Old-style democracy was when every man went to the chief’s place and participated personally in the affairs of the village. Everyone contributed to the conversations, and the chief took the consensus as the voice of the people. But the village has widened so immeasurably that we now have new-style democracy.Today, the way it works is that we periodically elect people whose ideas reflect ours to go and speak for us at various forums — at local government, for example. The decisions of those forums are meant to reflect the will of the people.Between the elections, we continue to speak out – through word of mouth, cellphones, blogs, talk radio, letters and opinion pieces in newspapers. We toyi-toyi and we protest; we remain loud and noisy, because we cherish our right to be heard.This right is entrenched in the constitution’s bill of rights, which guarantees that "everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes freedom of the press and other media, freedom to receive an...
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