Drum: DEMOCRACY II
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If a brand loses customers, it must make changes or its business folds.
The same is true for politics and politicians. So why this continued
loyalty to the Labour Party when your vote is clearly being taken for
granted? Gary Younge in New York.
Power2
the People
y the age of 44, Sakumzi Macozoma had
already lived many lives when he received the
Black Empowerment Businessman of the Year
award. His job title, Deputy Chairman of the
Standard Bank’s investment division, is the latest in a
series of reinventions. Born to a black working-class
family in Port Elizabeth, he has been a student
activist, a prisoner on Robben Island, an African
National Congress official, and an MP in the new
South African parliament. When I met him in 2001
he was Deputy Chairman of the Standard Bank’s
investment division, gliding gracefully on the marble
floors of global capital.
B
“We are living in what they call one of the ‘privileged
moments of history’,” he says, sounding like a dot
com millionaire before the bust. “I am a beneficiary
of that.”
Such is the power of any transition. The pace of
change is such that individuals cease to live in real
time. Human journeys that under normal circumstances take decades, if not generations, are completed
in a few years, if not months. So the prisoner becomes
president; law breakers become law makers; armed
guerrillas become arms dealers. The person who slept
on your floor only 10 years ago, after a wild party, is
now a government minister with an entourage. »