Human rights, black aspirations and white fears

On March 21st we will celebrate our Human Rights Day. We deliberately chose this day as our Human Rights Day to honour the people who were massacred at Sharpeville on March 21, 1960, as well as all other patriots who had perished during the course of our struggle for liberation.

This was a struggle to end white minority domination and racial discrimination, to replace them with a non-racial and non-sexist democracy. It was not a struggle to replace white domination with black domination, precisely because the very core of the liberation struggle was to end racism in all its forms.

Throughout its history, our movement upheld and defended this position without wavering. For instance, it was incorporated in the historic 1943 document, The Africans' Claims, which preceded the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

It was proudly proclaimed in the 1955 Freedom Charter, which boldly stated that "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white"; that "All national groups shall have equal rights"; that "All should be equal before the law"; and that "All shall enjoy equal human rights".

All these objectives are firmly entrenched in the Constitution adopted by the Constitutional Assembly in 1996. In particular they have been incorporated in the Bill of Rights, which constitutes Chapter 2 of our Constitution, and spells out the political and socio-economic rights due to our people - the fundamental human rights that characterise the new South Africa.

In this regard, we must draw especial attention to the provision in the Bill of Rights, which states that, "The Bill of Rights applies to all law, and binds the legislature, the executive, the judiciary and all organs of state."

The Constitution is the fundamental law of the Republic. The provision in the Bill of Rights we have just quoted makes it very clear that this Bill provides the framework for everything that all three arms of our system of governance do - the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.

Despite all this - both the commitment of the ANC and our Government to non-racism and equality, and the fact of our Constitution - new concerns have been raised precisely around questions of non-racism and equality. As we celebrate our Human Rights Day, some in our country have sought to put back firmly on the public agenda the issue of "group rights". This has centred on the allegation that our Government's policies, originating from the ANC, are negatively affecting the rights of the Afrikaners in particular, and the white section of our population in general. At its most extreme, the argument that is being advanced is that the ANC and the Government are as guilty of racism as was the apartheid regime.

The editor of the newspaper "Rapport", Tim du Plessis, put this matter thus in the March 6 edition of the paper:

"The last time SA enjoyed the kind of economic prosperity we are experiencing today, was in the 1960s. Then, the country was ruled by the race-ideologist H F Verwoerd. Today we are ruled by the race-ideologist Thabo Mbeki... There are... voices that are warning that the present economic good times are misleading, and that stability could even be threatened... Whites are silenced with the accusation of racism...

"Like in the days of Verwoerd, the business leaders prefer to keep quiet, and go along with the misplaced, race-driven laws and regulations. South Africa's bright economy does paint a veneer of respectability over the current race farce being perpetrated in the name of transformation. It makes it less visible, but no less absurd than the bizarre social engineering used in the Verwoerd days to create a segregated society."

The Deputy Editor of "Die Burger", Leopold Scholtz, echoed these sentiments in an article published in this newspaper on March 11, 2005. He wrote:

"The somewhat brutal way in which the ANC in the Tshwane City Council is forcing its will upon the minorities with regard to changing the name of Pretoria to Tshwane, should set the red lights flickering. This is a symptom of the possibility that the historic agreement of 1994 could be faltering.

"In the first few years after 1994, President Mandela repeatedly stressed that the whites had not been defeated and that government policy should accommodate both black aspirations and white fears...

"In the Mandela model of reconciliation, the compromise reached on Pretoria was that Tshwane would be the name of the mega-city and Pretoria would be retained as the name of the old city area. But the Tshwane ANC - like the ANC in Limpopo before it -seems to have forgotten all about 1994 and the Mandela model. The ANC is using its majority in the Tshwane Council to simply steamroller over its opponents...

"In an ethnically divided country like South Africa, there is general consensus that some things should not be interfered with unless there is a very, very good reason for doing so. Mandela realised this when he was prepared to lose some popularity within his own party by protecting the Springbok as a symbol for the whites, and for the Afrikaners in particular.

"Mbeki is not showing the same wisdom. True, the Pretoria decision was not taken by him, but he is seemingly not lifting a finger to stop it. Don't let the 1994 agreement fall apart. That agreement meant that we were able to avoid a destructive civil war."

