ANC Today --------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 3, No. 50• 19-25 December 2003 --------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS WEEK: * Letter from the President: Reconciliation needs a united effort to build a better life * Road safety: Safe roads are challenge for all of us --------------------------------------------------------------------- LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT Reconciliation needs a united effort to build a better life Earlier this week, on16 December, the Board of Trustees of Freedom Park hosted the national celebrations marking our Day of National Unity and Reconciliation. These were held on the grounds of the Union Buildings. Before these events at the Union Buildings, some of the Freedom Park Trustees had attended a service at the Voortrekker Monument, signalling the deepening of the process of redefining ourselves as one people, sharing a common patriotism. The occasion of this national holiday presented our country with the possibility once more to reflect on the twin challenges of national unity and reconciliation. This is with regard to both what we have achieved during the last nine-and-a-half years and what we will need to do in future. We will celebrate the next Day of National Unity and Reconciliation during the first year of our Second Decade of Liberation. This will provide an important occasion for all our people to set or reaffirm the goals we will need to achieve during this Second Decade, as we continue to pursue the central objectives of national unity and reconciliation. Already our movement has said that one of the principal goals on which we should focus during this Second Decade must be the struggle to eradicate poverty and underdevelopment. We have also said that as we strive to achieve this goal, we must also concentrate on the important task of ensuring that we attain a people driven process of change. This means that we will have to continue to work to inspire our people to respond to the calls for letsema and vuk'uzenzele. It signifies that we will have to continue to mobilise all our people to join the people's contract to push back the frontiers of poverty and advance towards the realisation of the goal of a better life for all. The day after our Day of National Unity and Reconciliation, a commentator wrote an article that appeared in one of our newspapers ("This Day"), under the heading "Worry less about the past, more about the future". Towards the end of this article, the author wrote: "Is (reconciliation) the elimination of inequality as a basis for reconciliation? If the latter, we are doomed to endless guilt and recrimination, because as Honoré Balzac lamented for France, 'Equality may be a right, but no power in earth can ever turn it into a fact.' Development and good government is at least possible if we worry less about the past and more about the future." Interestingly, the newspaper also published a Letter to the Editor on the same page on which this article appeared. In this instance the reader of the newspaper says: "This country is racially divided more than ever. Whites have a superiority complex. This is because of an undesirable past. The challenge confronting us is that the wealth of this country is still in the hands of the few, and the gap between the poor and the rich is widening. "To avoid a racial conflict, whites should extend a helping hand to help blacks develop economically. It's time that whites learn to reconcile and compromise. That should be done in the best interest of all. We're not asking for whites to give us money. All we're asking is for whites to support our endeavours and programmes of economic development. If whites can do that, Mandela will die a happy man." These two contributions to "This Day" illustrate important points of difference that regularly emerge in the national debate about the challenge of national reconciliation. Whereas some argue that we should forget the past, others say that we cannot, because the past continues to define the present. Some say that to refer to the past and its role in defining the present is to "play a race card", which only serves to incite racist feelings. Others state that to develop amnesia about our racist past and ignore its continuing legacy is to condemn our country to serious racial conflict in future. Those who argue that we should forget the past strive to attribute the persistence of the socio-economic legacy of the past to the failures of our government since our liberation in 1994. Those who refuse to take an ahistorical view about the evolution of our country assert that it is dishonest to pretend that a legacy of three-and-a-half centuries could be eradicated in less than one decade. Arguments are presented that the distribution of wealth and income has lost its distinguishing racial characteristics. Rather, it is said that the ranks of the well off have been deracialised and therefore the assertion of white prosperity and black poverty is wrong. The claim is made that our country is characterised by class rather than racial divisions. On the contrary, others say that only a minority of black people has entered the ranks of the well off. This has made no major difference to the inherited overall black-white divide in terms of the distribution of income and wealth. Some say that to continue harping on the racist past and its impact on these questions of income and wealth is to seek to impose an intolerable burden of guilt on the white section of our population, including those who were not part of the apartheid regime. It is said that this makes the achievement of national unity and reconciliation very difficult if not impossible. Others respond to this by saying that we should all be inspired by a common patriotism and a realisation that we share a common destiny. In this regard it is said that self-interest itself, not informed by any sense of guilt, should tell those who were advantaged by our racist past that they need a more equitable society to ensure that they continue to prosper. The commentator we have cited adds to all this that in any event, equality is impossible to achieve. Presumably this means that we should not pursue this allegedly unachievable goal. Deliberately, he seeks to transform the necessary objective of equality into an unattainable goal of equalisation, and thus discredit the pursuit of equality by turning it into an absurdity. He says that the elimination of the inequalities we inherited should