Freedom Day will never be insignificant
It is all in your hands, so said Nelson Mandela, describing how we, as the inheritors of the freedom of April 27, 1994, ought to guard it with our own life – each citizen making certain we never again descend to the tyranny of injustice visited upon us by the apartheid system.
The Freedom Day, which we celebrated yesterday, on April 27, marks the strides the country has made under democracy, transitioning from the apartheid monster of oppression.
This is remarkable. The importance of the day should never be underestimated, even as people hold different ideological views.
The ANC victory at the first democratic elections of April 27, 1994, marked the beginning of a new democratic era. It also spelt the end of apartheid nightmare.
The defeat of more than 300 years of colonial and apartheid white minority rule was achieved. A civil war was averted. Negotiations for a new order, imperfect as they may have been, saved the day. The new Constitution with its Bill of Rights came into existence.
The doors of learning were opened and became a reality as prescribed by the Freedom Charter. Now thousands of black students can flood institutions of higher learning such as Wits University, University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University, University of Pretoria, which hitherto had been a bastion of white privilege.
To pretend, for whatever reasons, that Freedom Day is insignificant, is to be out of sync with reality.
The democratic government inherited an unjust country that was on the brink of economic collapse, with international sanctions biting as an answer to discrimination and oppression heaped upon black people by the apartheid regime.
The notion by some, including a sprinkling of black people, who hold the view that apartheid was better than the current dispensation, are factually incorrect.
The UN declared apartheid a crime against humanity. Apartheid was ruthless; the apartheid regime killed freedom fighters in their thousands.
This inhumane conduct by the apartheid system accounted for several tortured freedom fighters, and some fed to crocodiles, while apartheid police officers watched on in glee.
How can we then hanker for a return to white rule, as some people such as the DA leader John Steenhuisen seem to suggest in some of his meetings? We suggest this would be an absurdity. There is still a lot of work to be done to complete the chapter of our freedom. Many of our people continue to live in abject poverty.
Freedom without economic empowerment is incomplete.
The education system under apartheid regime disadvantaged black people, with minuscule budgetary allocation earmarked for the education of Africans.
More still must be done to ensure no black child misses an opportunity to get good education.
The governing party has a duty to ensure that all South Africans enjoy decent housing, and that no one suffers from deficiencies of poor service delivery.
Madiba entrusted us with the task of ensuring all enjoy a better life and are allowed to realise their full potential.