(Schooled in an authoritarian style of leadership that characterised the National Party, this journalist, Leopold Scholtz, will find it difficult to understand that what Nelson Mandela said and did reflected ANC policies and decisions. For example, even the view about the Springbok symbol, communicated to the country by President Mandela, was decided at a formal meeting of the ANC leadership. The current President of the ANC is as much bound by the collective decisions of the ANC as was President Mandela and the preceding Presidents of the ANC. The ANC has no tradition of exclusive decision-making powers that are enjoyed and exercised by some macho-leader, and completely rejects the sustained effort to personalise its decisions and procedures.)

Evidently driven by the same concerns expressed by du Plessis and Scholtz, F.W. de Klerk spoke to the Cape Town Press Club on February 28, 2005, entitling his address: "The role of minorities in the new South Africa". He said:

"Instead of an approach that accommodates diversity, there is an increasing tendency to require minorities to conform to the ANC goal of (demographic) 'representivity'... In effect, the concept of across the board representivity is irreconcilable with the constitutional principle of cultural diversity.

"Diversity requires an environment with numerous centres of cultural, social and economic activity -all existing in mutual toleration and respect. It presupposes a degree of community autonomy and acceptance that there are important spheres of life that should be free from majority interference and control...

"The reality now is that whites - and I believe members of other (racial) minorities as well - feel increasingly disempowered. According to Lenin, politics can be reduced to two words: "who, whom" -who exercises political power and against whom is it exercised. Minorities increasingly feel that they are on the wrong side of the Leninist power equation -particularly as transformation policies begin to impact on virtually every aspect of their lives."

F.W. de Klerk went on to say that, "we need to reach consensus on the key issues of transformation, cultural diversity and skills... My only regret is the absence of a structured forum in which such a discussion can take place. Should the Government not take the lead in creating a forum where civil society and the politicians can thrash out a consensus on the way forward? I think so!"

If Tim du Plessis, Leopold Scholtz and F.W. de Klerk are correct in their assertions, then it must follow that our Government's actions are unconstitutional and therefore illegal. Indeed, referring to our sustained efforts to build a non-racial South Africa, de Klerk states the matter openly that "the concept of across the board representivity is irreconcilable with the constitutional principle of cultural diversity."

If these allegations were correct, the ANC and our Government would have to engage in the most serious introspection and analysis, radically to alter or terminate all policies that would be in violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution. As principal architects of our democracy and constitutional order, we have to ensure that, at all times, we remain loyal to our role as defenders of our democratic gains, and therefore our Constitution.

Beyond this, if they were correct, the arguments advanced by the three Afrikaner writers would mean that our movement has abandoned the very positions that define and have defined it as a progressive movement for national liberation, positions for whose realisation our members and supporters sacrificed their lives. If they were correct, they would make it absolutely imperative for our movement to undertake the most serious and critical assessment of both itself and its policies.

To guide us in this regard, we would have to take into account various provisions contained in our Constitution. For instance Clause 31 in the Bill of Rights says: "Persons belonging to a cultural, religious or linguistic community may not be denied the right, with other members of that community - to enjoy their culture, practice their religion and use their language; and to form, join and maintain cultural, religious and linguistic associations and other organs of civil society."

We would have to take this together with Clause 185 of the Constitution, which spells out the tasks of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities. One of these is: "to promote and develop peace, friendship, humanity, tolerance and national unity among cultural, religious and linguistic communities, on the basis of equality, non-discrimination and free association."

Equally, we would have to pay attention to the principles enunciated in the Preamble to the Constitution. For instance the Preamble says that, "We the people of South Africa recognise the injustices of our past... (and) therefore... adopt (the) Constitution... to heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights..."

To heal these divisions of the past, Clause 9 of our Constitution, (the Equality Clause), says, among other things, "To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination, may be taken."

Contrary to what our detractors have sought to convey, the reality is that the human rights architecture contained in our Constitution, our country's fundamental law, specifically requires that we should redress the wrongs we inherited from our colonial and apartheid past.

