Daily Dispatch
Hold fast to legacy of peace
TODAY South Africa stands at a crossroads. Will there be peace or will we wage war against one another? Just 23 years into constitutional democracy our country is saddled with a president that fewer and fewer people want.
Marches calling for an end to Jacob Zuma’s leadership of the country have been vigorously planned nationwide, with involvement from a broad range of civil society, religious and political groupings.
Judging from the extent of the outcry, it is conceivable that this will be the largest public show of discontent since the protests against the apartheid government.
The ANC has done absolutely nothing to soothe a worried nation.
Rather than reassuring citizens that their peace and security is the main priority, the president has been typically mute. Meanwhile war talk has echoed out of his organisation.
Some may think the current ructions are the outworkings of a factional battle within the ANC, but the dynamics have long exceeded such parameters. What president with a regard for the rule of law and constitutionally enshrined rights allows openly violent threats to be made and repeated against citizens of his country?
The ANC Youth League, a national executive committee member and an Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association leader have all, in one way or another, threatened “fire”.
Among the most recent was Themba Mavundla of the KwaZulu-Natal MKMVA who is leading 600 “combat-ready” MK vets to Johannesburg to “defend” the president. “Life or death, victory is certain,” he vowed. Death? In a constitutional democracy? That there is no sanction against such inflammatory and intimidatory rhetoric is a measure of just how high the stakes are for Zuma and co. It is also an indication of the combustibility of the situation.
This is not to suggest that citizens who may hold a different view respond in like manner or that anyone cowers and hides.
Rather it is time to remember. This nation has been to the brink many times before.
Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s South Africa teetered perpetually on the brink. The various states of emergency imposed by the PW Botha government fuelled the people’s seething anger. The Bhisho massacre had the potential to tip the country into the abyss.
The murder of SACP and MK leader Chris Hani took us even to closer to bloody civil war.
Yet at each of those and many other occasions wise and good people stood up – known or unknown heroes – and stepped into the breach. Sanity prevailed. Chaos was driven back. Peace was reclaimed.
South Africans one and all passed through the valley of the shadow of death and stepped into the glorious sunshine of a new day, a new and free country and a new dispensation.
Peace and equality did not come freely, though. They were hard won at great personal cost. But they are our rightful legacy as South Africans. They are our precious assets, ones to cherish and build upon.
At times such as today when it seems as if the clouds of war may be closing in above, it is helpful to remember that peaceful change was possible in 1994. As South Africans we have a great capacity to exercise grace. If peace was possible back then, it is still the case.