The balance of political power in South Africa is unhealthy and needs realignment, former state president FW de Klerk said on Monday.
On paper, the country enjoyed a competitive democracy, he told the annual conference of the National Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers at Kleinmond in the southern Cape.
"But in any democracy, where one party has 70 percent of the vote and where six, seven, eight parties are fighting and at each others' throats for a share of 30 percent of the vote, it's not a healthy democracy.
"What we really need is a realignment in our party political structures, a realignment which will result in normalising our political parties so that we find parties which bring people together irrespective of their race or colour. which bring people because of shared values, shared policies and shared beliefs."
This would allow a system in which there were two major parties, one just to the left of centre and the other just to the right, hopefully marginalising the "wild people" and activists.
He did not know when this would happen, but it would, because ten years after democracy there were still communists, people who were "hard line socialist" in their thinking, in the governing alliance who wanted a return to the failed experiments of Eastern Europe and the rest of Africa.
At the same time, millions of moderate South Africans who supported that alliance had become convinced that free market principles were the only way to achieve the growth and create jobs and wealth.
The glue that held this alliance together, opposition to apartheid, was now gone.
"The glue which a healthy democracy needs is shared beliefs, shared principles, building of political principle and policies and philosophies which can bridge the divides."
De Klerk also warned that socio-economic transformation had to be implemented in a way that did not disrupt national unity or lead to friction between communities.
The problem was that South Africa's minorities had not been sufficiently consulted on transformation which, as a result, had become a divisive issue.
There was very little frank debate on the issue: instead, whites were withdrawing behind their security fences into a new laager and not making the contribution to broader society that they could and would like to make.
"South Africans need to talk to each other about transformation," he said. - Sapa
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