To the stars on our firmament - bayethe!

On September 26, Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu delivered the Steve Bantu Biko Memorial Lecture. It is indeed very fitting that this Annual Lecture should be delivered in September, as Steve Biko, a great hero and son of our struggle and people, was murdered by the apartheid police on September 12, 1977, 29 years ago.

Correctly, the Archbishop paid tribute to Steve Biko. Among other things he said: "Right and goodness have triumphed even if we still do not have the whole, the true story of how Steve died.

"What is more, we have here an eloquent example that true greatness lies in having given oneself on behalf of others: Jesus did say, 'Greater love hath no one than that a person should lay down his life for others.' And the people have said a resounding 'Amen' to that, and you really can't fool all of the people all the time. They will always know who their leaders are and they will be ready to acknowledge them and to the extent that they can, will reward them, will express their appreciation to them.

"You cannot buy that affirmation by the people. We know it - the apartheid regime tried to foist its candidates on us as our leaders, and the people, i.e. the vast majority, rejected them as but pseudo leaders. Once people have taken you to their hearts as a true, a genuine leader, than nothing anyone tries to do can dislodge the real leader from the hearts of the people.

"Steve was a remarkable young man in his commitment and passion…He was ready to jettison (his medical studies) because of his all consuming passion to strive for the liberation of his people and their emancipation through appropriate community development and health enhancing projects. He possessed an incisive and indeed massive intellect."

The Archbishop said Steve Biko worked "to make us realise that…we were human and not inferior, as the white person was human and not superior. I (had) internalised what others had decided was to be my identity, not my God-given utterly precious and unique me.

"And when I looked inside me and saw this man-made caricature I bridled with anger and hatred and contempt of this false self. I then projected it outwards to those who outwardly looked like me. Before my superior white overlords I quaked with demeaning obsequiousness, and before those who looked like the thing I hated and despised, I was harsh and abrasive."

During the Lecture, among other things Archbishop Tutu raised serious concerns about important issues such as respect for the law, for life itself, and for one another, to eradicate gross criminal and other unacceptable behaviour in our society.

In this regard, he said: "Why have we lost our deeply African reverence for life? Just look at what happens with say a car hijack. The scared owner hands over the keys and for no earthly reason he/she will be shot dead in cold blood for the sheer hell of it; utterly gratuitously, wantonly.

"Is it not horrendous for an African, even before Black Consciousness came on the scene, for whatever reason for an adult man to rape a 9 month old baby? What has come over us? Perhaps we did not realise just how apartheid has damaged us so that we seem to have lost our sense of right and wrong, so that when we go on strike as is our right to do, we are not appalled that some of us can chuck people out of moving trains because they did not join the strike, or why is it common practice now to trash, to go on the rampage?

"What has happened to us? It seems as if we have perverted our freedom, our rights into licence, into being irresponsible. Rights go hand in hand with responsibility, with dignity, with respect for oneself and for the other.

"There are municipal, provincial, government offices which you go to only because you really can't help it. They behave as those others used to behave in the old pass offices - they are rude, inefficient and thoroughly unpleasant…We despise ourselves, we really hate ourselves and project it on to others.

"We should be dignified, law abiding citizens, proud of our beautiful land, proud of our freedom won at such great cost. We should not devalue it. We should not abuse our children, our womenfolk.

"The fact of the matter is we still depressingly do not respect one another. I have often said black consciousness did not finish the work it set out to do.

"The best memorial to Steve Biko would be a South Africa where everyone respects themselves, has a positive self image filled with a proper self esteem and holds others in high regard."

Speaking on behalf of the ANC, in its 1998 document entitled "The Moral Renewal of the Nation", our Commission for Religious Affairs expressed the same concern voiced by the Archbishop. It said: "Most people are moral. They are not criminals advocating unethical behaviour. They wish to bring up their children to be honest, with the desire to build a prosperous and peaceful South Africa for all who live in it. The cultures brought together in our nation also had high ethical standards…

"Corruption, criminality, tax evasion, fraud, rape, the abuse of women and children, drunkenness, extortion, and family breakdown, much of it touched by violence, are the outward forms of a diseased social climate which affects all of us. The whole country is passing through a period of transition in which we are seeking to establish a new and successful modern society. The problems we experience are not different from those in other societies - but at this formative stage we intend to do something to ensure that South Africa becomes a truly moral society. The ANC welcomes the Moral Summit process as an opportunity to analyse this situation, and seek a national commitment to overcome it."

On the issue of the need for good leadership, in its 2001 document "Through the Eye of a Needle", our movement said: "A leader should constantly seek to improve his capacity to serve the people; he should strive to be in touch with the people all the time, listen to their views and learn from them…A leader should win the confidence of the people in her day-to-day work…She should not seek to gain cheap popularity by avoiding difficult issues, making false promises or merely pandering to popular sentiment…

"A leader should lead by example. He should be above reproach in his political and social conduct - as defined by our revolutionary morality. Through force of example, he should act as a role model to ANC members and non-members alike. Leading a life that reflects commitment to the strategic goals of the NDR includes not only being free of corrupt practices; it also means actively fighting against corruption."

As has been the case when our movement has raised its voice to speak of the critical importance of moral behaviour in society as well as among our own members, some have sought to misinterpret the Archbishop's comments as indicating that what he thinks and said is that all that characterises our new democracy is the pervasive prevalence of unbridled and unstoppable depravity.

