to bad governance and people should develop the courage to call out bad governments for what they are, without restraint.

South Africa comes from a dark past dominated by injustices stemming from racial prejudice and supported by laws emanating from racist parliamentary sovereignty dictates.

Every piece of legislation, however oppressive, was rubber-stamped and became part of the country’s statutes without being subjected to judicial review — a mandatory requirement in our new constitutional order.

The country’s past apartheid framework, which manifested over a period of more than 300 years under the rubric of colonialism and imperialism, was bolstered by discriminatory laws.

The liberation struggles were a direct reaction to the prevailing cruel system of governance — a prototype upon which all evils of injustice coalesced and, in the words of Masaryk, could not be justified by reason or morality.

Is it not, therefore, strange that some of the architects of this monstrous edifice were theologians, many of whom trained in philosophy and law?

Broederbond is an Afrikaans word meaning “brotherhood”. It refers to a secret Afrikaner nationalist organisation, with a history intertwined with the rise of the National Party, Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid.