‘Our dreams of liberation have been realised’
A friend of mine, Dr Clifford Nxomani, posted on our alma mater’s WhatsApp group: “When you hit a pothole, whether in life or on the streets, always remember where you’ve been.” Words of wisdom indeed. Why wallow in Doomsville when the dreams of our forebears have been realised?
Sixty-two years ago, the president of the ANC and Nobel laureate Chief Albert J Luthuli wrote a book about the dream of our liberation. He called it Let My People Go after the biblical story of Moses demanding that Pharaoh release the Children of Israel. “There remains before us the building of a new land — a home for men who are black, white, brown — from the ruins of the old narrow groups, a synthesis of the rich cultural strains which we have inherited.”
We crossed our own Red Sea 30 years ago when we voted for the first time, but the task is not yet finished. South Africa is not yet a home to many of its children, as some of them emigrate and those who remain become victims of joblessness, suicide and substance abuse. Through all these seemingly endless social storms, the good news is that we have the title deed to the new land, which is the constitution. The title deed doesn’t protect us from the bitter winds of bigotry or the subtle drizzles of racism, because the courts have neither a sword with which to threaten us to behave in a particular manner nor the cement to hold together the society of its dreams.
“If the present tries to sit in judgment on the past, it will lose the future,” Sir Winston Churchill warned. Let us capture the future and for posterity nurture this tree of freedom so it can live forever, through the cold spells of paucity and the warm seasons of prosperity, so that when future generations hit the potholes of their time, they can look to ours for inspiration.