What does‘freedom’really mean in SA?
For the ‘born-free’ generation, there is no pot of gold at the end of the ‘rainbow nation’ — but perhaps, writes Andile Zulu, they will be the ones to ‘reignite the revolution that was betrayed 26 years ago’
With the passing of each year in what we are told is a new South Africa, the term “born-free” seems to have lost its power. I felt this loss of potency on April 27 as Freedom Day passed; the occasion felt distinctly unremarkable. One could attribute this loss of grandeur to the conditions created by the national lockdown; relegated to our homes, away from work and separated from friends, public holidays fade in significance.
But is the lockdown solely to blame? Sometimes I wonder whether Freedom Day, meant to be a simultaneously joyous and solemn celebration of liberation, has actually meant anything to anyone in recent years.
There is a tendency for South Africans to possess an unthinking attachment to certain words, values and ideals: reconciliation, the rainbow nation, radical economic transformation, white monopoly capital, liberal democracy and nonracialism.
Often these narratives and ideals function as myth. They are finely crafted, dazzling misrepresentations of reality. Sure, they may sometimes reflect a portion of truth, but on the whole they distort. This distortion of realities, past and present, be they social, economic or political, is not coincidental.
“On the 27th of April 1994, the men, women and children of South Africa emerged from the dark vale of oppression to stand in the light of freedom …” Hearing President Cyril Ramaphosa’s words, one can’t help but ask — freedom to do what?
Because, 26 years since the dismantling of white political supremacy, many of us born thereafter are beginning to wonder — what kind of freedom have we been born into? Freedom — the word is bloated by numerous meanings and bruised by the fierce contestations of those definitions.
Like some myths found in sacred texts, the ideals of post-apartheid South Africa act to corral the unruly, soothe anxious minds, calm the rage of the indignant, silence the dissent of critical voices — they act to avoid the conflict that could result from an unfiltered confrontation with reality.
One could argue that these mythologies operate as what Marxist thinkers would call ideology. As defined by the philosopher Louis Althusser: “Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.”
Why do these imaginary relationships matter? Why must we see the real conditions of our material existence? Because, without an accurate understanding of the dilemmas that overwhelm us, our efforts to produce effective and far-reaching strategies or solutions for change will fail.
I’d propose that our status as “born free” acts as ideology in the political order of post-apartheid South Africa. And its grip on our imaginations is unravelling.
Ideology often retains a large portion of its vitality through the manipulation of history. Because the present is constituted by the past, the ability to retell history, through a particular lens or from a certain vantage point, is exercising the power to have a meaningful influence over how the present is interpreted and understood. And, therefore, an influence over how we act in the present.
Discussion of freedom as we know it today is impossible without reference to apartheid. Specifically, how the methods of oppression shaped and informed the struggles against said oppression. The evil of apartheid was evidenced not only through the everpresent use and threat of violence by the machinery of the state.
One must remember that white supremacy is firstly a project to obtain power in order to assert dominance. To do this, the agency of those who aren’t white has to be eliminated.
In other words, to secure and amass power, while suppressing mass revolt against repression, nonwhite people had to be diminished to the status of infants. Where one could live, who one could love, what knowledge was available to learn, who you could socialise with, where you could and where you couldn’t drink — these choices were not yours to make. We were not sovereign over our own lives.
Certain episodes of internal resistance to apartheid receive more attention than other moments of struggle in the mainstream retelling of history. The ANC’S defiance campaign, protest against pass laws as led by the Pan Africanist Congress, and the Soweto Uprisings of 1976 are such legendary stories of struggle.
One of the reasons for their popular use as tools to help us understand the country these struggles created, is their digestibility when told through a certain lens.
We are instructed that they were battles against an external and illegitimate imposition of power. A power that unjustly limited what one could do and the choices one could make, therefore limiting who they could become.
This retelling of the past frames freedom as the right and liberty to exercise choice, and the absence of external, unjustified restriction of one’s choices or the limitation of one’s possibilities. Political theorists refer to this type of freedom as negative liberty.
In contrast, there exists positive liberty or positive freedom. Positive freedom is “possessing the capacity to act upon one’s will” as defined by Isaiah Berlin, the political philosopher who first introduced the distinction between these freedoms.
With the establishment of liberal democracy, freedom as emancipation from external control and the right to choose was written into law. And we are a better society for this transition. Yet, 26 years later, another question ails the minds of the old and young alike: Is this it?
To live in the “rainbow nation” is to be familiar with disappointment. Observing our politics, one is sometimes tempted to recoil in disillusionment, the mind aching with a stinging awareness — something is missing. Perhaps it was never here, but its absence is loud.
The roar of this deprivation echoes in our struggles for a decent life as born-frees: 69% of black youth live in poverty, more than 50% of youth who are of working age are unemployed and only 34% of university graduates between the ages of 18 and 34 are employed.
What use is the right to shelter and education, what value is the right to free speech or the right to pursue one’s passion, if you don’t have the means to do so?
The right to choose and the presence of opportunity are rendered hollow by the lack of power to act on your will. Even when restrictions are eradicated, without the means to act, we remain “free from” but not “free to do”. This is a fact that is overlooked by a definition of freedom that is solely negative.
Negative freedom doesn’t need to be thrown aside. It needs to be supplemented by a rich formulation of positive freedom. Those attempting to do this would ask: “What am I free to do with the world’s resources and opportunities to enact my will?”as discovered by an ever-growing number of born-frees, the answer to that question is “not much”.
Why? Because the resources of this country and, therefore, the power for an individual or collective to practise self-determination, exists in the tightly clasped hands of a few: those who own the means of production. This is where the debate over freedom becomes fervently contested.
Private ownership of the means and resources through which goods and services are produced compels the deferral of any movement towards positive freedom. The embrace of capitalism, specifically neoliberal capitalism, by the ANC in 1994 has often subverted and sabotaged attempts to make self-determination a reality.
A minority of people dictating how resources are to be produced, distributed and utilised, means one must submit themselves to the labour market, doing work that is seen as necessary by those who own the means of production.
Our time, our energy, our skills, our talents, our creativity and imagination are not our own. Unless you are born into immense wealth, ultimately a great portion of your life and your abilities are spent in a competitive and harsh struggle for survival.
This arduous labour doesn’t fairly compensate those who undertake it, therefore, the means to enact one’s will eludes the majority of South Africans.
Clearly the poverty, inequality and social decay that has resulted from the economic order we adopted in 1994 is self-evident. Born-frees have recognised this injustice, because many of us are the subjects of its tyranny.
Perhaps it is this generation that will reignite the revolution delayed 26 years ago. Maybe we will see the wealth of this country for what it is: the collective property of all who live in it.
Whatever direction, shape or form the struggle of born-frees takes, it cannot begin without a conception of freedom. One that is aware of history and the true material conditions of the present. One that asks: “What am I free from and what am I free to do?”
The right to choose and the presence of opportunity are rendered hollow by the lack of power to act on your will
Andile Zulu runs the Born Free Blues blog