64 years on, still so much to do
The return this week to Sharpeville by most political parties for the commemoration of the killing of 69 people on March 21 1960, today known as Human Rights Day, served as a bittersweet reminder of the tortured road traversed in pursuit of democracy. It was bitter for how little has changed in a place where Robert Sobukwe, a doyen of Pan-Africanism, led a protest march to burn passbooks that ended in bloodshed that shook the foundations of the apartheid state. It was also bitter that, 64 years later, the residents and visiting dignitaries, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, were subjected to power outages that sadly seem indicative of the poor state of service delivery by the democratic state for which so many made the ultimate sacrifice.
Elsewhere around the country, in places such as Seshego township in Limpopo, many residents seem to have given up their right to clean drinking water as their municipalities struggle to provide services. In Northwest and Mpumalanga, the roads are marked by potholes as the country reels from failing infrastructure.
The challenges are too many to enumerate. Much still needs to be done to engender a culture of human rights. This notwithstanding, we must never lose hope, for what possibly could despondency help us achieve? In the years since the senseless massacre in Sharpeville, and 30 years since Nelson Mandela took office as the first democratically elected president, much has happened to advance the cause of freedom, to restore the dignity of people lost through purposeful subjugation.
That we have institutions that serve as the bulwark of our democracy — like the courts, or the constitution that foregrounds human rights — is something not to be taken for granted. That we have an education system that churns out distinctions in villages where the racists of yesteryear thought only the hewers of wood and fetchers of water would come from is a notable positive.
It is a gift bequeathed us by those killed in Sharpeville, and similar places, that those who are happy or displeased with the country’s leadership can vote for or against them come May 29.