One of democracy's core functions is to hold power accountable. ‘Mainstream development orthodoxy’ also tells us that accountability is essential to ensuring that government serves everyone, including people living in poverty.

In most conventional accounts, that usually means holding the government accountable. Because citizens enjoy rights, they are able to speak, organise and act in concert to ensure that those who govern tell them what they are doing and why they are doing it. If what they are doing is not what citizens want, they face vocal pressure to change. But, contrary to the claims of devotees of the unfettered market, accountability is not restricted to government – it can equally well be demanded of private interests whose actions and decisions affect the lives and interests of the citizenry.

Accountability is rarely a product of the efforts of individuals. It stems from institutions and organisations and how groups use them. The media (digital as well as conventional), the academy and citizens’ organisations enable the people to demand answers and to insist on change if they do not like what they hear. This should ensure government that is more responsive to the needs of citizens. While the real world of democracy is much messier than this account suggests, accountability understood in this way has, across the globe, forced the holders of power to accommodate the needs and wishes of citizens. There can be few issues on which this is more needed than a country's response to a pandemic which threatens the health and well-being of everyone who lives within its borders. Democracies should be better equipped to deal with pandemics than authoritarian societies because those who decide how to respond are more likely to be forced to explain and to correct behaviours and policies which do not meet citizens’ needs. But accountability is more complicated than that.

Democratic rights make accountability possible but they do not make it inevitable unless people can and will use them to hold power to account. Not all citizens enjoy the same power to hold government to account. Citizens who have a pressing interest in making themselves heard are often powerless and so the accountability relationship simply does not work for them. A consequence of the realities discussed in chapter 1 is that, in South Africa, it is the ‘insiders’ who join the organisations and make use of the institutions which hold power holders to account.