Of course, not all South Africans agree that building a democracy is a priority. They are not alone. Doubt about democracy's benefits is common across the globe, particularly in new democracies. Indeed, O'Donnell and Schmitter coined the term desencanto (disenchantment) to describe the doubts about democracy which emerge when the system is achieved, often after long and bitter struggle. This book has tried to show that South Africans, like everyone else, need democracy not only because it is the only system which can allow people to control their lives, but also because it does offer the tools needed to fight for a fairer society. It has argued, in effect, that those who suffered and died to achieve democracy did not waste their lives, and that the system established in 1994 opens possibilities which may still be realised.

It has also rejected the view, still stubbornly embraced by those who mourn the passing of apartheid, that democracy must fail here because South Africa – and South Africans – have not developed to an economic or cultural stage where the system could work. Democracy can survive and grow here and in the rest of the continent. Everyone everywhere is ‘ready for democracy’. Whether democracy is ready for them is a more difficult question. In South Africa, as elsewhere, the system works well for some but not others – for those who enjoy access to collective action but not for those who don't. The effect is to repeat many of the divisions created by apartheid.

This is so, however, not because the constitution imposed on the country an alien form of government which traps many of its people in servitude. Democratisation does not mean foisting a template on societies. On the contrary, it means empowering and enabling people to reject the templates which do not work for them and to choose the social forms which, in their view, do. And it means overcoming the powerlessness, real and perceived, which prevents most citizens from engaging in the collective action that holds power to account and ensures that decision-making is as much as possible an expression of popular sovereignty rather than elite preference.