SA: older, hopefully wiser

TODAY, 25 years ago, South Africans went to the polls for the first time as a free nation, ending 300 years of colonialism and legalised racism. The world warily looked on, expecting liberation to erupt into ethnic cleansing.

It never happened. Instead Archbishop-emeritus Desmond Tutu, in his inimitable way, dubbed us the Rainbow Nation. The colours have faded over the years and we still have a long way to go to reach the fabled pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: a better life for all.

Sometimes it feels as if we have missed the road altogether and lost our moral compass. We have a whole generation of Born-Frees – aided by older South Africans – asking questions of the transition heralded on April 27, 1994, and of the price paid for the compromises that were made.

It has become fashionable to disparage the miracle and to denigrate the efforts of the father of the nation, Nelson Mandela, and his co-leaders of this new nation as people rightfully ask where the economic dividends are, 25 years after receiving the political dividends of liberation.

We are in real danger of becoming a nation of supplicants and malcontents, whose role-models are kleptocrats, populists and racist fake news pedlars rather than the nation-builders whose bequest to us we are busy squandering.

As the nation turns 25, we should be asking what we have to do to build the society the founding fathers and mothers envisaged; one which is non-racial and non-sexist, which belongs to all who live in it, which gives succour to the needy and shelter to the desperate.

We have emerged battered and bruised after a decade of abuse, but that should be no excuse. We have to do better.

Happy birthday, South Africa!