The people must govern
THE Freedom Charter was signed 60 years ago today in Kliptown, Soweto – a place then not so different to what it is now. Underdeveloped, its people’s voice angry, its residents demoralised, this patch of vital South African history has been one of the great ironies of our 21-year-old democracy.
That’s a sadness, not only because Johannesburg city and the Gauteng province have spent R802 million, with a further R677m to be spent on the area in the medium term. It’s also because that irony has become a bit of a comment on what has been achieved since apartheid, even among some activists, let alone the real people living in Kliptown. The story of Kliptown’s apparent deprivation has spread even to ordinary South Africans in other parts of the country.
Despite the magnificent sculptures created by Usha Seejarim and the other memorial attractions related to the Freedom Charter on the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication in Kliptown, there is a sense that it represents what has gone wrong with our aspirations – not what has gone right.
It has a mobilised and vocal population who have a few times taken their anger at a lack of housing and services to the streets. Already in 2007, police were firing rubber bullets at demonstrators in this same community.
On Youth Day last week, people in Kliptown blockaded roads with burning tyres and stones to protest against evictions by the Red Ants, and what they say are exorbitant municipal levies.
But there’s also an unfairness to the opinion which has been levelled around this. Certainly, Kliptown is an example of political neglect – useful, particularly, to those who would have us believe the ruling party has failed the country. The example of Kliptown can so easily be extrapolated to the extent that not much has been done generally to bring equity. That’s plainly untrue.
Perhaps today, then, we should rather be asking whether we, the people, have failed the aspirations of the Freedom Charter, not only whether the politicians have failed the people. After all, it was a people’s charter, created through a defiantly democratic process, such as we have not seen again.
The process leading up to and then the signing of the document changed the formation of the struggle at a time when the ANC was not yet banned. The Freedom Charter still represents the only vision for a future drawn up by the ordinary people of this country, and there is a beauty, power and authority to that which cannot be undermined.
Even the constitution, which has correctly drawn praise around the world, was not drawn up out of months of conversations with the men and women of this country. It was certainly created by some of our brightest minds, but not necessarily the most broadly representative.
If we carefully consider the lovely wording of the Freedom Charter, we’ll be reminded of how many of its visionary hopes have been achieved.
Most importantly, South Africa does today belong to all who live in it, black and white. Our government can indeed justly claim authority based on the will of the people. Every man and woman has the right to vote for and stand as a candidate for all bodies which make laws.
All people are entitled to take part in the administration of the country. The rights of all are the same. The bodies of minority rule have been replaced by democratic organs of self-government.
The people of Kliptown, like all of us, have every right to stand up for themselves against harm, but the question they and we must ask, too, is: Are we doing enough, or anything, to help transform our society? After all, the Freedom Charter placed the responsibility on the people to govern.