In reality, the social transformation programmes we are implementing are not only consistent with our Constitution, but are prescribed by the same Constitution, to ensure that we recognise the injustices of our past, heal the divisions of the past, and promote the achievement of equality.

In addition, and of great importance, that constitutional human rights architecture also requires of us that we should respect the principle contained in the Constitutional Preamble, which states that we "Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity." It requires that together, as a people, we should promote and develop peace, friendship, humanity, tolerance and national unity, involving all our people across the inherited divisions based on race, colour, culture, religion and so on.

To respect and promote the letter and spirit of our Constitution, one of the things we have to do it to respond seriously to the requirement stated in the Constitutional Preamble to "recognise the injustices of our past". The recognition of those injustices means that we should have a proper understanding of the legacy of colonialism and apartheid that continues to scar our society.

That legacy communicates the unequivocal message that we still have a long way to go to achieve the objectives indicated in the Equality Clause, as well as the friendship, tolerance and national unity encompassing all our people, prescribed by Clause 185.

To give only one example of the scandalous consequences of this legacy, a recent study produced statistics about the numbers of engineers in our country. For instance it indicated that we face the following racial imbalances:

Civil engineers: 6816, White: and 374, African; Mechanical engineers: 6247, White: and 343, African; Mining metallurgists: 2417, White: and 132, African; Electronics & communications technicians: 10647, White: and 585, African; Mechanical engineering technicians: 10 534, White: and 585, African; Draughts persons: 980, White: and 54, African; % of all engineers: 90.99%, White: and 4.77%, African.

What this means is that, because of the persisting impact of the legacy of the past, we continue to experience a criminal waste of the talents of the majority of our people, contrary to the principle contained in the Constitutional Preamble to "improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person".

All engineering skills in our country are in short supply. Any action our Government might take both to increase the numbers of skilled people and address the racial imbalance indicated by the figures above, would not in any way imply the 'disempowerment of minorities' that F.W. de Klerk alleged was happening.

It is sad and unfortunate that opinion-makers such as F.W. de Klerk, Tim du Plessis and Leopold Scholtz seem to be completely blind to the imperative to address the equitable empowerment of all South Africans, bearing in mind the debilitating burden of our racist legacy. Nowhere, for instance, do they even express regret for the disastrous picture conveyed by the information on engineers that we indicated above.

They seem totally blind to the basic requirement that to protect the rights and privileges of the Afrikaners in particular and the whites in general, they need to be champions of the rights of all other South African race, linguistic, cultural and religious communities, including the rights and obligations contained in the Equality Clause.

They appear not to understand the stark reality that in terms of the socio-economic physiognomy of our country, the most "disempowered" in our society are the millions who were the victims of centuries of colonialism and apartheid.

They appear not to understand that those who should harbour the most serious grievance about any deficit in terms of the honouring of the provisions of our Constitution are the historically disadvantaged millions, the majority of our population, whose upliftment stands at the core of our programme of social transformation.

It seems that they do not understand that what would cause "the 1994 agreement (to) fall apart", and lay the basis for a new "destructive civil war", would be our failure practically to respond to the imperative prescribed in the Constitutional Preamble, to "recognise the injustices of our past".

In this regard, F.W. de Klerk may be right that our Government should deliberately seek to engage the minority in our country, to which he, Tim du Plessis and Leopold Scholtz belong. This political and ideological minority is out of step with the black and white majority of our people, including the business community, which understands that it is in our common interest to take the necessary corrective steps to "heal the divisions of the past".

The engagement we refer to has absolutely nothing to do with the regression to the apartheid and "separate development" concept of "group rights" that lies at the bottom of the suggestion to create a "forum where civil society and the politicians can thrash out a consensus on the way forward". We have absolutely no need for a convention of race and ethnic representatives, based on the false, backward and racist thesis that these racial and ethnic groups share common racial and ethnic political objectives.

The March 15, 2005 edition of "Die Burger" carried an article by Professor Fanie Cloete of the University of Stellenbosch. Among other things he said, "There are so many more shiny new cars and bigger houses in the traditionally white areas, that one simply has to question whether there is any merit to the arguments of all the white sceptics (about the future of our country).

