Freedom, Alienation and our Hollow Democracy
“Let me at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It is the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies…Many may not have rationalised it, may not even understand, may not be able to articulate it. But they feel it.” Jimmy Reid, Clydesdale trade unionist, after being elected as rector of Glasgow University. April 1994, that moment under the African sun, when South Africans, young and old, the healthy and the infirm, queued in seemingly endless lines at polling stations to cast their vote in a democratic process , a vote that would at long last, signal their enfranchisement, and the end of centuries of exploitation, oppression and disenfranchisement. In a word, it would be t...