Ntsebeza urges action against SA’s sick society
RENOWNED advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza SC said South Africa under its democratic government had become a sick society.
He said the crisis had beenworsened by those who fought against apartheid capitalism turning their backs on the masses in their quest for personal enrichment.
The University of Fort Hare chancellor was addressing a black tie event held by members of the Black Lawyers’ Association (BLA) under the banner of a memorial lecture on the association’s founding president, Godfrey Pitje. Pitje founded the BLA in 1977. The lecture was held in East London at the weekend, with Ntsebeza the keynote speaker. He told attendees he had served with Pitje in the 1980s – which he described as “the deadliest decade of them all, where apartheid security machinery had gone into top gear”.
Ntsebeza said Pitje “was not a faction opportunist”.
“As we remember him today and as we remember what he stood for, we must also begin to reflect on the sickness of our own society today.
“I have no doubt that if he was alive today he would be dead against the present scourges that will destroy our democracy”.
Ntsebeza made reference to a speech Nelson Mandela made in 1998, when he said: “We have learnt now, that even those people with whom we fought the struggle against apartheid’s corruption, can themselves be corrupted. Having come to government with a declared intention of eliminating the corruption we knew to be endemic, we have in the past four years found out that some individuals who fought for freedom have also proved to be corrupt …”
Ntsebeza said Pitje would no doubt have said what Mandela said, and “that is something which we should also say as we remember and honour him today”.
“Success will require an acceptance that in many respects we are a sick society.
“If we, as legal practitioners like Madiba, like Pitje, want to be leaders in the campaign against corruption, we need to remember to write history as it happens and not as we would have wished it should have happened.
“We are our own liberators as former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke said, and [need] to think seriously about what our role in society today is.”
Ntsebeza appealed to the audience to “expose lies whenever they are told”.
“Comrades, lest we forget. The moment for you to take the lead in the healing of our society, healing of that sickness that South Africa under apartheid capitalism once was, can no longer be postponed.
“Everything that Godfrey Pitje stood for is under very serious threat. We will never be able to say we did not know.” —