"With regard to Afrikaners in particular, why can't they try to allay their fears about the future by accepting their specific responsibilities with regard to doing more to address the imbalances caused by apartheid?"

About a week before Human Rights Day, on March 15, I had the privilege to participate in the joyful official opening of the new building which houses the Law Faculty of the University of Pretoria and the prestigious Oliver R. Tambo Law Library of the Faculty.

Merely to be present at this historically Afrikaner University as it honoured one of our eminent national heroes, the liberation fighter and former President of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, was a gift that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

But also most remarkable and inspiring was the report given by the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University, Professor Pistorius, when he said that the University of Pretoria is:

• the biggest African University in our country, in terms of its intake of South African, African students;
• the biggest Afrikaans medium University in our country;
• the biggest English medium University in our country; and,
• the biggest source of original research among our Universities.

The story that Professor Pistorius told, as well as the official opening of the Oliver Tambo Law Library, said everything that needs to be said to confirm that the University of Pretoria, its administration, staff, students and workers stand out as a lodestar with regard to what our country has to do, to build the human rights culture we will celebrate on March 21st, to honour and respect our Constitution, to educate ourselves and the rest of the world what it means to create a non-racial society "in an ethnically divided country like South Africa".

Human Rights

Honouring the ANC's human rights heritage

The South African Constitution and Bill of Rights are widely acknowledged as among the most progressive and inclusive in the world today. Yet how did South Africa evolve from a country notorious for its human rights abuses to one that is today a leading light for other countries grappling with issues of oppression in its many forms?

This question can be answered by considering the most significant landmarks in the history of the African National Congress that contributed to shaping South Africa's future on the long and painful road to human dignity, equality and opportunity for all the people of South Africa.

From the inspiration of early leaders, such as Pixley Seme and Charlotte Maxeke, through the mass participation in the drafting of the Freedom Charter, to the negotiations over a new Constitution, these landmarks record the ANC's unswerving commitment to the principles of human rights as the cornerstone of exemplary democratic governance.

The Africans' Claims in South Africa was adopted by the ANC in 1943 in response to the Atlantic Charter that announced a new world order emerging out of the Second World War. Insisting that any new order must be based on justice and self-determination for all people, this remarkable document, written five years before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asserted the legitimate rights of Africans and formulated a fully developed Bill of Rights that asserted not only the political rights of citizenship but also the concomitant social and economic rights to health, education, land, employment and welfare.

Africans' Claims in South Africa set the stage for the later expansion and elaboration of human rights as documented in the Women's Charter in 1954, the Freedom Charter in 1955, the Harare Declaration in 1989, and other watersheds in the ANC's human rights tradition. When it came to drafting a Constitution and a Bill of Rights for a democratic South Africa, this human rights tradition bore fruit by establishing human dignity, equality and freedom as the basic, uncompromising foundation stones on which our new South Africa has been built.

The ANC remains committed to its legacy, a lasting legacy to be celebrated, but also an enduring trust to be honoured in the present. By definition, a tradition is handed down from the past. But a tradition, if it is a living tradition, is not only handed down from the past but also taken up in the present. For those of us who take up the torch of this human rights tradition, we also bear the responsibility of being true to its claims for human dignity, integrity, freedom and self-determination.

We have walked a long road to freedom in South Africa over the past sixty years since the leadership of the ANC formulated Africans' Claims in South Africa.

Our progress has been marked by gains in human rights. But our progress has also been marked by losses, by the sacrifices made by so many of our people for freedom and justice in our land. As we commemorate the ideals of Africans' Claims in South Africa, recommitting ourselves to human rights and human development, we must also remember those heroes of the ANC's human rights tradition who committed their lives to the struggle but did not live to see the dawn of freedom.

Africans' Claims in South Africa, therefore, is a document spanning the twentieth century, recalling all of our gains, losses, and recoveries on the long journey from the racist denial of human rights to the constitutional establishment of human rights in a democratic South Africa.

