Halala Freedom Day, halala!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Below follows an edited version of the Freedom Day address of the President delivered at the Absa Stadium, eThekwini, on 27 April, which we publish as this week's Letter from the President because of the direction it provides with regard to our national tasks during the Second Decade of Freedom.

These Freedom Day celebrations take place as we begin the second year of the Second Decade of Freedom. It also takes place on the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Charter, which was adopted at the Congress of the People in 1955.

I mention the fact that it is the beginning of the Second Year of the Second Decade of Freedom as well as the golden jubilee of the Freedom Charter, because when we won our freedom we based our constitution on the vision contained in the Freedom Charter, including the correct assertion on the basic and fundamental characteristic of our society: South Africa belongs to all its people united in their diversity! The challenge for all of us in the Second Decade of Freedom is to make certain that we build this kind of South Africa.

During this new decade, we should ask ourselves as to what we have done, as individuals and communities, to translate into reality the vision that South Africa belongs to all her people. We should ask ourselves whether through our actions we have contributed to the transformation of our country or, whether we have blocked its advance away from our apartheid past. We should ask ourselves whether we have worked towards the goal of a country whose citizens are equal or, whether we have sought to entrench the inequalities of the past.

Indeed, we are happy that there are many in our society who have worked hard to ensure that South Africans march forward towards a unified nation - a nation that shares the same values and the same aspirations, driven by the same vision of a transformed society that is united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic, enjoying a shared prosperity.

We are blessed that there are many who are striving for the collective objective of all South Africans - that all our people should and must enjoy a better life - and through practical actions, are themselves daily pushing back the frontiers of poverty.

Working together we continue to improve the harsh conditions under which many of our people live. Indeed, in the first 11 years of freedom we managed to give hope where there was hopelessness. We brought back dignity where indignity prevailed. In this way, millions of South Africans know and feel that South Africa truly belongs to all of us.

Together we have brought to a stop the unnecessary violent conflicts that characterised some parts of country, especially this province of KwaZulu Natal. During our years of freedom, South Africa has steadily become a country that belongs to all because, in part, where there could have been serious racial conflicts because of our unfortunate past, our people, particularly those who were oppressed, have offered the hand of friendship and forgiven those who were responsible for their untold suffering.

Yet, the challenges of the Second Decade of Freedom are many and big. They are many and big because the legacy of colonialism and apartheid runs very deep. They are many and big because we have limited resources which cannot address all these challenges at the same time.

Even though all of us know that these challenges are many and big, some among us think that it is solely the responsibility of government to address them. These include those who do not take the initiative to do something about their circumstances but always complain that government is not doing anything for them. These people, to whom South Africa also belongs, usually fold their arms when their compatriots engage in self-reliance programmes in the spirit of Vuk'uzenzele.

In this Second Decade of Freedom let us work together to mobilise all our people and continue to engage in the programmes of Letsema and Vuk'uzenzele so that we do not hear stories about some of our children, some of the poor and the elderly in our communities being neglected, being hungry and destitute when our African culture tells us that 'umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu'. In this way, we will ensure that all our people feel that in reality, South Africa belongs to all of us.

Furthermore, through the work that we have done, some who were better-off before 1994 are even more prosperous today. As we build a South Africa that belongs to all, we would appeal to these compatriots to use their better positions in society to help improve the living conditions of the poor in our country. It cannot be that while government creates conditions for their own advancement and prosperity, these South Africans should continue to demand that it should be the responsibility only of the government to address the challenges of poverty and underdevelopment.

More can be done to accelerate the pace of development in our country if all the social partners work together especially with local communities, and use their expertise and resources to accelerate the transformation of our country. This is critical because the creation of a South Africa that truly belongs to all is the responsibility of every sector and echelon of society in our country.

This Second Decade of Freedom should also see us continuing to improve the system of government. The central challenge in this regard, is the sphere of local government. This is important because more than any other sphere of government, local government impacts immediately and directly on our people.

In response to this, our government has announced programmes to improve the capacity of local government. Work has already started in this regard. Accordingly, it is important that all of us work together with councillors, ward committees and other relevant structures, to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our municipalities, so that we are better able to improve the living conditions of our people.

