This percentage has fallen dramatically; less than a third of all states are now authoritarian, and the number of democracies is growing rapidly. Democracy has become the fundamental standard of political legitimacy in the current era. Events such as the release of Nelson Mandela from prison and the tearing down of the Berlin wall are symbolic of changes indicating that, in more and more countries, citizen-voters are in principle able to hold public decision-makers to account. Yet at the same time the democratic political community is increasingly challenged by regional and global pressures and problems. To my mind it raises a number of very complex questions, i.e.

> How can problems such as the spread of AIDS, the debt burden of many countries in the 'developing world', the flow of financial resources which escape national jurisdiction, the drug trade and international crime be satisfactorily brought within the sphere of democracy?
> What kind of accountability and control can citizens of a single nation-state have over international actors, e.g. multinational corporations (MNCs), and over international organisations, e.g. the World Bank?
> In the context of trends towards regionalisation, European integration, fundamental transformations in the global economy, mass communications and information technology, how can democracy be sustained?
> Are new democratic institutions necessary to regulate and control the new international forces and processes?
> How can citizens participate as citizens in a new, more complex, internationally organised world?
> In a world organised increasingly on regional and global lines can democracy as we know it survive?

The topic is indeed thought provoking and intimidating at the same time. I think that our democracy will endure for many more years than the next ten but at the same time we cannot make such an analysis against a myopic background of simply looking inwardly. The survival of this democracy must be compared against the historical background of democratic development internationally and against the backdrop of other democratic institutions worldwide. It raises the question of whether the developed world will allow democracy in SA to flounder given our regional, continental and international importance and strategic location. These are important questions which cannot be ignored in this debate. Democratic development in itself is in any case approximately fifty years old and I think there is need for us to develop our own brand of democracy. The topic of discussion should rather change to, whether our democracy will thrive and not survive over the next ten years.

In my opinion, for democracy to thrive in SA over the ten years there are five conditions that need constant attention, nurturing and realignment.


The SA Constitution and its responsibilities
We have one of the most modern Constitutions in the world today. When considering the SA Constitution it is clear that we have set a certain benchmark for ourselves in terms of democratic development. The role of any SA government should be to create the required climate for the constitution to permeate all facets of our daily existence. The current government has tried nine times and failed at the Constitutional Court. The lesson out of this is that we have established a solid constitutional democracy with an independent judiciary but the worrying aspect is that the Constitution has become more liberal than some of its creators.

The role of Parliament is however more questionable if not dodgy because it has become the foot stool of the Executive. In this respect we need to realign and nurture the role of Parliament as it is currently constituted. In a constitutional democracy the Executive is answerable to Parliament and not vice versa. There is a constant blurring of the line that divides the ruling party from the State. This weakness is compounded by an electoral system that fosters allegiance with the political party in the first instance rather than the Constitution or the State.

Currently, the opposition parties in Parliament are not united and their strength is non-existent. Several political party alliances have fallen apart, which is further proof of the state of disunion amongst opposition parties. As a result opposition politics in a functioning democracy cannot be referred to in the South African context.

In the liberal democracies, consent to government and legitimacy for governmental action are dependent upon electoral politics and the ballot box. Yet, the notion that consent legitimates government, and that the ballot box is the appropriate mechanism whereby the citizen body as a whole periodically confers authority on government to enact the law and regulate economic and social life, becomes problematic as soon as the nature of a 'relevant community' is contested.

National boundaries have demarcated traditionally the basis on which individuals are included and excluded from participation in decisions affecting their lives. However, if many socio-economic processes, and the outcomes of decisions about them, stretch beyond national frontiers, then the implications of this are serious, not only for the categories of consent and legitimacy but for all the key ideas of democracy. At issue is the nature of a constituency, the role of representation, and the proper form and scope of political participation. It is these values and principles that need constant attention, nurturing and realignment in line with our benchmark, which is the SA Constitution.

HIV/AIDS

In South Africa over the past two years drugs have fallen in price and could fall further if the government imports generic drugs or negotiates more effectively with large pharmaceutical companies. According to Medscheme the price of dual therapy has dropped from twenty thousand to three thousand three hundred an annum and triple therapy has dropped from thirty seven thousand to just under seven thousand seven hundred and eighty eight per annum.

This is good news for people living with HIV/AIDS who also happen to belong to a medical aid scheme. But what about all of those who do not.

For them the only hope is the State but the South African government is reluctant to commit the resources needed to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

But just as costs saved need to be taken into account so the cost effectiveness of ARV treatment as a long term option must be taken into account.

The HIV positive person on ARV treatment has a  lower chance of passing on the disease therefore there will be less new HIV+ cases and lower associated medical costs.

The possibility of treatment will encourage more people to be treated  and to receive post test counselling which in turn should change behaviour and reduce the incidence of new HIV cases and their associated costs.

HIV positive people on ARV have a lower incidence of opportunistic infections therefore the cost of treating such infections will be lower.

HIV+ people on ARVs can continue to look after their children and the problem of AIDS orphans will be reduced. HIV+ people who are employed will continue to work and firms will be saved the costs of replacing and retraining such workers. This will impact positively on profitability and hence on government tax revenue.