As an important part of our heritage, Africans' Claims in South Africa is also crucial for our future. This document established not only a template for assessing our achievements and challenges but also a horizon for our ongoing work in advancing human rights in the three contexts identified by its authors in 1943 -global, African, and national.

By living this legacy, in a changing, globalising world, we also fight for world democracy. By living this legacy, in and through our initiatives for African development, we also engage the world from an African perspective. By living this legacy, within a unified, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa, we have actually realised the demands made in Africans' Claims for full citizenship rights.

Mindful of the challenges before us, we must not take lightly the accomplishments we have made in turning the claims and demands, as well as the hopes and dreams, of the authors of Africans' Claims into reality.

Claiming our heritage, claiming our future - we honour the human rights tradition of the ANC best by doing everything we can in the present to advance human rights in our country, our continent, and our world. We are the custodians of this wonderful heritage. All we can do is to dedicate ourselves to the protection and enhancement of this heritage.

** Kader Asmal is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee. Together with Cassius Lubisi and David Chidester, he has edited a new book, 'Legacy of Freedom: The ANC's Human Rights Tradition', being launched on Human Rights Day, Monday 21 March 2005.

The Sociology of the Public Discourse in Democratic South Africa / Part X

A vitoria e çerta!

Despite what Nelson Mandela said in 1964, to which we referred last week, and regardless of everything we have done especially since 1994, the rightwing reaches and preaches the extraordinary conclusion that the struggle for non-racialism is nothing more than reverse black racism that echoes the sustained effort of colonialism and apartheid to establish and entrench white minority domination.

To give a veneer of intellectual sophistication to this thesis, the journalist, Anthony Johnson, described F.W. de Klerk's reversion to the apartheid concept of "group rights" (see below), as representing a "liberal mindset", which strives for "unity by celebrating and accommodating diversity". (A March 2, 2005 editorial in "Beeld" joins Johnson in praise of the de Klerk thesis, and says, "the ruling party would do well to take note of former president F.W. de Klerk's criticism of the obsession with race...")

He contrasted this with the statement made by NNP Secretary General, Daryl Swanepoel, calling on all South Africans to join the ANC, regardless of race and colour, characterising the NNP statement as representing an "authoritarian mindset", which tries to "enforce unity through conformity, centralisation and exclusion". ("Cape Times", March 8, 2005).

(Consistent with Johnson's views, the same "Beeld" editorial to which we referred in the preceding paragraph warmly endorsed what it described as de Klerk's "tough words" directed against the NNP, which he had accused of " 'flirt(ing) comfortably with the ANC' for personal gain, rather than insisting on the minority rights that are guaranteed in the Constitution.")

The rightwing feels emboldened and compelled to tell the barefaced lie that "much of apartheid's edifice has been abolished", to quote Helen Zille, regardless of the pervasive legacy of apartheid in all parts of our country and all spheres of human activity, which is visible to the naked eye.

The determined rightwing attempt to deny the persistence of the racist legacy thus constitutes one of the defining features of the sociology of the public discourse in our country. This necessitates that the rightwing should, as often as possible, strive to de-legitimise our movement's ideas intended to create a non-racial society, presenting them as being unacceptable attempts to "play the race card".

Because of our history and its contemporary outcomes, the right wing, in all its shades, groups itself around this central objective. Thus we find that all and sundry, from the DA, to F.W. de Klerk and Helen Suzman, from Hermann Giliomee to Max du Preez, from "Die Burger", to the "Citizen" and the Institute of Race Relations, and many others in between, both black and white, are very determined to de-legitimise the struggle to create a non-racial South Africa. Naturally, this hostile offensive must and does include the principal force in our country that bears the historic responsibility to lead this struggle, the ANC.

To give philosophical legitimacy and respectability to the ideas it advances to set the national agenda, centrally about "the race question", which Mteto Nyati said represented "(the white elite's) real interest to protect its wealth and lifestyle", (ANC TODAY Vol 5 No 3), the rightwing relies fundamentally on the neo-conservative precepts explained by Piereson.

These are about "strengthening the system of private enterprise and (ensuring) limited government, understanding that a defence of capitalism requires also a defence of the deeper cultural assumptions that gave meaning and order to a commercial (free market) civilisation."

