The South African State faces a crisis of legitimacy.

On Wednesday the 8^th of May 2019, voters turned out to participate in the 6^th National elections since the end of the Apartheid State in 1994.  Over the course of the days that followed, the media devoted extensive resources, airtime and space to covering and commenting on the historic process.

The headlines that marked the period referred mainly to the extent of the growth or the decline of various parties to attain a percentage of the vote and the main debate was whether the ANC as the governing party would be able to retain its 60% support among voters.

Some media and commentators did make mention of the low voter turnout, but none bothered to provide a contextual analysis of what low voter turnouts may mean for our young democracy.

This is surprising and eminently deeply concerning that the entire media establishment, committed as they are to maintaining the status quo, or at least ensuring the ascension of Cyril Ramaphosa and his faction, to the helm of the presidency, failed to raise, in any significant way, the enormous elephant that stood in the centre of the ROC in Pretoria as the results of the elections were announced.

The question of legitimacy did however not escape the President of the ANC, who during his victory speech after the elections results were announced, was at pains to make the false claim that; “[o]ur people have spoken; they’ve done so clearly and emphatically”, while describing the elections as a resounding expression of the will of the people.

The claims by the President and the silence of the media on the false claims, of a clear and emphatic mandate, raises more questions than it answers.  For example, questions such as; should the media, as the one sector of society tasked with raising the critical questions facing society, be so unanimously silent on such a critical challenge facing our democracy? Does the fact that no mainstream media has focused on the loss of legitimacy during these elections be a warning sign to us that vested interests within the media mean that we should be weary of trusting their bona fides? To what extent has the media ignored the question of legitimacy in order to further the interests of their own vested financial and political interests in the political domain?

Whatever the reasons behind the media blackout on this question, the fact of the matter remains that South Africa has, for the first time since the end of Apartheid minority rule, slipped back into the realm of minority rule.

Lets consider the facts before we consider the philosophical and practical implications.

South Africa has a voting Age Population of 36 million people according to the IEC. Ten million of the 36 Million potential voters have not been registered with the IEC. Of the 26.7 Million that are registered, only 17,6 Million voted. This amounts to 49% of the voting age population in the country.

This effectively means that less than half of the voting age population participated in the voting process. As an institution which ascribes to be a democratic process, this should be the first warning bell that our democracy, and the state which emerges from it, carries a minority approval which is in direct conflict with the idea that democratic representative elections should be an expression of the will of the people.

The implication of a minority voting a government into office, is that the wining party in this election, has obtained the approval and mandate of only 28% of the voting age population.

So, what does this all mean for South Africa and our political future?

Without rehashing the history of how states developed, it will suffice for our purpose here to acknowledge that the state emerges as an inescapable institution within all modern societies today.

The state emerges out of a consensus that it is necessary for social cohesion and for the realisation and protection of individual and collective freedoms and justice for all its citizens, because only an agency with the power of coercion, including violence, would be capable of discharging the many varied and demanding tasks involved. There can be no effective system of justice in the absence of a state, at least so it appears.

Given that the state claims the exclusive right to coercion and violence in society, the legitimacy of such a state is of critical importance. It is particularly so in situations where there is a contestation around issues of freedom and justice.

In such a case we can imagine one scenario in which the social order imposed by the state is just and that the state itself, by whatever criteria, is legitimate. In that case we will naturally say that in view of its legitimacy people are morally obliged to accept the impositions of the regime, and that they are obliged to endorse and comply with the laws of that state.

But what about another scenario in which the regime continues to count as legitimate but certain of its laws are unjust. The injustice of those laws will mean that people are not under obligation to endorse and comply with them.

Which leads us to another scenario in which the legitimacy of the state is called into question. When a state or regime is illegitimate then the laws it upholds are individually illegitimate and the branches of government that run the state are illegitimate too.

The question of social justice thus bears the final arbitration on the way in which rules and laws are imposed on citizens. By most accounts the social order will be legitimate insofar as it is sustained in an appropriate way, illegitimate insofar as it is not sustained in an appropriate way.

Take as an example of a situation in which the state uses its vast resources and monopoly on coercion and violence to undermine the social justice claims of a community such as Xolobeni, or as it has done in the past on the workers of Marikana and continues to do against thousands of protests that erupt across South Africa every year.

If the government has been elected by 28% of the voting age population, how could it consistently claim to be either elected by the majority or that it may legitimately impose its coercive privileges to deny social justice and other freedoms to thousands of communities who protest the lack of social justice.

In such a scenario we now enter into the realm where, as Jean-Jacque Rousseau suggested 250 years ago, that many existing states (during the 18^th century) were not involved in a legitimate exercise but merely in ‘subjugating a multitude’.

Have we arrived at that point so soon after the end of one form of minority rule, only to be duped into supporting another form of minority rule?

At play here is both the limited form of democracy which dilutes the citizens participation in the democratic process to making a cross once every five years for a preferred ruler, as well as the denial of real and meaningful participation of citizens in their own governance.

Not only have more than half of the voting age population refused to participate in the limited franchise offered to them every five years as a substitute to participating in their own governance, but they have also been denied real and meaningful opportunities to participate in their own governance.

It may be possible to imagine a legitimate state system in which the majority do not participate in representative electoral processes, but who nonetheless meaningfully participate in their own governance through other institutions, but it is not conceivable that one can have a legitimate state in which both elements are not realised.

In South Africa currently, both elements are not realised and thus the question of the legitimacy of the state must arise. The fact that our media have been so silent about this blatant inability to meet the minimum threshold of a democratic state must be a grave concern to us all.

The media and the political establishment are taking a dangerous gamble that the rising trend of protest, disaffection and alienation of a growing army of unemployed and desperate youth, will somehow miraculously dissipate and the dilemma of the States declining legitimacy will not be called into question and the media`s complicity in legitimating such a system becomes all the more critical.

The task of the media is to ask the critical questions and place them firmly in the public discourse, not to hide them from view. Anything less is a betrayal of the struggle for democracy and social justice.