Democracy hijacked: SA’s illusion of freedom - Siyabona Manje MaBenza
Key topics:
SA's democracy masks elite control, not true people power
Party-list system kills accountability, feeds corruption
Ethnic divisions and state capture sustain a fake freedom
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By Siyabona Manje MaBenza*
South Africa stood at a crossroads in 1994—not just of history, but of imagination. The nation had the chance to build something radically different—a governance model forged from African soil, rooted in community wisdom, moral courage, and hard-won truth.
But the South African peoples of all cultures were hoodwinked. The powers that be at the time chose the safer applause of an international audience over the harder path of authentic reinvention. They deflected criticism from within and from outside, and silenced anyone in their ranks with torture or murder—dare I even say, assassinations? Masked as something else done by someone else.
South Africa reached for the collapsing scaffolding of Western liberal democracy, painted it rainbow, and called it a miracle—so the coffers would roll in. And boy, did they roll in.
Nelson Mandela received a ticker-tape welcome in New York after his release from captivity—not seen since the end of World War II—and the money rolled in.
But this was a mask held up, a carefully constructed illusion. South Africa did not build a future. It was a repackaged failing manual of "Democracy" sold to the people as “Freedom is coming to South Africa”—endorsed by media and art like the film Seraphina.
Yet the grand promise of democracy met a hard truth: South Africans had never truly lived under a democratic system before. The democratic culture and civic experience needed for a vibrant grassroots movement simply did not exist.
From apartheid’s brutal suppression of political participation to the top-down imposition of a proportional representation system, the people found themselves spectators rather than participants.
Civil society and democratic institutions like the Constitutional Court, while symbolically powerful, struggled to reach beyond urban elites and were often co-opted or marginalized by political interests.
This absence of democratic foundation meant grassroots activism remained minimal, fragmented, and easily subdued—ill-equipped to challenge the emerging party monopoly.
Democracy became less a lived reality and more an abstract ideal, leaving ordinary citizens disconnected and disempowered.
Instead of true people-power, we built a Parliament of proxies. Instead of bottom-up accountability, we installed party-list puppetry and bureaucratic performance art. Today, that rainbow is cracking under its self-righteous inertia.
The constitutional system is technically democratic, but operationally monopolised by political parties.
You don’t elect a president. You vote for a party. That party then elects a leader, who is then voted into power by party MPs, who owe their positions not to voters, but to the party bosses who placed them there.
What do you call a representative who does not fear losing their job because their job depends not on the will of the people, but the protection of the party?
You call that person unaccountable.
You call that system captured by design.
Look no further than the Zondo Commission, which exposed the deliberate, coordinated networks of corruption and state capture. Where in the Western world would such brazen hijacking of state institutions be tolerated without swift justice? Here, it is the norm.
MPs and ministers act like royalty, bloated with security details and VIP convoys, while hospitals collapse, crime explodes, schools rot, and the state becomes a contractor with a flag.
This is no accident. The political system was deliberately designed to concentrate power within party elites and shield them from voter accountability.
The proportional representation, party-list mechanism replaced direct constituency elections with party-controlled candidate selection, creating representatives who owe their loyalty not to voters but to party bosses.
Cadre deployment entrenched this control further, prioritizing political loyalty over competence or public service.
It is a system built to gatekeep, to exclude independent voices, and to ensure that MPs and ministers remain insulated from public pressure or electoral consequences.
This design flaw is the foundation upon which corruption and state capture have flourished.
The media landscape, crucial in any democracy for accountability and informed public discourse, is itself captured by political interests.
The independent regulatory authority, ICASA, meant to safeguard free, independent broadcasting, has been compromised by political interference and ineffective enforcement of its own charter.
Public and commercial broadcasters alike function more as extensions of party propaganda machines than as watchdogs. Radio and television, the primary sources of news for many South Africans, have been weaponized to filter, gatekeep, and control narratives, effectively silencing dissent and manipulating public perception.
Without a free, independent media, democracy’s most vital check is lost, compounding the effects of an already rigged political system.
1994 was the glittering premiere. Yet termites were already chewing the set:
1999 Arms Deal—Thales bribes to Deputy President Zuma.
Cadre deployment—merit scrapped for loyalty.
AIDS denialism—ideology over science, thousands dead.
The rainbow had rot in its beams.
Read more:
Enter Jacob Zuma: the understudy who sold the stage lights.
Nkandla firepool
Marikana (2012)—34 miners were shot
Zondo Commission—pages of state capture, no orange overalls
VBS Bank—municipalities bankrupted for Bentley's money
We say the system was hijacked. The truth is: the hijackers built the plane.
President Ramaphosa promised a “New Dawn.” Instead:
Stage-6 load-shedding
Covid relief looted
GNU 2024—ANC + DA + extras: unity in name, gridlock in fact
DA deputy minister fired for a paperwork slip while big-ticket looters sip cappuccino in Parliament’s lounge
That’s what Floyd Shivambu understood.
That’s what Gayton McKenzie understood.
That’s what Kenny Kunene understood.
Jacob Zuma understands—every single one of them does.
That’s what the DA, IFP, ANC, MK, EFF, and COPE have all used to fund their salaries and PR machines.
Seventy parties. Seventy.
All to distract. All to sell you what is now the nightmare.
And we sit here on our hands. Even if you want to demonstrate, you have to apply to demonstrate. That was right. Now it’s a permission.
The brazen corruption and state capture we witness are not failures of individual character alone but symptoms of a deliberately engineered political system.
Party funding, electoral design, and institutional capture create a self-perpetuating elite business model where politicians and their cronies extract wealth and power, shielded from accountability.
