Bottom-Up vs Top-Down

It's amazing just how much faith and how much blame we invest in our leaders! Incredibly, some people believe that a single man can turn everyone's fortunes around. And on the opposite scale, most waste no time in blaming all their ills on just the same man.

Before I present my case, let me just clarify that I do believe that good leadership can make a significant difference. A good economy can be killed off very quickly by bad policy, and a few radically good decisions can spur a country to new heights.

However. I am a strong believer in "bottom-up" more than "top-down". In other words, the success of a country depends on many Joe Citizens working hard at McDonalds more than it does on one man in some fancy office in some government building. When you multiply Mr Faithful Joe Citizen a million times over, you have a successful country. Imagine taking charge of a country full of slothful citizens who live to see what government is going to dish out to them, rather than what they can produce for themselves!

This is the failure of Africa. Not wrong border lines, colonialism, corrupt dictators and unfair trade rules. They all played their role, but the real power of a multitude of good citizens cannot be overruled by one leader. I'm not sure that the old saying "A country gets the government it deserves" is always true, but it sure has a lot of merit.

It might seem like I'm discrediting the ACDP here. In light of what I have said, who needs a government? In fact, what I am emphasising here is what ACDP supporters have always recognised: when you take personal responsibility for your own life and for the impact of your actions, everyone benefits. The emphasis of the ACDP is on the personal integrity of its staff and on legislation that emphasises everyone's shared responsibility. I'm sure we all agree on this: if government can convey a sense of personal responsibility to the masses, it means less governance is needed - and that's got to be a good thing.

The Value of Federalism

Let me first state at the outset that the ACDP is one of the only parties in South Africa that is built on a federalist approach, meaning at a simple level, if I understand correctly, that the party is driven from the ground up. The opposite form to federalism is probably socialism or communism where the unit at the top is responsible for a far greater share of decision making, and their decisions are simply to be implemented at ground level. This of course is very much the case with the ANC, who have strong communist roots.

This may seem to be a curious conundrum. Those outside of Christianity may perceive it to be a highly systematic, heirarchical institution. Historically, that is not far off the mark. However, with the advent of Protestantism and the emphasis of Martin Luther and others on general access to the Bible, Christianity has moved far closer to federalism. Of course, the authority of the Bible is a central point to which individuals adhere, but the modern church has a much greater access to the views of the multitude, who have been given far greater freedom to match the decisions of human authority against the absolute authority of the Bible. In fact, much of the thriving church today consists of churches that don't fall under the traditional heirarchy of centuries ago.

The basic result is that the emphasis of the ACDP rests more with the absolute authority of the Bible than the absolute authority of the party leaders. Of course there are Scripture principles that aren't explicit and require debate and a final decision at top level, but the majority of Scriptural principles are really undebatable.

The key principle that drives federalism is simply this: take ownership, take responsibility. A party thrives far better when its individual components function successfully on their own than when central leaders have to commit investigative teams to track down how well instructions are being followed through. The principle of accepting responsibility is central to Scripture, where each of us is held accountable for what we say, do and even think. When we accept that we are sinners and ultimately are in no position to blame our misfortune on sexism, racism, apartheid, ethnic and class divides, mean bosses, relentless families and anything else that comes to mind, we are the starting block of actually doing something useful with what we have. In that frame of mind, the first thought of the party can be "what can I give" rather than "what can I get?"

While federalism would seem to be weak in that it grants too much power to those who are incompetent, the culture of taking responsibility is exactly what counters that threat.