STEVEN FRIEDMAN: Democracy is the only currency poor people have

If this country was not a democracy, millions who are alive today would probably be dead. A range of voices used Freedom Day last week to question progress since 1994. This was understandable because, almost a quarter century later, many of the ills of the apartheid period — racism and high levels of poverty and inequality — are still with us. It makes sense to ask whether the deal that made 1994 possible changed nearly as much as it should have. However, some critics went further: the problem, they insisted, was democracy itself, which they dismissed as pointless or worse as long as people live in poverty. There are two answers to this. The first is that anyone who thinks democracy means nothing has either never lived without it or has forgotten what it was like here when there was no democracy. Those who criticise democracy can only do it because democracy lets them speak. It is not trivial that people have a choice in who governs them and that they now have the right to be heard....

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