In this context, the rightwing in our country argues for a fundamentalist individualism and a doctrine of meritocracy. These positions were originally propagated principally by British philosophers, who correctly supported the historical evolution from feudalism to capitalism.

Applied to our situation with our specific history of the systemic and conscious disempowerment of the black majority, the superimposition of the neo-conservative/neo-liberal doctrines of fundamentalist individualism and meritocracy on what we have to do, cannot but ensure the protection of the privileged and exclusive "wealth and lifestyle" that white South Africa attained as a result of 350 years of colonialism and apartheid.

ANC National Assembly MP, Ben Turok, participated in the debate of the President's State of the Nation Address this year. Directly relevant to the foregoing, he said:

"The market favours the strong, so the disadvantaged need supporting institutions. This is where there is a role for the state, and this is why we have broad based economic empowerment, policies on labour intensive methods, new institutions for micro-credit, cooperatives and the rest of our new legislation. If we do not use these mechanisms we shall have white economic domination forever."

Strangely but perfectly easy to understand, another tendency within the rightwing continues to argue for the corrupted version of "group rights" that the NP argued for during the process of negotiations that led to the democratic victory of 1994. This latter group, former "true blue" members of the NP, also accuses our movement of "playing the race card" to marginalize and dis-empower the national minorities.

By this means, it seeks to hide its real intention to protect the "wealth and lifestyle" of its erstwhile constituency by pretending that its "solution of the national question" is more consistent with the noble goal of national reconciliation than the "racist" approach of our movement.

It also advances the notion that our efforts to achieve the fundamental social transformation of our country, relying on the democratic mandate we have repeatedly received in the free and fair elections we have held during our first decade of liberation, are illegitimate in a democracy.

It therefore argues that our democratically elected government should enter into negotiations with the national minorities as "groups", to determine the content of the national agenda, regardless of the fact that the overwhelming majority of the electorate, including voters who belong to the national minorities, gave us a mandate to govern.

One of the most significant outcomes of the 2004 General Elections was that the ANC emerged as the representative of the majority of the Coloured and Indian sections of our population, adding to its overwhelming African support. It also won greater White voter support than in the past. The ANC can therefore quite legitimately claim that it is the principal political representative certainly of the African, Coloured and Indian sections of our population.

Despite this reality, derived from our open democratic process, there are some in our country, such as former President F.W. de Klerk, who propagate the entirely false thesis that the ANC and the Government represent only the African majority. On this basis they argue that the supposedly "Africans only" Government should participate in a new CODESA with the "national minorities", who allegedly feel marginalized, to define what should be done to achieve the related goals of non-racialism and national reconciliation.

The protagonists of "a new CODESA" do not have the courage to explain that what they really have in mind is to oblige our movement and Government to negotiate with "the Whites", to put in place national programmes focused on at least slowing down the de-racialisation of our country, and therefore achieving the preservation of as much white privilege as possible.

Among other things, they would never be able to explain how the delegations of the "national minorities" would be elected. For instance, given the outcome of the 2004 General Elections, the right wingers who claim to speak for the national minorities would have to explain why the ANC should not represent the Coloured and Indian sections of our population in the "new CODESA" they are proposing.

The unrelenting attempt to banish discussion of "the race question" from the public discourse was eloquently stated in a March 2, 2005 "Cape Argus" editorial entitled "We have to talk about this".

It said: "When the new South Africa was formally declared in 1994, we were, perhaps understandably, misled by euphoria and relief into thinking that the new had actually come into being.

"We did not, then, properly understand the challenge that confronted us, and the challenge was to repair a damaged society. In many remarkable ways, we succeeded...

"But we have failed in one, crucial aspect: we have failed to debunk the apartheid mythology of race. And we have failed to debunk it because, quite simply, we have decided to keep it alive. We preserved it because we thought that it was the only way to reverse its effects, and there's every reason, today, to believe we were wrong.

"Race consciousness has not been higher in these 10 years than it is today, and within it resides all manner of untested, unspoken and unhelpful prejudices and fallacies...

