Author name: debbie.w.collier

Written by Alistair Ruiters

After two years of participating in numerous workshops, update meetings, hearing unfamiliar voices,
blurred and broken online images that flashed across my computer screen as yet another online
meeting was interrupted with “can you hear me”or “put your mic on mute” this past Saturday I
finally had the privilege of attending an in person meeting of the We Care project. I was anxious to
place faces to the voices and wondered how the members of the project would receive me.

My anxieties were misplaced. I was warmly received and managed to consume some lovely snacks
and coffee before the session started. The members sitting around the room were dressed in their
finest clothes, a mixture of church, formal dresses, and traditional wear. I was glad that I had put on
a collared shirt. Proceedings kicked off with introductions that focused mainly on why the project
was started and the progress that had been made to date. Much of this we had heard before. The
best was yet to come as the new executive/ management team was introduced and each member of
the team spoke of their growing confidence and reliance on the rest of the members for support.
Personally I felt the moment seemed lost on all. At least from the comments that were made. This
moment in the life of any co-op, I believe needs to be recognised and celebrated. what I witnessed
was the passing of the baton. the team from UWC had over the past two years worked with the coop
members and successfully empowered them to now take control, decide, manage and forge their
own destiny as a collective. Some coops are stuck in a dependency cycle. A dependency on the
support organisation to manage the co-op. Here today the dependency cycle was broken and
members were taking ownership and control – this is one of the cornerstones of the co-op principles.
I was moved as I saw the various executive members walk up and introduce themselves. This is the
moment to build upon. The project now needs to reinforce ownership and control by members at all
levels. The role of the support organisation needs to be clearly delineated with roles and
responsibilities clearly defined.

The next part of the proceedings was dedicated to handing out certificates. This was indeed the
most celebrated part of the afternoon. A combination of music song and dance accompanied each
walk up to the podium to receive a certificate confirming that the member had the competency to
use several apps, to engage the new world of social media, internet commerce but most importantly
engage in the project that seeks to build an e commerce online platform.

I was amused at some of the empowering stories of how the new knowledge of smart phones had
been deployed and it reminded that as South Africans no matter  how old or young we are, we are
always willing to step up to the challenge and find something new. I felt sad thinking of lost
opportunities to empower people, noting that such a small gesture by UWC and its partners and
changed the lives of 50 women. But the day confirmed that we have so much more to do, so much
to celebrate and in each and every small way we can change the world into a better place for all its
citizens.

Written by Sedica Davids

The World Economic Forum website describes “a new chapter in human development, enabled by
extraordinary technological advances that are merging the physical, digital and biological worlds”.
But the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” is about more than just technology-driven change; it is an
opportunity to help everyone, including leaders, policymakers and people from all income groups
and nations, to harness converging technologies to create an inclusive, human-centred future. The
University of the Western Cape’s Social Law Projecteels that the real opportunity is to look beyond
technology and find ways to engage with legal, social and workplace justice.

This blog describes emerging technological systems that may challenge current forms of political
participation, with an eye on its transformative nature.

The classic definition of democracy refers to one person one vote, or people deciding on policies
without any intermediaries. This was transformed in the 18th  and 19th  centuries to representative
democracy, where one person is voted on to represent the interests of many. The latest
transformation, made possible by the World Wide Web, has resulted in liquid democracy, an
approach that uses web technology to enable users to interact in new ways.

A 2019 paper describes liquid democracy as a cyber democracy, that combines representative
democracy and spontaneous direct democracy by using technologies of the Web 2.0. In recent years,
the quest has been to investigate if liquid democracy could make a more participatory and direct
democracy possible to fulfil the democratic promise of freedom and equality of the people. It goes
further and posits that “One could even ask if a supra-national system could become a democratic
option by using digital technologies for discussions and deciding”. 

In liquid democracy, each member of the electorate may directly vote on a topic, or temporarily
choose a representative by delegating her voting rights to another voter. Individuals who are either
apathetic for an election or trust the knowledge of another voter more than their own, can still have
an impact on the election result (through delegating). An individual who casts a vote for themselves
and for others is known as a guru (Christoff and Grossi [2017]). 

In 2009, the first liquid democracy software called “Liquid Feedback” was created as “a tool for
decision making”. Another software application called Adhocracy was also developed, using different
software programmes to reflect different philosophies toward liquid democracy. In each case, an
organisation was set up to further explore possibilities for the software. The work of these two
organisations has resulted in applications of liquid democracy systems, using the principle of
transitive participation, or transitive voting, to encourage active participation in decision making .

A recent study raises the following critical questions in relation to the proclivity of the idea of liquid
democracy:
(1) How do emerging Web technologies deepen democratic participation?
(2) How do we avoid or transform scenarios where Web technologies are employed to maintain
political-economic oligarchies of power? and
(3) What new political cultures or political contracts may emerge through the convergence of Web
technology and political engagement?

What we can learn from this as the DPCP-We Care project is that the underlying ideas of liquid
democracy may inform the project as it enters the technology development phase. In harnessing
existing technologies to further the principle of “dignity of work”, the DPCP-We Care-project
believes that the software we engage with must be fit for purpose. Whichever route or combination
of routes we take, will foster capacity building for driving democratic decision-making processes with
domestic workers at the centre, remembering that at the core of the project is meaningful
participation and decision making by domestic workers with the aim of developing a digital platform
as a marketplace for collective empowerment and for bargaining.

About the author: Sedica Davids is a caring feminist co-creating a just society with inspired
individuals for positive change.