Walk of Liberation and Resistance evokes echoes of SA’s turbulent past
AS THE nation marked Freedom Day yesterday, commemorating 28 years since South Africa had its first free and fair elections, it was a bitter-sweet day for many who felt that the freedom fought for was still a far cry away.
Marking their continued fight against development on sacred indigenous land, Khoi and San people joined by civil society, environmental organisations and social justice groups, came together for the second annual Walk of Liberation and Resistance. The event was also in commemoration of the first land grab in 1657 by the Dutch East India Company which took place on the banks of the Liesbeek River, leading to the first frontier wars of 1659.
The ritual pilgrimage walk was followed by an interfaith cleansing ceremony to honour the ancestors, and prayer to stop “further destruction on the old Liesbeek channel”.
High Commissioner of the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin Indigenous Traditional Council, Tauriq Jenkins, said the day was historic.
“It was a day of deep reflection paying tribute to our fallen forebears who defended this country from the threat of colonialism. It is a terrain that speaks to dispossession, it also speaks to how indigenous communities were alienated from their land, the river and of not just liberation and resistance, but the edgings where the Khoi genocide occurred.
“We pledged our promise to the protection of the river and the protection of the environment and that this heritage is a collective national heritage of significance to our collective memory as South Africans.
“It has great significance in terms of us beginning to express intergenerational trauma held in this space. It is a solid step toward restorative justice and restitution for our people,” he said.
The ANC in the Western Cape added that 28 years later, the mood in the province and country is “less positive” as the “struggle for socio-economic transformation must continue in our province in particular”.
Leader of the opposition in the province, Cameron Dugmore, said: “We see hundreds of thousands of young people in our province recruited by gangs, and seeing that as their future. We see extortion of business owners, local and foreign, and we see our communities held to ransom by having to pay protection money to simply be safe.
“In the Western Cape, we have a situation where less than 3% of private agricultural land is owned by black (African, Coloured and Indian) South Africans; 70% of urban land in the Western Cape is owned by White South Africans.
“The provincial economy remains in the hands of a minority who acquired wealth through decades of colonialism and apartheid.
“We know that the wealth of our country remains in the hands of a minority. The ownership patterns of our economy have not changed sufficiently. While progress has been made with land restitution, the pace of land redistribution has been far too slow. In our province, we find that many farmworkers do not have adequate security of tenure,” he said.
In his address in Mpumalanga yesterday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said: “We held the vision of a promised land of freedom, equality and shared prosperity. However, that vision has been tarnished by acts of corruption and state capture. For some in positions of responsibility, the pursuit of self-enrichment was more important than improving the lives of the people. South Africans have shown that they are determined to restore that vision, to end state capture and fight corruption, and rebuild the institutions of our democracy. In recent years, the ruinous apartheid inheritance of poverty and unemployment has been worsened by global economic shocks, a devastating pandemic and by our own missteps.”
He said gender-based violence, substance abuse and other societal ills had become rampant in communities.
“Crime and violence is eating away at our society. We can only defeat crime if we work together, as families, as communities and community leaders, as faith communities and leaders, and as individuals. We are confronting a new menace of violence against our brothers and sisters from other African countries. We have seen it in many parts of the country in recent weeks.”