Again, during this Second Decade of Freedom, let us bury for ever the apartheid scandal of denying millions of our people such fundamental services as clean water, sewerage, electricity, recreation facilities as well as access to health, education, housing, land and jobs.

Clearly, our freedom will mean nothing as long as our people in the rural areas continue to live in abject poverty and underdevelopment. In this regard, there is no doubt that in the last 11 years we have made important progress in our efforts to defeat poverty and underdevelopment in the rural areas.

But, because for centuries the black rural areas were deliberately condemned to poverty, disease, hunger and underdevelopment, it is impossible fully to address this challenge in a mere ten years. However, working together we can and will, in time, bring better services, infrastructure and development to all our people in these areas.

In this regard, we will continue to work with our traditional leaders, always seeking better ways to improve the institution of traditional leadership to improve its effectiveness as an agent for development. This includes the critical challenge of defending our cultures, languages and histories.

Of course, we should all engage in this work. As we celebrate our freedom, we would like to ask our intelligentsia, especially our historians and cultural workers, to pay special attention to this challenge of cultivating our languages, culture and identity. Undoubtedly, their work will be made easier if all of us as a people support their efforts to promote our languages and cultures through books, poetry, songs, theatre and other forms of communication.

Indeed, it is critical that the mass media becomes part of this important project of protecting and promoting our African identity, working with our traditional leaders, cultural workers and intellectuals, to reclaim our unique identity.

On the occasion of this Freedom Day, we would also like to ask our children and our youth to study hard so as to be better prepared for the challenges of building a new South Africa. As a country, we are determined to ensure that our youth enjoys a better future. These young people are our principal asset. Through them, we must take the development of our country to higher levels. Education and training, and life long learning must become the mainstay of our development processes.

We need to do all these and other things because many people sacrificed their lives for our freedom. They died so that we can all have equal opportunities to succeed. They died so that we can all use our god-given talents to improve our life-circumstances and those of our communities and our country. These heroes and heroines died so that we work together to defeat poverty and underdevelopment. The best way for us to honour their memory is to contribute to the development of our country.

Freedom Day and the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the freedom Charter give us the opportunity to renew our commitment to the realisation of this objective, as well as the important goals of national unity and nation building. The vision and ethos of the Freedom Charter remain an important foundation of our national effort to build a secure future together.

The last eleven years of our history have seen a radical overhaul of all institutions in our country. The constitution established Parliament, the implementation agencies and the institutions of democracy and in doing so provided us with essential agencies to help us achieve our stated objectives. While being justifiably proud of our national parliament, our provincial legislatures and local councils, we must continue to engage these institutions, and help to drive them to ensure that not only do the people govern, but that our system of governance is informed by the imperative to serve the people.

In this regard, we must treat the forthcoming local government elections as seriously as we did the General Elections, and ensure that we exercise our right to vote for our representatives in the critically important sphere of local government.

The people of KwaZulu Natal have been victims of violent conflict for far too long. As a result, in the past eleven years we have worked together, as government and different political parties, to ensure that there is peace and stability in this province. However, recently there have been some reports of violence in a few areas. We have to unite and defeat those who want to take us back to the days of violence and conflict. These are people who do not share the national vision of a democratic South Africa.

We all know very well that where there is violence there cannot be development; where there is violence there cannot be progress; where there is violence there cannot be a better life.

On this Freedom Day, as South Africans, let us join hands and work together so that we can accelerate the process that will ensure that South Africa becomes a fully developed and prosperous country that belongs to all who live in it. I wish you all a Happy Freedom Day.

Alliance Programme

Partners unite around programme to build people's power

The ANC-led Alliance formally launched its joint programme of action for 2005 following an Alliance Summit last weekend, undertaking to embark on a mass mobilisation programme to build people's power for local development.

The Alliance, which consists of the ANC, South African Communist Party (SACP), Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African National Civics Organisation (SANCO), last held a summit in 2002.

