Urgent need for change
DOES the EFF make you uncomfortable? Surely it should if you any conscience at all. If one can boldly claim to be born of this city, then the idea of lack of equality should somehow bother you.
In pursuit of freedom, what is a true South African if we are not all fighting for economic freedom, for all in this lifetime? What is the meaning of a rainbow nation if the majority of us are not yet beneficiaries of this freedom?
Since the inception of the new democracy, the rainbow nation plaster was put over us as a way to sell a dream, so as to shut out the noise and appease the slave master. The rainbow nation ideal is a lie.
It’s a farce to the keep the master from talking of gloom and an impending Zimbabwe-like future, where the blacks take over the land and pillage like savages. It is all laughable when the glaring truth is that we are not yet free.
We never were. Our people still live in abject poverty, they still endure unemployment, squalor and an education system that continues to fail their children.
Who is still running this country? Surely it cannot be the black majority who voted the ANC into power back in 1994.
This is why we must radically change the political landscape of this metro. Why the EFF should continue to make you uncomfortable.
Change will only present itself here when we begin to see less looting of state funds. When we see less of political infighting and more service delivery to the majority.
Where our children do not aspire for only matric certificates, but can see themselves advancing to higher education and being contributors of change.
There is a reason I joined the EFF. It was not to be a politician.
I was oblivious to the struggle because I had an easy life compared to most. My mother, yes, is a single parent, but she managed to scrape by and provide a decent education for me.
However as hard as I worked in the private sector, it became apparent that while I still applied myself, the issue of my skin colour always came into question. I began to wonder and fear for the two black boys I had given birth to.
Would they still have to cower and be ashamed when they grew up? Would they still be segregated to the bottom, not based on their performance but that of an incurable thing as skin colour?
It bothered me to no end. I then came across the founding manifesto of the EFF.
It spoke of land. It spoke of free, quality education, housing and sanitation.
It spoke of a transparent governed state, that provided for its people and included them in the reaping. It exposed the reality that we were owners and not the beggars that it has been imposed on us to believe we are.
It spoke of things I took for granted existed based on the environment around me. The reality could not be further from the truth.
Who are we if we as a people do not own the land? Who do we boldly claim to be if we do not have access to and control the basic minerals around us?
Who do we claim to be if we still have statues of Queen Victoria where we walk in this Bay? What do we teach our children of the true history of their forefathers ?
When they grow up what will they identify with?
They will brand us as anarchists and threaten that investors will leave this country because we are doomed to be the next Zimbabwe. That is not so.
The truth must be told. We must think generationally.
We must begin to see reality as it is. My sons will one day still walk around with heads bowed because the system has become so entrenched in them that they are second rate citizens, that even when they have been educated, any job they will receive they do not deserve because it is given through the “unfairness” of BEE.
We must continue to ask the uncomfortable question. Who owns the land?
What happens at the harbour, who is in charge of the maritime space and the change from green to the blue economy? Why do we still beg for the basic right to quality education?
Why do we still allow officials to run amok and pillage this metro when there is yet still so much to be done?
I could write the rhetoric political jargon because this is in fact a political climate that we're in. In a month's time our people are going to go to cast votes.
But when they do, will it be for sentimental reasons of a party that boasts struggle credentials, when it has done nothing in the way of fighting the wrongs of the past? Will it be for a party that wants to pretend it has your best interests at heart when all it has done has been to mask its racist intentions by putting a black leader as a front and having a Xhosa-speaking white mayoral candidate as a plot to make you feel as if it intends to save you when it knows for a fact it will do no such thing?
We must change the political landscape by being radical in our thinking. When they say we cannot, we must show them that we can.
A system where the state owns its resources is possible. A system where we are all equal is possible.
Our children will not thank us for sitting back placidly waiting for change to come. We must enforce change.
For now that change can only come through our voices. Our voices are the votes we shall cast come August 3.
Our children will not thank us for sitting back placidly waiting for change to come. We must enforce change