We need to find the caring within us, says Sandy Africa

The University of Pretoria professor, who was part of the greater struggle for South Africa’s democracy, says that those who are more fortunate than the poor need to inspire change

Professor Sandra “Sandy” Africa is currently working in the University of Pretoria’s Political Sciences Faculty and is deputy dean of teaching and learning in the Humanities Department. However, it is her activism activism going as fa back as the ’80s and her recent appointment to the high-level review panel on state security after the unrest in July last year that piqued Maverick Citizen’s interest in her.

The youngest of five children, Africa is from Durban and says that her parents really valued education.

“[While] growing up in the ’70s and ’80s [I had] the typical life of a child growing up under apartheid, with all the deprivations but at the same time in a community that was very close and parents who were very supportive and valued education. My mother was actually my school teacher up until matric.” Africa says that despite her parents’ humble earnings they still managed to enable all their children to have some form of higher education.

“My father was a very defining character in my life,” Africa says, going on to describe him as very active in their community as a social worker in addition to being a teacher. He often took her along when he went to assist people. She credits this influence, as well as that of her older siblings, for her joining the world of activism. She cites the example of her older sister, who was a drama student, taking her to the iconic Sizwe Banzi is Dead political play. She also laughingly mentions that her mom liked to remind her family that she shared a birthday with South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela. Africa says her mom also introduced her to a librarian friend of hers, who she says was quite a prominent political figure at the time. Her mom’s friend, who was at some point banned for her political involvement, allowed Africa access to books that were banned in those days.

Africa says that it was when she went to the then University of Natal that she got involved in organised political activism and was part of the University of Natal Black Students Association, which was under the Azanian Students Association and the Durban Housing Action Committee.

Asked how her parents felt about her political involvement at the time, Africa answers, “Well I had initially wanted to study journalism and my dad said, ‘No! It’s too dangerous,’” which is ironic because her political studies got her into the often dangerous arena of political activism, particularly as she was constantly being monitored and intimidated by the apartheid police.

Africa says she was subsequently recruited into the United Democratic Front and the ANC underground and became part of the greater struggle for South Africa’s democracy. While she had worked in a number of teaching and research jobs after graduating, after the ANC won the elections in 1994 she was part of a team tasked with integrating the former Umkhonto weSizwe into the then South African Defence Force, as well as the non-statutory and statutory intelligence services within government. This meant redefining what these institutions should look like and how they should function in a democracy that required the centralisation of people’s needs, good governance, transparency and accountability in order to be responsive. It was an arduous task, she concedes, because of the distrust that existed between the apartheid government and the ANC. Africa was part of government from 1995 until her resignation in 2007, when she returned to academia.

Speaking about her involvement in and assessments on the high-level review panel on state security last year, Africa says that what they found was not only incompetence but an issue of capacity building. She says that only after the Mufamadi commission on the State Security Agency, which made several recommendations, were any recommendations beginning to be implemented, and that posts which had been vacant were starting to be filled. Asked whether she thought large-scale burning and looting like the July 2021 unrest is likely to occur again, she said, “It’s still happening. It may be that it’s happening in a different format, but it’s still happening. Whether it’s people breaking into premises, destroying public property, literally picking up railway tracks and walking off with them, cumulatively you have a situation of the erosion of the state’s capability to do what it ought to do.”

Africa stresses that not only does the state have an obligation to provide service delivery and law enforcement, it also needs to provide space for people to enjoy full lives.

“We ought to be about more than just survival and a baseline existence. People should be able to choose the kind of life they would like to live. We barely talk about the things that make for a full human life because we are constantly in a state of anxiety. We ought to be allowed to live the kind of life that will allow us to feel fulfilled, and yes, it is about having food on the table and a job and an education, but it should also be about what kind of education and what kind of food and what kind of job.”

The middle class must not be disengaged and must pressure government to provide this space for people to thrive, says Africa. She says those who are more fortunate than the poor need to be activists in their conversations and to inspire change from where they are. Africa says she remains optimistic about South Africa’s civic engagement, noting that our country is in the process of a significant shift at the moment and that we should not allow government to cop out of its responsibility to the people. “We need to find the right balance again. We really somehow need to find the caring within us. We’ve actually become quite desensitised to so much that is so wrong in society. We need to just remind ourselves that we’re all human,” says Africa.