At the heart of the programme adopted by the Alliance is the 'know your neighbourhood' campaign in which national, provincial and local leaders of the Alliance will join branch members in door-to-door work to maintain dynamic contact with the Alliance's mass base. This campaign aims, among other things, to popularise and encourage participation in structures like ward committees, school governing bodies, community policing forums and other mechanisms for popular participation at local level. Through their participation in these structures, community members will be better equipped to direct development in their area and will be empowered to demand better service delivery from government.

This campaign will take place alongside Alliance activities to mark the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Charter, an historic document which emphasised the importance of the involvement of the people of South Africa in the process of governance. The Alliance aims to use this anniversary to deepen democratic practice, particularly at a local level, and to mobilise South Africans to work together to advance the vision of a new society contained in the Freedom Charter.

The campaign will seek to build cooperatives, community-based organisations (CBOs) and other mechanisms for the creation of sustainable livelihoods. The Alliance will engage with government structures, CBOs, NGOs and other organs of civil society to simplify and popularise the processes of drawing up, implementing, reviewing and monitoring the Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) that all municipalities are required to develop to guide their programmes. It will also convene 'district conferences of civil society' in each of the 16 nodal areas identified as part of government's rural development programme.

Growth, development and jobs

Another critical leg of this programme is the implementation of the agreements reached at the 2003 Growth and Development Summit (GDS) as one component of measures needed to stimulate economic growth and create jobs.

The Alliance Summit devoted much time to reviewing the GDS resolutions and assessing progress in their implementation. In the summit declaration, the Alliance partners said: "Important progress has been made, but...we have, as an Alliance working together with our government, not sufficiently mobilised our energies and resources to ensure that there is indeed a dynamic implementation of all GDS resolutions."

It said there was "particular concern" at the slow progress in reaching agreement on the GDS decision to encourage investors to invest at least 5% of their investible income in productive assets and services and social and economic infrastructure. The summit agreed the Alliance should continue examining option that would encourage growth in fixed capital investment, including prescribed assets.

"Our Alliance Summit has agreed that we need to take forward our discussion, debate and implementation of programmes that will help put South Africa onto a sustainable growth and development path that creates and protects jobs and ensures decent work and livelihoods for all," it said.

Within the context of these efforts, the summit expressed concern at recent job losses across a number of economic sectors. It said urgent intervention was required, including local procurement, trade and industrial policy measures.

Among other things, the summit said South Africa needed "an appropriate and more competitive exchange rate that will assist South Africa to create and save jobs, and build and expand local industry".

The Alliance is calling on retailers to sign a code with the union movement addressing local procurement targets of up to 75%. Government at all levels should also strongly pursue local procurement policies.

"In regard to trade, focused and clearly defined safeguard measures on imports must be taken to give industries in crisis an opportunity to restructure and to link these measures to active industrial policy measures and to shift industries to a more sustainable growth path."

For its part, business should treat retrenchment as the last option, and not the first, in responding to economic difficulty.

Alliance relations

The summit reviewed the work and functioning of the Alliance since the 2002 summit. It found the Alliance functioned effectively during election campaigns, with local structures working well together with a unifying sense of purpose. This was not always the case, however.

"Outside of election periods, and despite a great deal of ongoing Alliance interaction, we have not always been able to consistently carry through our unity and our popular mobilisation," the summit declaration said.

Among the problems and challenges identified were the "unconstructive public attacks" on each other and the failure to abide by proper protocols of engagement when airing genuine differences in public. The summit agreed that name-calling, labelling and questioning each other's integrity had no place in the Alliance, especially when expressed through public or movement media channels.

"These practices are impermissible," it said. "Comrades who engage in such practices should be reprimanded by their own organisation and each Alliance partner has the right to expect the others to ensure that their members and leaders abide by these protocols."

At the same time, there may be issues that arise from time to time on which the Alliance partners would agree to disagree. It was agreed that all Alliance partners had the right to communicate their position to their own members, and to agitate in favour of their own perspective: "Such discourse should be conducted in a way that contributes to the unity of our movement."

More Information:

• Alliance Summit Declaration
• Alliance Programme 2005

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