I would put a grander title here, but I'm not too confident in my writing on this.

Let's talk about democracy, shall we? There's been some discussion of it here, mostly in relation to the Democratic primaries, and how most of us are fairly apprehensive about the whole process, knowing what we know, and believing what we believe.

The Democratic primary finally wrapped up, and the DNC made the official decision on what people already knew: Barack Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee for the Presidency of the United States. 

Ah, but you see, there's a catch. The catch is a figure in Illinois politics called Tony Rezko, who was recently convicted on 16 of 24 counts of wrongdoing, which boil down to handing out dirty money to Illinois politicians. There is supposedly, sealed testimony in the Rezko case that is damaging to Obama that the judge didn't let out.

Obama has yet to accused to wrongdoing, but it doesn't sound good for his campaign that the guy that helped the nominee buy his dream home committed the ultimate sin in Chicago politics, getting caught, and lends credence to his now vanquished opponent's thesis that there's an October Surprise that could be a game changer in the general election.

Cynically, this means that I have a choice this year, between a charismatic young politician who has zero experience running anything large scale and John McCain (whom I apparently must prefix any comment about my beliefs of his policies with "I respect his service but...") whose conservative views frighten me, and his economic plans make no sense. I want another Conservative Christian in the Oval Office like I want a cerebral hemorrhage. 

One could say prospects for the country do not look good, and that's not even mentioning the crippling national debt and loss of goodwill the current President has left us with. And this is what democracy has brought us, I hear liberals across the internet say.

Here is the contrast:

I was recently in South Africa, and yes, the xenophobia was on everyone's lips, it was the topic of conversation. The xenophobia, of course has roots in the current democratic system. To get elected, the current president of the country (Thabo Mbeki) made a lot of promises to low income, rural citizens who didn't live near Cape Town that if they moved into portions of Cape Town that had yet to be built, but were somehow eligible for voting, that if they voted for him, he'd give them jobs and homes.

Well, he hasn't.

The people who moved, then, instead of moving back to their old homes and face a certain amount of disappointment and chagrin, made their own homes in portions of the city that have sporadic running water and power. I have seen these slums, and they stretch for miles as far as the eye can see. If you are lucky in there, your house's roof is made of more than one large piece of metal or wood, and houses less than eight people in a glorified studio apartment.

As you can imagine, resentment builds.

So. These residents begin to see the success of immigrants from other countries around South Africa and become envious, who live far more comfortably than they do. Some are immigrants from Zimbabwe who came to South Africa to avoid persecution at the hands of their fellow citizens. The city government of Cape Town, having to come up with something, begins to build small brick houses with access to water, and an electricity scheme to help those same disadvantaged residents to supply electricity for themselves and the people around them. In some cases, I don't know how many, these small houses are turned around and sold by the residents, who then claim the government does nothing for them.

Before we continue this story, I ought to mention the sizable gap between the rich and the poor. Within a 15 minute walk of the docks, where there is a sign saying it has been six days since a risk of a debilitating injury, there is an Aston Martin dealership, a truly world class shopping center with two movie theaters and a five star hotel.  Too much too quickly?

But. Grievances stack up, and so something finally snapped in Johannesburg. Immigrants homes and businesses were broken into and torn apart. (Some enterprising business owners took the opportunity to deface the property of their business rivals who were not South African natives. You go xenophobia and capitalism!) What makes this so heartbreaking for some South African citizens is because those same countries from which the immigrants are from helped South Africa defeat apartheid, so natives violently ejecting immigrants is particularly cruel.

Xenophobia spread and Thabo Mbeki was conveniently out of the country, while South African residents were left with the clothes on their backs as the city police had to bring in riot police to stop the violence and intimidation, while also trying to bus the immigrants away from the danger. Why mention that? Because Mbeki and Mugabe, the strongman in charge of Zimbabwe are friends.

A decade or so on in democracy in South Africa, the common refrain is "we've come a long way", and by and large, they have. But, what they're starting to learn is that democracy once they get it, is not a pannaccea that fixes problems the minute we move to the form of representation and social organization. It's something that must be actively engaged by the population to continue its good operation. Democracy, then, is not something passive or robust. It is, in fact, quite fragile. It must be worked at.

We have seen what happens when the current electorate is not informed. It leads to abuses, and the world has suffered for it. I'm not going to list the ways for fear I've missed an important one, the list is that long. Democracy, this little thing of ours, (typed with not a little bit of frivolity) despite the large, expensive buildings that exist to serve justice do not serve their purpose if the people filling them and paying for their upkeep don't also believe and work towards democracy.

This isn't to say that "look, we could be South Africa, and by comparison, isn't America or democracy great?", but instead that this kind of representative system is something that is tied to, and will become more and less responsive to the people it is supposed to serve based on how much feedback it gets and how much the people interact with the offices of the state. South Africa, then, is learning about how dangerous representative government can be, and I think that some people ought to be reminded that just because you dislike the two major candidates is not proof that the system doesn't work, but instead that American voters made a choice, even if that choice was, in some people's minds from a small palate of options.

It means something to me that the palate is there.