This system transforms governance into a commodified performance, where parties exist less to serve the public and more to secure salaries, funding, and influence—sustained by a captive electorate left with little meaningful choice.
South Africa’s political reality is deeply shaped by its ethnic and cultural diversity—Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana, Ndebele, and others—with histories and allegiances deeply rooted in language, lineage, and land. These identities are not just cultural; they are political weapons. The ANC knew this. The IFP was built on it. And the apartheid state exploited it.
Today, these divisions are not healed—they are harvested. From municipal hires based on clan, to national cabinet choices shaped by tribal calculus, party bosses use ethnicity like currency. Whole provinces can be swung not by policy, but by kinship....
Consider Jacob Zuma:
In the early 1990s, after the ANC was unbanned and Zuma returned from exile, he was strategically deployed to KwaZulu-Natal—not by voter demand, but by ANC central command. His mission was clear: erode the IFP’s Zulu power base, which had become a violent and politically uncontrollable region.
As a Zulu leader loyal to the ANC, Zuma was positioned as both peace broker and political battering ram. He was made ANC Chair of Southern Natal in 1991, ran as ANC’s KZN premier candidate in 1994 (despite losing), and ultimately served as MEC for Economic Affairs & Tourism. These were not grassroots appointments—they were tactical placements.
The strategy:
Neutralise IFP dominance by using a Zulu face not aligned to the IFP
Stabilise the hotspot province of ANC–IFP violence for the upcoming elections
Zuma’s ethnic role gave the ANC a foothold. His eventual presidency? Not a triumph of the vote, but a victory of manipulation.
Now consider busing:
Julius Malema has openly threatened to “occupy” towns during elections—a thin veil over the common tactic of relocating voters to swing wards. The ANC has also used strategic registration and relocation, often under the pretext of mobilisation, but in reality designed to tilt local results.
This is not democracy. It is demographic sabotage.
Democracy struggles where kings are elected, and kings do not leave.
It is a dangerous myth that the Bantustans—Transkei, Ciskei, KwaZulu, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and the rest—were mere inventions of apartheid bureaucrats. The truth is more uncomfortable: these regions often corresponded, however crudely, to areas where language groups, clans, and cultural traditions had deep roots stretching back centuries. These were not just lines drawn on a map, but lands of real historical and ancestral meaning.
Yet, in the transition to democracy, this reality was not honored. Instead of recognizing these places as “originals”—authentic heartlands of South Africa’s many peoples, worthy of pride and preservation—the new order absorbed them into sanitized provinces with new names, erasing the unique identities of those within. The Western Cape, once home to Cape Khoi, Griqua, and Xhosa communities, is now a province with a generic brand, its layered histories flattened by the politics of nation-building.
This was not an accident. It was a deception. The strongest political tribes and factions, under the banner of unity and non-racialism, engineered a settlement to secure control over the whole of South Africa. The “Rainbow Nation” narrative became a mask—one that concealed the consolidation of power by dominant elites, while ordinary people were sold the illusion of freedom and inclusion.
Read more:
The result? The sense of place, belonging, and cultural specificity for millions was diluted or lost. The new democracy offered a single, marketable story of unity, but underneath, the old game of patronage and exclusion continued, just with new players and new slogans. As in the 1990s, so now: South Africans have been sold a lie within democracy, and the more we talk, the clearer it becomes.
Each one of those parties, whether it gets 0.2% of the vote or 20%, receives IEC funding.
Your taxes pay for their posters, press statements, travel budgets, campaign rallies, and yes, even their wine-soaked strategy weekends.
They are not running for office. They are running a business.
According to IEC records ahead of the 2024 election, these were some party allocations:
Party - IEC Funding (approx.)
ANC - R148 million
DA - R62.7 million
EFF - R40.9 million
FF+ - R19.5 million
IFP - R14.6 million
ACDP - R9.7 million
ATM - R7.8 million
UDM - R6.4 million
NFP - R6.1 million
Al-Jama-ah - R5.2 million
PAC - R4.1 million
COPE - R4.4 million
Every single one feeds from the same trough—DA included. None object. All benefits.
And their take?
Ordinary MP: R1.2 million/year
Deputy Minister: R2.2 million
Minister: R2.4 million
President: R4.2 million
Mayors in Metros: R1.4 million+
Councillors: R500,000 to R1 million — “Half the population lives on less than R1,300/month. A councillor earns that in a day.”
Then there are the consultants:
Over R21 billion spent in 2023 alone—often doing what civil servants are already paid to do.
Multiply that by seventy parties. Seventy sets of secretaries, spokespeople, social media managers, rented chairs, empty tents, and branded pens.
This is not democracy. This is a subsidised feeding frenzy.
Still, they preach the importance of public service. Still, they chant about the people. Still, they cloak themselves in credentials of struggle as they sign off on tenders, jets, security upgrades, and diplomatic junkets.
Immunity from real accountability.
Immunity from real accountability.
Immunity from real accountability.
Immunity from real accountability.
We are not witnessing the death of democracy.
We are witnessing its tax-funded impersonation.
This is no longer about who governs.
It’s about whether this state deserves to exist in its current form.
South Africa’s democracy, for all its promises, has become a R40+ billion industry of political survival, elite enrichment, and managed illusion.
The tribal divisions, the systemic corruption exposed by the Zondo Commission, the erosion of protest rights, and the commodification of politics all point to a democracy in crisis—one that serves the few at the expense of the many.
If freedom was the bait, power and enrichment have been the catch.
*Siyabona Manje MaBenza: A writer from South Africa, likened to the graffiti artist Banksy, exposes the glaring hypocrisy of our society.