In other words government should adopt a broader notion of cost effectiveness. It may well be that the cost of not treating HIV positive people exceeds the cost of treating them.

Poverty and infrastructure development

The levels of poverty in South Africa are staggering and make a mockery of our democracy and struggle for liberation. The statistics, if we can trust them, are all telling us that poverty in South Africa has increased over the last nine years and 9 million of our people are forced to eke out an existence on less than R400 a month. Our present social welfare system does not give give any benefits to about 60 percent of the poor in South Africa. Not only that, but the inefficiencies in implementing social grants means that a number of people who are supposed to receive benefits often don't. It is clear that we need to overhaul our present system and start to alleviate the grinding poverty that so many of our people currently live in.

To be fair to the present government it should be stated that great strides have been made in delivering services to our people. More houses have been built, more water pipes have been laid, communities have been electrified and people's access to telephones have increased. I would argue that not enough has been done, however, and that the government has in many cases fallen short of its own standards that it set for itself. One also needs to look at the quality of the services being supplied and whether people can afford to pay for it. These are all important challenges that we need to find ways of addressing if we are going to succeed as a country and consolidate our democracy.

Job creation

I think everyone can agree that job creation is the number one challenge facing South Africa. It is also the one where the government has failed most miserably over the past 9 years. Since 1994 our economy has shed 1 million jobs and we are reeling under an unemployment rate that is close on 40 percent.

Obviously something needs to be done. Before elections the government always preaches the message of jobs but after elections it states that it is not the responsibility of government to create jobs but merely the environment conducive to job creation. Even judging by its post election argument, the government is quite clearly failing to create that environment.

The Independent Democrats believes that more priority needs to be given to the creation of jobs in the informal sector. Given the low levels of training and education existent in this sector it is clear that many people living in this sector of the economy will not be absorbed by the formal economy. In shifting priority to the informal sector we would argue that greater support must be given to small scale businesses both financially and in terms of skills transfer. The bureaucratic burden must also be reduced for these businesses and the giving of grants and credit needs to be simplified and made more appropriate for their conditions. I also believe that agriculture can employ far more people than it does presently, but in order to achieve this, far greater support needs to be given to small scale producers. Unfortunately there is no one magic bullet to creating jobs in South Africa and any political parties that claim there is are preying on the hopes of our people. Even the outcomes of the Growth and Development Summit are highly optimistic where public works is seen as the panacea for our unemployment woes. The problem is that we have a Public works department that is presently wholly incapable of managing such a large scale job creation project. Less than 400 permanent jobs were created by public works programmes last year, so I'm not convinced that they can create the millions of jobs that were talked about at the Growth and Development Summit.

Corruption
While prevalent in developed countries too, corruption is particularly harmful in developing countries [such as South Africa] which tend to have fewer resources to address the problem - which are now wasted or not used in the most effective or equitable way.  Corruption impacts severely on human security.  It threatens:
> Economic growth,
> Efficiency and social development,
> Creates significantly higher levels of risk and uncertainly in economic transactions,
> Distorts public expenditure in that it diverts scarce resources to lesser or non-priorities,
> Acts as a disincentive, possibly deterring prospective economic activities and investment;
> Stifles private initiative and enterprise.

Corruption thus becomes both the cause and consequences of underdevelopment and poverty in general. Politically, corruption is often a consequence of the unaccountable monopoly of power in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.  Where representative processes to enforce governmental accountability are weak or non-existent, political structures provide the greatest opportunities for corruption.  These exist where there is an absence of political mechanisms through which a government that tolerates, condones or participates in rent-seeking and corrupt practices, might be dismissed.

The political impact is such that an electorate's perception of widespread corruption may eat away at the popular legitimacy and trust of the government. Adhering to basic principles of honesty, decency and respect are what is needed for democracy to thrive in SA.

Conclusion

The locus of effective political power can no longer be assumed to be national governments - effective power is shared and bartered by diverse forces and agencies at national, regional and international levels.
There are, of course, new regional and global trans-national actors contesting the terms of globalisation - not just corporations but new social movements such as the environmental movement, the women's' movement and so on. These are the 'new' voices of an emergent 'trans-national civil society', heard, for instance, at the Rio Conference on the Environment, the Cairo Conference on Population Control and the Beijing Conference on Women. In short, there are tendencies at work seeking to create new forms of public life and new ways of debating regional and global issues. These are, of course, all in early stages of development, and there are no guarantees that the balance of political contest will allow them to develop. But they point in the direction of establishing new ways of holding trans-national power systems to account - that is, they help open up the possibility of a more participatory democracy.

Participatory democracy involves the development of administrative capacity and independent political resources at regional and global levels as a necessary complement to those in local and national politics. At issue would be strengthening the administrative capacity and accountability of regional institutions like SADC and the EU, along with developing the administrative capacity and forms of accountability of the UN system itself. A participatory democracy would not call for a decrease per se of state power and capacity across the globe. Rather, it would seek to entrench and develop democratic institutions at regional and global levels as a necessary complement to those at the level of the nation-state.

I thank you.