This betrays a simplistic understanding of democracy. In short, its meaning cannot be derived from decomposing its etymology, and your take here is ... certainly unique.
Democracy is not just voting. Actual full democracy is predicated on a fairly large number of fundamental rights, as well as duties. Democracy is antithetical to majority rule, in which the rights of minorities can be ignored or trampled by the majority.
Zulus ruling over Xhosas can never be democratic, because nobody is "ruling over" anybody else in a democracy, no matter their ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, and so on.
Some people call what I'm describing here "liberal" democracy, but that's to distract from the fundamental fact that there is no meaningful definition of democracy that isn't liberal. If we're not free and equal, we cannot participate in democracy, and therefore it isn't democracy.
> Actual full democracy is predicated on a fairly large number of fundamental rights, as well as duties.
This is an entirely modern idea and really has nothing to do with the concept. It's the typical leftist tendency to appropriate a word that people see as good and then redefine it to be something which the leftist themselves want, and then hope that people still associate it with good.
It's the same thing with the word nation, love, marriage and a multitude of other concepts.
> Zulus ruling over Xhosas can never be democratic, because nobody is "ruling over" anybody else in a democracy, no matter their ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, and so on.
Zulus making laws for Xhosas is most definitely Zulus ruling over Xhosas. Just because the Zulus also give the Xhosas rights to vote does not make them one people or mean that all of a sudden, Xhosas are ruling themselves.
Demos is a synonym for ethnos, and for all of history except maybe the last 80 years people would have understood democracy as self-determination of ethnic groups. The reason why everyone wanted democracy has always been that peoples, i.e. ethnic groups, want to rule themselves, and don't want to be ruled by others.
If Palestinians are 10% of the electorate in a Jewish nation state then they can never write laws for themselves, they can never rule themselves. There can be no democracy for Palestinians in a situation like that.
If Zulus and Xhosas each make up 50% of the electorate then voting is not democratic, it's a battle for one ethnic group to try and rule the other, and the weapon is just voting.
Xhosas don't want to be ruled by Zulus, Zulus and Xhosas don't want to be ruled by Afrikaners, Afrikaners don't want to be ruled by the English, Poles don't want to be ruled by Germans or Russians, Russians don't want to be ruled over by Lithuanians, Jews don't want to be ruled over by Arabs, and Palestinians don't want to be ruled by Jews.
Everyone knows this, even you. Redefining words won't change this. Nominalism won't change this.
Almost invariably, even under the most favourable conditions of rule by another ethnic group, an ethnic group will still want to rule themselves.
«What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people.»
> This is an entirely modern idea and really has nothing to do with the concept.
It's Voltaire (1694-1778). Depending how you count, The Enlightenment is or isn't part of modernity.
Did you think democracy was not a modern idea? It unequivocally is. The word comes from Ancient Greek, but what they did had almost nothing to do with the current definition of the word.
This focus on ethnic groups that you have is simply just not germane to this discussion. Democracy as it is currently understood does not have anything to do with "ethnic self-determination" (reeks of Blut und Boden - what the hell does it even mean to have an "ethnic self"?).
I don't know if you are inspired by neo-fascist thought or what's going on, but your understanding of democracy is extremely unconventional.
I think its possible to take a stronger position as the roots of the modern idea are definitely pre-modern and not significantly influenced by ancient Greece. Democracy and human rights evolved together. From things such as the Witan and the moots in England ( https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofp... ) and traditional laws that were gradually extended over time (the Magna Carter, for example). Similar histories in other countries too.
> reeks of Blut und Boden
Definitely linked to that sort of thinking. It sounds very inspired by 18th/19th century ideas of race (the ideas based on science that was debunked by the mid 20th century and has been thoroughly disproved by genetics).
The problem with these sorts of arguments is they take little bit of truth and some real examples (there are societies with politics is very tied into ethnic identities, there are groups defined by culture and language that want their own states) and treats them as the norm.
> It's Voltaire (1694-1778). Depending how you count, The Enlightenment is or isn't part of modernity.
Find me one single definition of Modernity that excludes the 18th century.