YONELA DIKO writes an open letter to OR Tambo and asks: What has the ANC done with freedom?

Dear OR

Sitting in the galaxies you may sometimes wonder: How are my children fairing? What have they done with their freedom?

We made it OR. The freedom you fought for, for over half a century, finally arrived.

As one of your celebrated grandsons puts it more spoiltly: “We are out here tata, abusing our freedom, thank you.”

Less a message of being spoilt, it’s a message of self-expression, that due to your sacrificing your own lives, we are living ours how we want to. Is that all, you may wonder? Have we arrived in the envisaged Utopia, you may ask?

This is what you told us: “We must proceed from the position that our task is to win a revolution. Political revolutions are about the capture of state power and its use to advance the objectives of fundamental social transformation. This task must be carried out consciously and intentionally by the revolutionary forces to bring about profound change in favour of the social classes and strata that have gained power. Without the victory of the revolution, revolutionary changes are not possible. The state is a vital feature in that effort to bring about those revolutionary changes because a new society cannot be built within the existing framework.”

I can tell you unequivocally; we captured state power and began in earnest to advance the objectives of fundamental social transformation. What remains contested, at least by those privileged to be in conversations, is whether a profound change in favour of the social classes and strata that have gained power has happened, at least in a manner that is satisfactory. Knowing you OR, you would have expected such a contest.

There is equally a feeling that our negotiated transition, and not a revolution per se, has contributed greatly to the lack of revolutionary changes that needed to have happened. The inability of this political power, which all belongs to your party, the African National Congress, to be used to capture, in its entirety, the economic power that will give a black child a stake in his country, is seen as the greatest failure by some in the effort to bring fundamental social transformation.

There are 11 million people on state welfare, more than 25 percent of your children are unemployed, mainly your grandchildren. It feels as if instead of a country that opened itself to opportunity for its black children the openness merely showed just how vulnerable and helpless your children are.

Only yesterday, a friend on social media brought out of the shadows a story of a 17-year-old child heading a home with two younger siblings in Khayelitsha. He was crying, saying that some days he makes less than R10 to feed his siblings, who would not have eaten the whole day.

There are millions of such stories in a country with black state power. It would seem that what you were trying to avoid by calling for a fundamental revolution is exactly what is happening. You told us in no uncertain terms that: “The state is a vital feature in that effort to bring about those revolutionary changes because a new society cannot be built within the existing framework.”

The framework that existed then largely still exists now, hence it seems change has been frustrated.

Obviously our leaders, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, all served with you for many years and will most definitely have shared your vision and your sentiments. You were all a league of extraordinary gentlemen and you remain so still, so it has been crucial for all of us to proceed from that premise.

Whether it is due to observation of transformation of countries elsewhere or wisdom, your fellow leaders seem to have realised that a country is not a static entity, to be given a once-off change, but a living entity to be changed progressively.

Hence OR, I must put the story of our country on a split screen: on one side is a country as we wish it to be, equal, fair, just; and on the other side our country the way it is: still unjust, economically divided largely on racial lines, with exploitation, work brutality, racism, a black child still largely outside mainstream.

Here OR, we must tell you unequivocally, that South Africa remains the miracle that you led us in. We are a nation that maintains our sights on the kind of South Africa we want, while looking squarely at South Africa as it is. We have acknowl- edged the sins of our past and the challenges of the present without being trapped in cynicism or despair.

So much has happened OR that pleases the soul so that anyone who has tried to lie to our people, that this country has not changed for the better, for a majority of citizens, they have been silenced election after election: but they still refuse defeat and in between elections they throw an amazing amount of vitriol, ultimately calling voters, your children, fools for continuing to show unwavering confidence in the progressive work of your party, the ANC.

There has been a profound shift in material well-being of the previously oppressed.

There has been a tremendous shift in racial relations. Things have got much better. Still, your ANC will be the first to tell you that better isn’t good enough.

Between 1994 and 2014, employment rose by 6.2 million. There are 9million people formally employed in the country with an average salary of R15 000. That is what your party has brought to your children.

The black African population made up 72.8 percent of total employment in 2014. That is a story that is usually drowned by the percentage of the unemployed.

However small the number, there is no area of South Africa that is not black represented. We have black cardiologists, black economists, black accountants and a black professional strata that can fill a small country, all majorly happening in the last 20 years under your glorious party, the ANC.

We made it OR and we say that not to hide the challenges that remain: The challenges of the present remain and again, considering what we have already overcome, we remain steadfast that these challenges too, shall be overcome.

No OR, we are not abusing our freedom, we are making it count, for all your children.

It’s April 27. Thank you for your sacrifice, we will never forget what you did for our country.

Diko is founder and chairman of Root (Responsibilities Of Our Time), a foundation and publishing company that will publish his first book of the same title at the end of November, as well as a clothing line and other spin-offs.