Why is Political Tolerance an important element of a democratic political culture and what are the obstacles to Political Tolerance in South Africa?
Why is Political Tolerance an important element of a democratic political culture and what are the obstacles to Political Tolerance in South Africa? What is political tolerance? Political tolerance is the willingness to extend basic rights and civil liberties to persons and groups whose viewpoints differ from one's own. Being patient and tolerant of other peoples political perspectives and viewpoints. It is one of the central principles of a liberal democracy. The individual rights and freedoms that a culture of political tolerance affords its citizens encourages people to think for themselves without being afraid of intimidation, even if their opinions offend sections of the population. In South Africa the expression of those beliefs is protected by one of our core democratic tools, the Constitution. By allowing people to freely voice their political opinions, political tolerance also exposes those political ideas to criticism. Instead, if they were suppressed the majority of the population would not be able to give their evaluation on the ideas. Unfortunately we as humans are not born absolutely tolerant, but must learn to be tolerant. In a non-political context, when we are younger and play a game with other children who play it differently to us, depending on what we are taught, we will be tolerant of the other child. Therefore, in our youth, it is a very important
Why is there a need for World Development?
Why is there a need for World Development? In the world today, there are developed countries like Britain and Japan, developing countries like Brazil and Malaysia and less developed countries (LDC's) like Bangladesh and Mali where people regularly starve to death. If we are to have a fair world, then the LDC's will need greater help from the developed countries. It is also in the interests of developed countries to help the less developed because they need new markets for their goods and they need products like cotton, tea and coffee from the less developed countries. The world is now inter-dependent. Most LDC's are in areas where there are regular natural disasters like earthquakes and floods. For example nearly every year Bangladesh has had bad floods. Many LDC's suffer from wars sometimes caused by corruption, or by the way the country was split up when colonised by Europeans a hundred years ago. A neighbouring country can often move from developing to less developed when war refugees arrive needing shelter and food. All LDC's suffer from debt. They have to borrow money from developed country banks and pay large amounts of interest to the bank, which could have been spent on development. Many LDC's try to get money from abroad by growing and selling cash crops. The land used to grow these is often the best farmland, which could be used for people to grow their own food
