We have now been in the USA for 2 weeks. We have barely had time to sleep and so many exciting things have happened that it would be hard to even list them all.

Our SAWIP theme for week 2 was Democracy. This topic was particularly interesting to me as a law student. My recent research project was presented on voting rights for non-citizens and looked closely at the interaction between voting rights and democracy. At our Idasa panel on Monday night, experts in the field, Eric Robinson (National Endowment for Democracy), Jon Elliot (Human Rights Watch) and Dr. Chloe Schwenke (Africa Bureau of USAID) provided some insight into the concept of democracy. Perhaps the quote of the night was “Democracy is like love- it’s hard to define, but you know when you’ve found it”.

Democracy is a fluid concept especially with the rise in International migration and globalization. The rights and obligations that come with citizenship are no longer as clearly defined as they were in the past. This means that democracy no longer means the practice of resident citizens voting for their local and national government. It must encourage the participation of others, especially non citizen residents. This concept is in line with the idea of street democracy which allows for those who are part of the community, who pay taxes, who send their children to local schools, to participate in the decisions that affect their lives. This definition of democracy means that citizenship and voting rights are not the only facets of democracy. We must consider a complete package of rights and obligations including freedom of speech, ease of government transition, distribution of power and the quality of public debate.

We spent the weekend in New York meeting with the South African UN delegates, visiting the New York Stock Exchange and touring the city. My highlight was the visit to the UN where the poor tour guide was overwhelmed with questions about the lack of a female Secretary General, the lack of representation for Africa in a permanent seat on the Security Council and the ANC’s non-voting seat in the General Assembly in the 1980’s. Interestingly, Ban Ki-Moon was sworn in for a second term as Secretary General just last week (on June 21) so perhaps he will be able to change the Security Council composition.