There are occasions when I have the privilege and opportunity to listen to fascinating and extremely learned presentations from distinguished academics and scholars. On one such occasion, a couple of weeks ago, I listened to a series of presentations on democracy and development hosted by the Nelson Mandela School of Governance, at the University of Cape Town.

This topic is particularly relevant today, given the rise of populism of the wrong kind and the emergence of democracies with dictatorships in countries long regarded as the north star of liberal values and democracy.

The world is going through what amounts to a reversal of liberalism, with democracy itself in the process of transition. It is a mistake not to closely study Steve Banon and Alexander Dugin – they serve as the intellectual beacons opposing political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s vision of an eternal liberal order, which he envisaged after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which he confidently described as ‘The End of History’.

Reversals of liberalism are not being driven by communists or Islamists, but from within the Western world itself, spearheaded by figures such as those behind Breitbart and the MAGA movement.

Several factors are converging to shape the current state of affairs: geopolitical competition, globalisation (which has not worked for all) and the rise of national populism, exploited by a new kind of politician that does not respect the existing system. Such is the decline of liberalism that it has led Michael Ignatieff, a scholar of liberalism himself and a follower of philosopher Isaiah Berlin, to lament the sudden descent. Ignatieff wrote a lengthy essay in the Liberties Journal defending the value of liberalism – a sign that things are really bad for liberals.

Curtis Yarvin, an American blogger, has received significant support among anti- liberals. He wrote a manifesto (an anti- liberal Magna Carta) under the pen name of Mencius Moldbug, calling for monarchy in the US, with a sort of Imperial CEO presiding over global affairs.

It seems we are back to square one when it comes to the kind of political system and ruler needed to deal with today’s uncertainty and chaos. The paradox of our time is that chaos leads to uncertainty, fear and a growing desire for more autocrats. Until the terms of autocrats end, global chaos will generate more autocrats. Progressive forces are far from gaining new ground against this new force and their efforts are insufficient to be consequential.

What type of rule we should have is a very important question for Africa, given the diverse governance models on the continent and that many States are having to consider the relationship between liberal democracy and positive and progressive developmental outcomes. If you consider recent election upsets in Botswana, Senegal and Mozambique, and military coups in the Sahel, it is now between democracy led by young people, military dictatorships or one-man-ruling-forever-type systems.

The fundamental question is whether it is always the case that democracy leads to improvements in the lives of ordinary people.

In South Africa, while the country has moved from minority rule to a more inclusive political system, it cannot be said that a liberal democratic system has produced an equitable society. Social exclusion and injustice persist.

Questions about the nature of democracy are not so much about the form of democracy but the substance of this system. There is so much to be said about the substance of democracy. For instance, the US, often hailed as the greatest democracy on Earth, operates under a two-party system that, over time, has become heavily influenced by big money. The two parties in the US, in collaboration with the media, academic intelligentsia and other elites, have been able to rig the system to benefit themselves, a process Noam Chomsky describes as “the manufacturing of consent”.

The US is in the midst of a radical right-wing shift. By all standards, the purges, executive orders and recalling of past programmes signal the rise of autocracy. These developments do not come from nowhere; they are a direct response to the actions of liberal elites. This reaction has inspired a whole new right-wing movement – one from which even the left should learn.

In general, both Republicans and Democrats have created a semblance of popular rule. It is easy to build such a veneer through media spin and amplification on social media. In a democratic society, the tools of propaganda have become instrumental in the art of persuasion. Social media and Big AI are technological platforms now weaponised for such purposes. The rise of AI is not driven by economic forces, but by a desire for consumer and social control

There is often a naïve assumption that democracy leads to a “good society’’ (John Dewey’s notion of it) and that such a good society extends the hand of friendship beyond the boundaries of a democratic State. However, no great power has performed very well on this score, even though, with a great sense of political amnesia, we are often asked to judge the bad political habits of others.

Great powers, as John Mearsheimer eloquently reminds us, live in two worlds: a set of rules for themselves and a set of rules for others.

With Donald Trump’s election for a second, non-consecutive term as US President, these two worlds are now one. He rejects hypocrisy and says it as it is. Trump is, in effect, the tragedy that has befallen the broken promises of the liberals, and of liberalism’s failure to address the duplicity that has ruled the international order since 9/11. It has always been a case of one rule for us and another for you.

For now, progressive forces are in retreat, and what the US teaches us is what the right understood very well: connect people to people, people to a party, build leadership across all classes, co-opt the billionaires and use lawfare to break the old rules. In effect, the ‘flatten the earth’ theory has gained ascendency once again.