TONY LEON: Lessons from the battle for an open public space
' The courts, despite some energetic rigging attempts by the majority party, still push back against a delinquent state; civil society, far from being muzzled, is fully throated in its denunciations of state capture and corruption'
Does distance lend enchantment, or just more distance?Writing this column in Tel Aviv, on the day Israel celebrates its 69th anniversary of independence, just days after South Africa commemorated its 23rd Freedom Day, lends no easy answers.My brief spell in the Holy Land is to teach Masters students at a university here a course entitled “Democratic transitions and recessions”. The case of South Africa provides no end of lessons on how to overcome centuries of division and conflict and then embrace democracy. But, after two decades, we have slipped into a grey zone where waves of freedom get caught in an undertow of semi-authoritarian backsliding.
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