not be part of the requirement for us to achieve national reconciliation. He goes on to describe reconciliation as "the most loosely used word among many loose words in our political lexicon." This suggests that he thinks that the very word reconciliation means virtually nothing. The irony with regard to this debate, especially with reference to those who argue that we should forget the past, is the fact that it reflects precisely the legacy of racism. The very ideas that both sides canvass indicate the place each occupied in the society built by our colonial and apartheid past. This suggests that in as much as it will take time to eradicate this legacy, so will it take time to arrive at a common national understanding of the concepts and practice of national unity and reconciliation. Throughout the nine decades of its existence, our movement has pursued the goals of national unity and reconciliation. Even at the most difficult periods during the course of our struggle, we never abandoned these objectives. It was because of this that we consistently refused to choose the easy option of conducting a terrorist campaign against the white section of our population. This extended to the decision to establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We deliberately intended that the new South Africa should, at all costs, avoid revenge and retribution against those who had imposed intolerable pain and suffering on our country's black majority. In the period since our liberation, all our policies, without exception, have, in part, aimed at the consolidation and entrenchment of this outcome and will continue to do so. But for us to achieve this objective will require that we never abandon the understanding that national reconciliation and social transformation are inextricably linked to each other. The struggle against poverty and underdevelopment is directly and immediately relevant to the struggle to achieve national unity and reconciliation. The overwhelming majority of our people are poor. This is not a result of democracy but part of the legacy of our racist past. These poverty stricken masses are black. Again, this is not a creation of democracy but part of what we inherited from our racist past. One of the facts about our present is the worrying level of unemployment that is central to the deep-seated phenomenon of poverty. The overwhelming majority of the unemployed are black, uneducated and unskilled. This, too, is a direct consequence of our racist past. The system of white minority rule developed the economy and expanded white wealth on the basis of the unlimited availability of cheap and unskilled black labour. In time, the structure and technological base of our economy changed. Now this economy required and requires skilled workers and had no use for unskilled black labour, turning almost all of these, and not just some, into a surplus population. Over time, the system of white minority domination achieved the strategic objective that had been fundamental to the growth and development of its economy for over a century, of turning as many as possible of the black people into an economically surplus population. These were immediately available to be drawn into productive employment or discarded as need arose. This system handed these millions over to the democratic order as part of the bitter legacy. Accordingly, we speak here of millions of people who are poor, marginalised, alienated and subjected to a condition that denies them their human dignity. Clearly, their material conditions will have to change for the better for them fully to feel that they are an inherent part and beneficiaries of the process of national unity and reconciliation. These continued realities inherited from the past dictate to us what we have to do about our future. Inevitably we have to continue the struggle to eradicate poverty and underdevelopment. We have to continue the struggle to eradicate the racial, gender and geographic imbalances and inequalities that continue to characterise our society. The equality visualised in our Constitution can only be achieved if we realise these objectives. The national unity and reconciliation we seek can only be fully attained if we bring about this equality. We will accomplish this equality only if we deliberately implement programmes for the fundamental transformation of our country. It is for all these reasons, including the objective fundamental to our movement, of establishing a caring and people-centred society, that we have placed the struggle against poverty and underdevelopment at the centre of the goals we must pursue as we progress through our Second Decade of Liberation. To succeed as speedily as possible in this struggle, we need to ensure that the greatest number of our people, black and white, act together as part of a people's contract that is based on the understanding that we share a common destiny. To achieve the goals of national unity and reconciliation requires that we act in unity and unite in action to advance the shared national goal of a better life for all. Hopefully, this year's Day of National Unity and Reconciliation has given a further impetus to the national movement that is evident in many parts of our country, of our coming together in a people's contract, whose adherents have no doubt about the meaning and vital importance of national reconciliation. The season traditionally described in our country and other parts of the world as being one of peace on earth and goodwill to all persons is upon us. We cannot fail to mention that one of the events that will be celebrated during this season, on January 1, will be the birth of the first Black Republic in the world, proclaimed in Haiti on January 1, 1804 after the African slaves of Haiti had defeated three European powers of the day. We extend the season's compliments to all our readers and people and wish everybody a joyful, peaceful and safe period of rest and celebration. We are convinced that the overwhelming majority of our people, black and white, fully understand and accept the need for us to work together for equality, national unity and reconciliation, and a prosperous future for all our people. To ensure that everybody has the possibility to contribute to these goals, we must all respect the call to Arrive Alive! Thabo Mbeki --------------------------------------------------------------------- ROAD SAFETY Safe roads are challenge for all of us For the festive season road death toll to be curbed, government