Black Tuesday

I haven't been able to log in here for a while - as my contemporary in the blogging world, Sadiyya Sheik suggested, it probably has something to do with the new awesome layout: nothing is perfect. (Might I add, you probably want to check out her blog! The Last Tether). So, anyway, my blogging powers have returned, at just the right time - or wrong, depending on the way you look at it.


Today is Tuesday the 22nd November 2011, the day the Secrecy Bill was waved through, the day we wave farewell to our young democracy of 17 years...


When I first heard about this, I thought to myself, "Now, I'm not a law student, but I know enough to gather that a bill has to be passed by legislature ( parliament/congress) first, and then (usually) approved by the executive branch of government."
I thought that there was still a chance that the bill wouldn't grow into a statute or act. I know, a lot of people would call me naive and a lot of people would laugh at my baseless optimism in the leaders of our country...a lot of people would be saying under their breaths, or with contempt, "you fool." 
And maybe I was. Maybe I was a fool for being a stalwart crusader for the hope that possibly the people 'at the top' had enough honesty in them to lock away their avarice...


Did all those Apartheid hero's fight and suffer and in many cases, die, in vain? Is the democracy they so valiantly gave their all for, the democracy that 17 years ago was so celebrated, already gasping out it's last breaths? Translucency should prevail in a democracy - it is how everyone has a say in what goes on, it is how citizens monitor their elected government, it is how a governing body stays in check...


I lived in the foolish hope, that South African politicians still had enough of the original democratic governments' character, to do the right thing - and ensure that, that is all this Secrecy Bill remained: a Bill.


But my hope was delusive. And our politicians and 'public servants' have no understanding of the fact that, a "Democracy without transparency is not democracy, it's just an empty word".