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April 30, 2008 My dear friends and fellow South Africans, This week we celebrated the day, fourteen years ago, that we emerged from the dark night of apartheid into the bright light of a non-racial democracy and cast our votes for the first time as free citizens. We all commemorated Freedom Day in our own ways. I shared a platform with members of the KwaZulu Natal provincial government cabinet – some of you may have seen the television coverage! Over and above all this, South Africa’s transition is a story of hope in adversity, light shining in the darkness, humanity prevailing over evil. As we celebrate our freedom, we remember those who perished in the struggle. Many of you lost loved ones in the long and bitter war for freedom. Grief, we remember, is the price we pay for love. After 1994, South Africa became a beacon of freedom to an entire continent and an example to humanity. That is why this week we express our solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe. We have all watched with concern at the unravelling of the hard-won freedoms of the Zimbabwean people. One thing that freedom has taught us is that the power of denial is strong. On this side of the Limpopo River, we blundered. For too long we let the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorate so fast and so far without as much as a word of concern. Yet, all along, at home we have celebrated freedom: human rights, promoted reconciliation, and respected the rule of law and the political opposition. We cannot undo our past errors, but we can help fix Zimbabwe so that she may, once again, rejoin the family of free nations. South Africa did the right thing by turning away the Chinese container ship with arms destined for Zimbabwe last week. This is what I would call an ethical foreign policy. And whilst we despair at the collapse of a human-rights culture in our northern neighbour, we are reminded at home that, in the words of Wendell Phillips, "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty". We must never take our liberty for granted. Liberties must constantly be fought for afresh each day. We must not lose the focus, for what we are celebrating in South Africa today is, for many, merely political freedom. Political participation is the means, but not the desired outcome. My friend, the late Sir Laurens van der Post, a great son of South Africa who achieved international fame for his books, often liked to quote the novelist Robert Stevenson when we discussed the nation’s tortured journey: “it is better to travel in hope than to arrive”. I think we all are quite clear about what kind of country we would like South Africa to be. We want a thriving economy that creates the wealth to deliver rising living standards and better public services to all. We want a caring society that gives people the freedom to live the lives they want, but which supports families and protects the vulnerable. And we want to be part of a strong, self-confident and outward-looking country, a country with a good reputation in the region and the wider world, a country we can be proud of. It will take a second liberation to bring about economic freedom that will transform our country into a truly free, property-owning democracy in which everyone has the opportunity to realise their God-given potential. This second wave is still to come. I cannot overemphasis how important it is for all of us to participate in the political process by voting. With freedom comes responsibility. One of the biggest threats to our freedom and way of life is voter apathy. Why? Because when people do not turn out to vote, it shows they have ceased to care and have stopped dreaming about tomorrow. I exhort everyone to vote in next year’s election. We get the government we deserve because of the choices we make at the ballot box! Turning to the country's gravest challenges, HIV/Aids and abject poverty, which are concentrated in rural areas, we believe that local government and traditional councils have a vital role to play to ensure that communities have access to food and nutritional services, adequate seeds and tools, clean drinking water and sanitation. In the longer-term to achieve economic freedom, which I mentioned at the beginning, our people must be equipped with the tools of self-help and self-reliance by being provided livelihood support including micro-credit, agricultural services and vocational training. All South Africans are being hit hard by the spiralling food prices caused by the forces of poor harvests and climatic change (the latter being yet another example of the syndrome of denialism). Food prices have also been negatively affected by fluctuations in the energy market. We need to understand the phenomenon that has wreaked havoc to the food supply in Egypt, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Madagascar, the Philippines and Haiti in the past month. The distribution of grain is being directly impacted by transportation costs, tying grain costs to oil prices. This, in turn, has fed the demand for bio fuel, which exacerbates shortfalls in the food system. Last week’s UN report on food security has called for a return to traditional farming. Despite being highly productive, modern agricultural practices have exhausted land and water resources, squelched diversity and left poor people vulnerable to high food prices. I have long called for a return to subsistence farming in our rural areas and which has, alas, largely fallen on deaf ears. Even in the wealthy West, the time of cheap food is over. The report recommends that agricultural science place greater emphasis on safeguarding natural resources and on ‘agro-ecological’ practices, including the use of natural fertilisers, traditional seeds and intensified natural practices, and reducing the distance between production and the consumer. The report emphatically states, “Business as usual is no longer an option” as global grain stores are today at their lowest level on record and prices of staple foods such as rice, maize and wheat are expected to continue to rise because of increased use of crops such as maize and soybeans for bio-fuels. The need for action is urgent, the report says, because many poor people are now reliant on the global food market, where soybean and wheat prices have increased by 87% and 130% in the last year. There is no doubt that since the advent of democracy in 1994, South Africa has made substantial progress in providing infrastructure, education and health care facilities, but the HIVAids pandemic has obscured this progress. In 1994, when blacks in this country voted for the first time, about 10 percent of the adults in KwaZulu-Natal were infected with HIV. Today, the figure stands at about 40 percent, one of the highest rates in a nation that has more people infected with HIV than any other. Blinded by shame and denial, distracted by the enormous challenge of redressing racial inequities, many of our political leaders' eyes are still closed to Aids. Fourteen years after the adoption of our Constitution founded on the inalienable principle of human dignity, our young and productive people are dying, like many others across Africa. This is wrong. The Constitution alone cannot arrest the spread of HIV/Aids. Our sensible interpretation of the Constitution can do a lot to hamper the epidemic. The outline of South Africa's epidemic is widely known. What is less frequently explored is how ordinary communities are coping with a plague that is killing our citizens, threatening our culture and shattering our dreams. Freedom Day is a time to consider this. Nearly four years ago, on August 17th 2004, in an address to the National Assembly, I suggested that the Executive and the Legislature convened at least one day a month to deliberate upon the progress that we were making in our nation and community in the fight against HIV/Aids. My call fell upon deaf ears. I hope on Freedom Day, our political leaders will reconsider my call. By pointing out these uncomfortable truths, the IFP exists to point out shortcomings and propose remedies. In politics, this is where alternatives are born. We in the IFP are no fatalists. We do not believe that chronic unemployment and abject poverty are innate characteristics of our people. They are temporary setbacks, as poverty and unemployment and even HIV/Aids have been in many other countries before. Some of them have recently advanced far beyond their original ambitions. I still believe, despite the hurdles we face, that South Africa will prevail. Just last month we commemorated the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the great American civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King Junior, who served as such an inspiration to the struggle leaders here. Like Dr King, we have all stood at the mountaintop and dreamt of a free, non-racist and non-sexist nation. Unlike Dr King, we lived to see the promised land of a non-racial democracy. Yet, if we are honest with ourselves we must accept that our nation is still far from being free, non-racist and non-sexist. As I have written here before, I am astonished of how we South Africans of different hues, cultures and languages, who are neighbours and work colleagues, know so little about each other. I still, however, believe that we can build such a society if we grow our democracy from the roots. South Africa is one country and it is building one nation: but its future will only be secured if all its constituent traditions are respected. One way to approach the process of building a national consensus is with an open mind and with maximum honesty. These attributes will ensure that in building a new national consensus, individual, regional or group concerns about identities are not imprisoned in stereotypes, or stigmatised as tribal or retrogressive. This is not the essence of democracy, which is the freedom to choose. But remember there are always consequences to the choices you make in life. And that, I believe is the most important lesson of Freedom Day. Let us travel in hope. Yours sincerely, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP |