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Letsema Volunteer Campaign - giving
effect to the concept and goal of a new patriotism
We are at
the beginning of the second month of our Year of the Volunteer. As is
generally known by now, this month we will be focusing on the issue of
safety and security. I urge all our members, supporters and our society
in general to participate in this letsema/ilima campaign in even greater
numbers than we were able to mobilise last month.
I would also like to congratulate everybody who participated
in volunteer work last month to respond to the call made in the Freedom
Charter - that The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall be Opened! Immediately,
we correctly focused on the important issue of helping to reinforce the
culture of learning, teaching and discipline in our schools.
We are pleased at the response throughout the country
last month. We are happy to say that the organisations involved included
members of the Tripartite Alliance as well as the organisations of the
mass democratic movement.
Not only did the volunteers from these organisations
turn out in good numbers. Supporters and ordinary citizens also participated.
In many schools, parents also came to hear more about the Volunteer Campaign
and to express their support. The administrators, principals, teachers
and pupils were clearly inspired that the country demonstrated its readiness
to give them the support they need in the important area of education.
The success achieved was all the more remarkable given
that the Volunteer Campaign was only announced on January 6, when we marked
the 90th Anniversary of the ANC at the successful rally in Durban. This
illustrates the readiness of our members and supporters as well as our
people in general directly to participate in the process of the reconstruction
and development of our country.
Our country is reported to have a large CBO-NGO sector.
This is a good thing. This gives the possibility to achieve extensive
outreach to the people, reaching the individuals in our society who are
most in need of support and assistance, unencumbered by the problem of
government bureaucracy.
The letsema volunteer campaign opens up greater possibilities
for these organisations of civil society further to improve the impact
of their important work by helping to organise and direct the matsema
to reinforce what they are already doing. As we said in the January 8th
Statement, it is important that civil society is involved in the campaign.
The ANC branches have a duty to approach these organisations
in their areas to encourage them to act together with everybody in the
spirit of the slogan - people united in action for change!
In this regard, we extend our sincere appreciation to
the religious organisations that have already expressed their support
for the letsema Volunteer Campaign and their readiness to participate.
They have given the necessary lead to which we hope everybody will respond.
Again as we said in the January 8th Statement, this
campaign also coincides with the 50th Anniversary of the 1952 Campaign
for the Defiance of Unjust Laws - the Defiance Campaign. Accordingly,
we must draw inspiration from and emulate the great heroes and heroines
of our country who, at that time, volunteered to defy the apartheid system
as part of the intensification of the struggle for our liberation.
What characterised these volunteers was a spirit of
dedication, courage and sacrifice. They were not intimidated either by
the brutal might of the apartheid regime or by the enormity of the task
of defeating this regime and replacing it with a government elected by
all the people of South Africa. They did not act for material rewards
of any kind, including personal popularity. They sought only to serve
the people of South Africa.
Although it is now almost 8 years old, our democracy
is still but a young child. All of us without exception are still learning
many new things about what it means to live in a democratic society. This
includes those among us who are fond of presenting themselves publicly
as the arbiters of what good democratic practice is.
Those of us who are not driven by this sense of arrogant
superiority recognise the fact that we continue to learn, for instance,
how to balance rights and obligations in a democratic society. We continue
to expand our understanding of the role of the citizen in the process
of the reconstruction and development of our country.
We mention these things because, in the last few years,
there has developed in our society a heightened sense among some of our
people that they have no personal responsibility for their development
and upliftment. The expectation and the demand are that the government
must "deliver!" The opponents of the government drum this message
into the heads of the people everyday, that the government must deliver!
Obviously, this is neither to deny nor minimise the
tasks of government to help build a better life for all our people. Indeed,
one of the first objectives of the Volunteer Campaign is to strengthen
the links and the co-operation between the government and the people.
