The Power of Democracy | Lindiwe Mazibuko | TEDxOxford
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ4EOq1_Iis Video ID: XJ4EOq1_Iis ============================================================ hello I am here today to deliver what I hope will be an impassioned plea for democracy as an idea for the idea of government by the people for the people as a legitimate and sound way in which to improve people's lives improve their outcomes both economically socially and in terms of human development it's an idea that I want to stress to you is actually under threat there is a lot of data demonstrating that authoritarianism is increasingly becoming the mode even in countries that are nominally considered democratic but I'm gonna propose to you that there's a way to heal these ailing democracies the failures that democracy has delivered over many many years particularly in this part of the world nominally the West or the global north and that that change has to do with who leads our democracies not what type of governments we are led by I'm gonna make the case but by injecting a new generation of leaders who underpin everything they do with ethics and accountability we can really see democracy and democratic government self-determination where citizens are able to choose their government and remove them from office when the time comes for them to go is going to flourish in the way that it was always meant to so I imagine those of you who've been watching what's happening in Parliament Square over the past few days or perhaps an impeachment trial that's taking a place across the Atlantic are wondering well you know democracy hasn't done much for us recently why why is this woman standing here trying to sing the tune of democratic government why is she here to defend it and I think one of the first things we have to do as we try and defend democracy in distress is to admit to its failures is to admit for example that there was a rupture in 2008 when democratically elected leaders used taxpayers money to bail out private-sector companies which had defrauded citizens enabling them or preventing them from hanging on to their houses losing them their pensions losing them their jobs that's a rupture that we must admit to we must acknowledge that failure of democratic leadership I think we should acknowledge the pain and suffering inflicted by policies like austerity necessary as there may or may not have been and acknowledge the contributing factors that they have contributed to a failure to see democracy as a legitimate form of government in my part of the world corruption has really dealt democratic governments a blow leading to people questioning whether or not these democratically elected leaders who steal from the public purse are the right people to take us forward often the answer that's posited as an alternative to democratic governments by the people and for the people is this idea of a strongman leader why don't we do what is happening in other parts of the world in East Asia and in some countries in Africa where individual leaders take it upon themselves and a particular elite to govern term after term after term in order to ensure stability and economic prosperity and although there are examples of governments of this kind where a kind of more authoritarian stance has led to improved economic social and human development outcomes for citizens it is by no means the rule these are the exceptions the data are clear and have been clear for many many years the best way to give the most people the best way of life and the most prosperity is by enabling people through regular elections that are clean and fair to choose their government and remove their governments at will that coupled with free media independent judiciaries strong institutions and other bollocks of democracy or one other ways in which it is possible to deliver on the promises of democracy I want to argue with you that the problem is not the system the problem is the people who occupy it and I want to use my own continent in my own country as an example to illustrate this I'm from South Africa on the youngest continent on earth where the average age is nineteen and a half years old at the last count at the last set of census data women marginally outnumbered men in Africa by 1 million citizens so if the face of Africa is a 19-year old woman why is it that the face of African government is a 70 or 80 or 90 year old President or mayor or governor or cabinet minister but that is what democracy looks like on my continent a huge disconnection between the so called leaders and the lid people in politics who cut their teeth during the Cold War proposing to lead a young continent through things like the fourth Industrial Revolution mechanization AI and the impact on things like the labor force this is the kind of leadership we have it is a problem not of the system but of the people who occupy that system paradoxically if you pan over to countries like the United States and Canada or parts of Europe you see a very different picture countries with pension crisis looming where the working age population is too old and there are not enough people to pay into the pension system aging populations with increasingly young leaders there is in fact a millennial who is about to vie for the Democratic nomination in the United States in Iowa right now something that we don't see in any kind of numbers in a place on a continent like Africa or people like Jacinda Auden the prime minister of New Zealand a woman in her 30s or the newly elected prime minister of Finland Sonam are in a woman in her thirties leading a government of women coalition government of women there are really exciting developments in the global north and in the West which enable younger voters in particular to feel as though that they they are connected to the project of democracy in countries and this is one of the things that's crucial to making democracy durable right it has to have people who have faith in the system who participates in elections who oversee their governments who read newspapers protect their judiciary's and are part of vibrant civil society organizations because when you have a leadership like we have in Africa that is so far removed from the people it is supposed to serve all it does is feed mistrust an absence of trust absence of representation absence of relevance these things make young people pull away from voting and you get situations in which voter turnout is in the thirty or forty eighth or fiftieth percentile instead of full virtu participation representing the will of the people and that's what's gonna make to paraphrase a certain American president democracy beautiful again is when everybody participates in it both young and old and we can do away with this world in which there is a straight-line correlation between your age and the likelihood that you are registered to vote or to participate in elections so if my theory is true that the problem is not with the hardware but with the software if my argument that democracy is by its very nature and by the proof of the data the right way to go when it comes to leadership in any given country then what can we do to engender more leadership by more young people more women more people from diverse backgrounds in order to affect these changes make democracy beautiful again make it something that people can trust once more well that's more complicated because one of the principles of democracy is contestation and so we need people of different backgrounds to step up and make themselves available this is a well-known set of data in the private sector the the the fact that diversity improves outcomes it's true of democracies as well there have been studies that have shown that when there are more women in government stills are more durable corruption goes down health outcomes are improved human development outcomes like maternal mortality they go down both live births go up people's lives are improved biodiversity in government diversity is a value in and of itself when it comes to the people we elect into government but we are not going to get diversity of leadership unless we're willing to do the work to nurture it it's not gonna appear out of nowhere and even when it does it will often face challenges from the status quo I've experienced those challenges myself when I was in political leadership in a system in which on any given day if you googled a picture of me I was invariably surrounded by men twice my age most of them old enough to be my father some wonderful leaders some extraordinary people who helped birth democracy in my country and some not so great leaders so unless we can change the way governments look we're not going to be able to attract the kind of talent that we deserve that's why we here in the UK in southern Africa and in Sweden founded a political Academy as a nonprofit organization to support train and inculcate values of ethics transparency and accountability in a new generation of political leaders but we're a drop in the ocean were one small nonprofit organization really what is needed is a large scale tipping point level defense of democracy that will bring talented people from a variety of backgrounds into government and there are some green shoots in Africa even as I complain about the division between the leaders and the lid boots wanna and so recently had a trade minister named Boogaloo Ken awenda who was in her 30s camera Sierra Leone I apologize recently appointed its inaugural chief technology officer so there are spaces in which young people are puncturing this culture of older male leadership certainly in Africa but it's not nearly happening at the same pace as it should be and certainly not at the same pace that as it is happening in the global North so we need to find ways to support young people women queer people people from rural communities differing ethnic backgrounds to come into government to serve in in the civil service to give technical advice grassroots support and bring all of their skills and experience to bear on this critical instrument of delivering a better life for as many people as possible the democratic system because unless we do the decline of democracy the distress in which democracy finds itself will continue and those who argue for an elite LED or Thor eteri and style of government which is supposed to guarantee certain outcomes but most often concentrates power in the hands of a few with little or no accountability they're gonna win this argument we need to do what we can to inject the best of what our society has into one of the most important levers for improving the lives of the people in that society we need to make democracy beautiful again thank you very much