"We all have histories, a sum of influences that make us think and act differently, but we will embark on a damning parody of the apartheid we celebrate defeating, if we continue to emphasise the superstition of racial difference.

"It's a handy superstition, but it's not doing much to transform society, and it's doing a lot to sow division and suspicion... The national leadership needs to confront the challenge we put off a decade ago of figuring out how we really are going to repair the damage done in the name of skin colour." We must admit that it is not very often that in our public discourse, we hear such a clear message emanating from the voice represented by this "Cape Argus" editorial, part of what Mteto Nyati described as "the systemic structures behind the (seemingly) random events" that characterise the national battle of ideas.

Any honest person who reads the "Cape Argus" editorial cannot but be moved by the sincerity of its tone and its intent. At the same time, we cannot avoid remarking on its obvious seeming innocence, informed by the illusion that some in our country entertained and encouraged, that the peaceful elections of 1994 meant that, "the new had actually come into being."

On countless occasions since those elections, we argued that the legacy of the past was too deeply entrenched for "the new to have come into being" in 1994. We said it needed time and the cooperation of all South Africans to bring the new into being.

We said that national reconciliation and social transformation were two sides of the same coin, which had to be pursued together and simultaneously, with neither being possible without the other. We called for adherence by all our people to a new patriotism.

Many in our society contested what we said about the stubborn reality of the racist legacy, claiming, as Helen Zille has just done that "much of apartheid's edifice has been abolished". Many among these viewed racism exclusively in terms of ideas carried in the heads and spoken through the mouths of what they determined was but a small minority of our people.

Convinced that "the new South Africa" now offered equal opportunities to all our citizens, they refused to focus their minds on the structural socio-economic manifestation of racism, which continues to exist, regardless of the progress we may have achieved with regard to the intellectual or, at times, rhetorical repudiation of the ideas of racism by our people, black and white.

They also refused to recognise the reality that on the macro-plane of human consciousness, it was in any case impossible to eradicate racism in a decade. This reality has now forced itself onto the national agenda around such urgent and critical issues as the transformation of the judiciary and our schools.

Among other things, the debate about the transformation of the judiciary will also have to address the perverse and malignant interpretations of the doctrines of the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary, which seek to translate these concepts into a structural antagonism, or an antagonistic contradiction between the executive and the judiciary.

Less dangerously for the future of our democracy, this also finds expression in a supposed structural antagonism between the executive and the media.

All this also constitutes part of the sociology of the public discourse in our country. Accordingly, it must be discussed freely, as part of the process of ensuring that our democracy creates the space for a thousand schools of thought to contend.

This debate should not be shut down through the use of the dishonest device that such debate threatens the independence of either the judiciary or the media. These assertions have also served as part of the sociology of our public discourse, intended to insulate some institutions from the public discourse and public accountability, as holy cows, to give them the possibility to confront the democratic order, unchallenged, in the interest of those who felt that democracy deprived them of privileges to which they were accustomed.

Those of our compatriots persuaded to the point of view that in the light of the 1994 elections, "the new had actually come into being", saw our demands and programmes, such as affirmative action and black economic empowerment, as being nothing more than the re-introduction of a racist social engineering approach that had been "abolished".

It is out of all this, which continues to form part of the national discourse, that the determination was made by these that to pursue the goal of demographic "representativity" was to "re-racialise" our country. Yet what this representativity is about, is striving to accomplish the goal stated in the "Cape Argus", "to repair the damage done in the name of skin colour."

Our movement has a duty to continue its historic and long-standing struggle for the socio-economic liberation from poverty and underdevelopment of the black people in general and the African people in particular.

At the same time, we must truly respect the outcome spelt out in the Freedom Charter and our National Constitution, that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, united in their diversity, as well the policy directive, that we must achieve, simultaneously, both national reconciliation and social transformation.

To achieve these objectives, our movement has to remain loyal to the objective to eradicate the legacy of 350 years of colonialism and apartheid. To solve this problem we must first acknowledge that it exists. To address it, requires that, in the first instance, we must not entertain the illusion that "the new came into being in 1994".