Historically, our movement has always depended on the concept that the
people are their own liberators. It has always upheld the view that change
can only be achieved with the mass involvement of the people. It has never
conducted itself on the basis that the people should be reduced to a state
of paralysis, transformed into mere observers, the object rather than
the subject of change. Even as we have been building our non-racial and
non-sexist democracy, we have sought to insist that ours must be a people-driven
process of change.
This is one of the central objectives of the letsema
Volunteer Campaign - to mobilise the masses of our people to become their
own liberators from poverty and underdevelopment. It aims to end any sense
of disempowerment among the people and any feeling of complete dependence
that destroys the striving towards self-reliance, personal initiative
and personal responsibility.
This is important in many respects. For instance, we
are waging the ABC campaign with regard to AIDS. It can only succeed if
the people themselves take responsibility for their lives and do the things
raised by this campaign.
This also extends to the other diseases of poverty that
claim many lives. In this regard, in addition to the things that government
must do, questions of hygiene are critically important. The people must
be educated to understand that they too have a responsibility for their
own health and must therefore do everything they can to take care of their
personal hygiene.
We can mention many other examples to demonstrate the
importance of people not just waiting for the government "to deliver!"
This month, for instance, we must ensure that we mobilise the people to
participate in the realisation of the objectives stated in the Freedom
Charter concerning security and peace within our country. Accordingly,
they must themselves be involved in working with the Police Service to
fight against crime and not merely sit and wait for the police "to
deliver", even when they know who the criminals are.
The third important objective of the Volunteer Campaign
is to rebuild the sense of community among all our people. For this reason
it was designated as a letsema/ilima campaign. It must activate our people
to restore the social cohesion that was so characteristic of our societies
and to move away from the atomisation that, for example, leads to the
breakdown of family life and individual isolation and alienation.
This, of course, also relates very directly to the issue
which concerns all of us, the matter of the RDP of the soul, as Nelson
Mandela put it. Many in our society, including the ANC, the government
and the religious communities, among others, have taken up this matter
with a call for the moral renewal of our society.
The letsema Volunteer Campaign also directly addresses
this question. We are convinced that as it takes firm root among the people,
this campaign will also help to rebuild and further strengthen the value
system we all seek. This is critical in all respects, such as social mobilisation
against crimes against the person, including murder, rape, domestic violence
and abuse of children.
In the past, to explain some of the causes of any moral
decay in our society, we have quoted the well-known financier, George
Soros. ("The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered.")
He writes:
"One of the great defects of the global capitalist
system is that it has allowed the market mechanism and the profit motive
to penetrate into fields of activity where they do not properly belong.
"The promotion of self-interest to a moral principle
has corrupted politics and the failure of politics has become the strongest
argument in favour of giving markets an ever freer reign.
"The functions that cannot and should not be governed
purely by market forces include many of the most important things in human
life, ranging from moral values to family relationships to aesthetic and
intellectual achievements. Yet market fundamentalism is constantly attempting
to extend its sway into these regions, in a form of ideological imperialism.
"According to market fundamentalism, all social
activities and human interactions should be looked at as transactional,
contract-based relationships and valued in terms of a single common denominator,
money."
Everybody concerned with the issue of moral renewal
in our society has raised precisely these questions - the scramble for
material wealth and the promotion of self-interest to a moral principle.
By drawing all of us as volunteers into the letsema
process, the Volunteer Campaign directly confronts the value system characterised
by what Soros describes as a single common denominator, money. In its
place, central to any moral renewal, it affirms the central importance
of the human being and the principle of human solidarity.
These are some of the fundamental objectives of the
Volunteer Campaign. As we rebuild our country on the basis of the profound
principles on which the Campaign is based, we will help to build the kind
of South Africa we will all the proud of. The Campaign is therefore also
about giving effect to the concept and goal of a new patriotism.
As these new patriots, we must occupy the front ranks
of the Volunteers who are engaged in struggle to ensure that South Africa
becomes the human-centred society of which millions of our people dream.
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