Celebrating local democracy across the Commonwealth
There is an old joke that “in democracy it is your vote that counts, but in feudalism it is your count that votes!” Today, on the International Day of Democracy, we need to remember that the transition from feudalistic and other non-participatory forms of governance to democracy is a relatively recent phenomenon in the Commonwealth. Women in the UK were granted the right to vote in 1928, and young people aged 18-21 years only in 1969. In many of our Commonwealth nations, democratic systems were only established in the 1960s. In my own country, South Africa, where I grew up witnessing the hardship and suffering of people within an unjust system, a fully democratic state was only created in 1994.