All this must form part of the public discourse that moves all our people, regardless of their respective histories, to act together to bring the new into being. If we do this, we will in time arrive at the situation when the damage done in the name of skin colour will have been repaired.

Our movement cannot allow the perception to prevail according to which the struggle to create a non-racial society carries a false public (media) image that it is but a struggle to re-introduce a racial order that has been abolished. It dare not abandon the struggle to set the national agenda, either through timidity or complacency, believing that it is sufficient merely to win elections.

Contrary to what Itumeleng Mahabane predicted, the progressive movement must practically demonstrate that it has the resolve to wage the protracted struggle for fundamental social transformation as well as the ideas supporting such change, that James Piereson said the US neo-conservatives had engaged in, to redefine the US political agenda.

As they have done throughout our long struggle, all our cadres and supporters must constantly strive to understand the sociology of the public discourse, and therefore the battle of ideas.

They must do everything to ensure that our movement remains "the leading party of ideas", to guarantee that the genuinely democratic movement of our country continues to set the national agenda, understanding that "politics is only superficially about personalities: it is the implementation of ideas through power."

We have entitled this concluding article of the Series on the Public Discourse in our country "A vitoria a çerta" - Victory is Certain! Like the heading of last week's article, "A luta continua" - The Struggle Continues - we have borrowed the title of this week's article from the most enduring slogan of the sister liberation movements that defeated Portuguese colonialism on our continent, which was - "A luta continua: a vitoria e çerta!"

We quoted Mteto Nyati in the Part VIII article published in Vol 5 No 9 stating that, "Africa's renewal has never been a priority for SA's white elite."

This was starkly demonstrated in the statement made by the political leader of the rightwing in our country, Tony Leon, when he addressed the "Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe" faction in the European Parliament, on March 2, 2005.

This supposedly African political leader made bold to say that the EU should "tie future progress in trade negotiations between EU and African countries to political progress on Zimbabwe."

In other words, this supposedly African political leader travelled all the way from South Africa to Western Europe to argue for the further marginalisation and impoverishment of the hundreds of millions of the peoples of Africa, who are engaged in a desperate struggle to open the markets of the developed North to their products.

Because of a racist fixation about Zimbabwe, which has absolutely nothing to do with genuine concern for the fate of the people of Zimbabwe, this supposedly African leader was even prepared to oppose the welcome efforts of the most prominent political and other leaders of the West to open the markets of the West to African products.

He travelled from Africa to Europe to argue that even these Western leaders are wrong to accept the concerns of hundreds of millions of Africans, without political preconditions. He argued that instead, they should impose collective punishment on these masses because of whatever might be happening in one African country out of 53, Zimbabwe.

Fortunately, this supposedly African political leader will fail in his mission to recruit European opinion to the cause of our national, South African, right wing, against the interests of the peoples of Africa, as well as our own. Even the most rightwing among the European politicians understands that the victory of the conservative cause cannot be secured at the cost of the impoverishment of almost a billion Africans.

Blinded by its racist origins and current pursuits, our domestic right wing, as represented by the DA, cannot understand this most basic humane imperative. It cannot comprehend the crass and ugly immorality of criminally exploiting the hunger of millions to advance the ideological objectives of the right wing.

The total liberation of Africa has always been a fundamental objective of our movement, the ANC. Even from the middle of the 19th century, the emerging African intelligentsia, as represented by patriots such as Tiyo Soga, defined our liberation within the context of the unity of free Africa.

The immediate antecedents of our liberation movement, the ANC, such as the emergence of the Ethiopian Christian movement in our country - the indigenous response to the conversion of the masses of our people to Christianity - were centred on the aspiration towards African emancipation and unity. The anthem, "Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika", gave voice to this objective.

As we conclude this Series, which discusses our national ideological challenges, using slogans inherited from liberation struggles elsewhere on our continent, we seek to make the statement that we will continue to engage the national battle of ideas, fully conscious of the reality that ours is also a struggle for the emancipation of the peoples of Africa as a whole. As we continue that struggle, we are proud and inspired to reiterate the noble words - God bless Africa!

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