departments, communities and individuals needs to work together. While the festive season should be a period of celebration, for some families it turns into a time of sadness. The road carnage that has become synonymous with the festive season means that while most families celebrate their achievements of the previous year and look forward to the prospect of the coming year, other families mourn the deaths of loved ones, spend the season in hospital wards, or are shattered due to the loss of breadwinners through road traffic injuries. A report by the United Nations General Assembly, looking specifically at the problem of road traffic injuries and their impact on societies, states: "Road traffic injuries are a global problem affecting all sectors of society. To date, road safety has received insufficient attention at the international and national levels. This has resulted in part from a lack of political responsibility and multidisciplinary collaboration needed to tackle it effectively." In addressing road carnage, it is necessary to move from compartmentalising road traffic injuries. The thinking, for quite some time, has been that road traffic injuries are a problem that should be faced and addressed by the department entrusted to oversee transport matters. We are yet to fully realise that road traffic injuries affect not only all sectors of our society, but also other departments of government. There is, for example, an obvious link between road traffic injuries and the Department of Health. When a pedestrian has been knocked down by a vehicle, they are rushed to the nearest health facility for medical attention. It is the Department of Health that has to expend its meagre resources to attend to the tragic consequences of road traffic injuries that could have been prevented. The Department of Health is tasked by the Constitution to progressively ensure that everyone has a right to health care, including road traffic injury victims. Road traffic injuries fall disproportionately on people in low and middle-income communities. They also disproportionately affect the poor in developing countries, where the majority of road crash victims are vulnerable road users. This reality, coupled with this Constitutional obligation, means that the Department of Health, at most times, is the only entity to foot the bill to cater for road traffic injury victims, many of whom are poor. Even more alarming is the fact that World Health Organisation (WHO) projections suggest that by year 2020 road traffic injuries could rank third among causes of death and disability, ahead of such other health problems as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV and AIDS. Road accidents will continue to cause death and injury and deplete resources if there is no effective intervention. Road traffic accidents have been part of the human experience for a long time. The increase in road traffic accidents is synonymous with development, but is preventable and its impact can be reduced. Many of the impacts of road traffic accidents are visible but some impacts are invisible. Grief and pain caused by road traffic injuries cannot be quantified. What is of great concern is that most people that die are young males - most of whom are economically active people and breadwinners. Therefore, it is of even more importance as a public health problem. The Department of Health needs to be part of primary prevention strategies. Primary prevention focuses on things to do to prevent the accident or injury from happening in the first place. The Department of Health can do a few things in primary prevention, including alcohol intake and distribution control, driver behavioural changes, community mobilisation to prevent accidents and eye tests. The response to road traffic accidents and injuries fits perfectly into the public health approach. Like the approach to public health, the response to road accidents should be interdisciplinary and intersectoral, scientific, involve collective action, emphasise primary prevention, and provide maximum benefit to the largest number of people. The health sector has a variety of advantages and assets to bring to the table. At the same time, it has a social responsibility to prevent road traffic injuries, because tax payers money is used for emergency care, hospital care and rehabilitation as well as for social security grants. Senior officials from the Department of Health are already engaged in talks with the Department of Transport to identify areas of cooperation around the problem of road traffic injuries. Other sectors, including civil society and business, need to join this effort in a bid to stem the tide of road carnage and injuries. The WHO has chosen the theme 'Safe Roads' for World Health Day to be observed on 7 April 2004. The objectives of World Health Day 2004 are to: u draw global attention to the growing but preventable human and economic costs of road traffic injuries; u advocate for increased and sustained action in policy, programmes, funding and research; u place road traffic injury prevention high on the agenda of governments, international organisations, development agencies, NGOs and the private sector; u launch the World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention; u build partnerships and collaboration for road traffic injury prevention. As South Africans, we need to do all in our power to ensure that we go some way in bringing to fruition the objectives of the World Health Day for 2004. It is up to all of us, firstly as individuals and as responsible communities, to stop the carnage on our roads, to stop the maiming of our mothers and fathers, exercise consideration and courtesy as we travel to our various destinations this festive season. If we understand the consequences that road traffic injuries have on our communities, we will then make sure that we indeed 'arrive alive'. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the last edition of ANC Today for 2003. The first edition of 2004 will be published on 9 January. We wish all our readers well over the festive season. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of ANC Today is available from the ANC web site at: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2003/at50.htm To receive ANC Today free of charge by e-mail each week go to: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/subscribe.html To unsubscribe yourself from the ANC Today mailing list go to: http://lists.anc.org.za/mailman/listinfo/anctoday