To continue the negative onslaught sustained by some over many years, to date, that we are bound to fail in our struggle to create a truly democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa, sections of the domestic and international media reported Archbishop Tutu's Steve Biko Lecture under such headlines as:

"Sth Africa is losing its way - Tutu"; "Apartheid may have destroyed moral sense, says Tutu"; "Tutu warns of dangers of ethnic strife afflicting South Africa"; "What has become of us, laments Tutu"; "Tutu berates South Africa"; "Tutu: Respect gone in South Africa"; "SA gained freedom and lost its soul -Tutu".

And yet, in the same Steve Biko Lecture which these headlines seek to summarise, Archbishop Tutu made the heartfelt observations that: "We are generous, compassionate, caring people at our best…We have a wonderful country…We are wonderful people…We have produced outstanding people…We have given the world a splendid example in our relatively peaceful transition showing that former enemies can at least be colleagues…The world has marvelled at our capacity to forgive, to walk the path of forgiveness and reconciliation, to be magnanimous and generous."

On September 27, at our Eighth Awards Ceremony for National Orders, we had occasion once more to salute and celebrate the "outstanding people" our country and people have produced, to whom the Archbishop referred. What they have done, as a result of which they have earned the right to become Honoured Members of our National Orders, makes the very firm statement that, as the Archbishop said, we have a wonderful country and a wonderful people!

In the Ceremonial Oration we delivered at the Awards Ceremony, paying tribute to the outstanding South Africans identified and nominated by the public as fitting Members of the National Orders, we said: "The honours that we bestow today tell the story of what and who we are and who we shall be. These National Orders represent the nobility of human endeavour, constituting a hall of fame that will, today, be enriched by new and distinguished members."

What and who we are and who we shall be is represented by the Honoured Member of the National Orders (the Order of Mendi for Bravery), George Phela, who drowned at the Wemmer Pan Aquatic Club on January 31, 2005, having jumped into the dam at the Club to save a mother and child from drowning. George Phela could not swim. But when he heard the mother's cry of panic, with her child on her back, he jumped into the water to save the threatened mother and child from certain death. He managed to hold them up until they were pulled onto dry land. A couple of hours after the mother and her child had been rescued, George Phela's still body was found lying in silt and mud at the bottom of the dam.

What and who we are and who we shall be is represented by the Honoured Member of the National Orders (the Order of Mendi for Bravery), Marcel Christian van Rossum, who dived into the Indian Ocean at St Lucia in KwaZulu-Natal at the spur of the moment, to save Sipho and Sibongiseni Thela from certain death.

As their parents, Jabulani Thela and his wife, who could not swim, cried out for help and watched helplessly as the children were swept deep into the ocean, Marcel van Rossum, who was only passing by, relaxing on the beach with his wife, went twice into the ocean, saved the children and, unlike George Phela, was present at the Union Buildings to be admitted into the ranks of the Honoured Members of the Order of Mendi.

Also present to be admitted into these ranks, also as an Honoured Member of the Order of Mendi for Bravery, was the 85-year-old Soweto resident, Elizabeth Gumede.

During the course of our struggle, Mama Elizabeth, then an underground operative of APLA, the armed wing of the PAC, suffered terrible torture, assault and abuse at the hands of the apartheid South African Police, who wanted her to betray her comrades, and failed. To this day, she remains unshakable in her conviction that the freedom of our people is more precious than her own life.

What and who we are and who we shall be is also represented by the Honoured Members of the National Orders (Order of Ikhamanga), such as the musicians Thandi Klassen, Abigail Kubeka, Dorothy Masuka and Christian Ashley-Botha, the poet Don Mattera, the novelist Andre Brink, and the athletes Ryk Neethling and Oscar Pistorius.

In the Ceremonial Oration, of these and other Honoured Members of the Order of Ikhamanga, we said: "We have convened today at the seat of government, the Union Buildings, to admit to the Order of Ikhamanga our leading cultural workers and sportsmen and women. All of them have contributed to the pride we, as a nation, feel in our achievements that celebrate our inner African and human soul.

"Their accomplishments are representative of the wealth of human imagination and talent brought forth from our continent, which has, since time immemorial, endowed the planet earth with the things of beauty that are products of human creativity."

What and who we are and who we shall be is also represented by the Honoured Members of the National Orders (Order of Mapungubwe), the scientists Selig Percy Amoils, Lionel Opie, and Patricia Berjak. These compatriots are gifted with, and have developed original minds which they have used further to unveil the secrets of nature, helping our people and all humanity both to continue "the flight from wonder", wonder born of unknowing, of which Albert Einstein spoke, as well as create the new knowledge that enables all human beings to lead better lives.

Between them they have discovered new knowledge hitherto hidden from all humanity, covering such areas as curing diseases of the eye, curing diseases of the heart, understanding seeds, to ensure food security for all, especially the poor, and saving from extinction the genetic material of the plants used over the millennia in highly effective traditional African medicine.

We convened at the Union Buildings, on September 27, the day after Archbishop Tutu delivered the Steve Bantu Biko Lecture, to confirm the truth of what the Archbishop had said, that we are a wonderful people and a wonderful country.

On this day and at this occasion, as at the previous Award Ceremonies, we could understand what Martin Luther King Jr meant when he said, "I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land"; and what Archbishop Tutu meant when he said, declining to proclaim victory too soon, "we are indeed a scintillating success waiting to happen."

I know this as a matter of fact that our great people, the millions of ordinary South Africans who produced our Honoured Members of the National Orders, who, in turn are taking us to our mountain top, will not allow that the depravity of a few among us turns our promised land into a mirage in the desert.

In the Ceremonial Oration we said: "We are especially blessed that this ceremony permits us to share a brief encounter with the Honoured Members of the National Orders, who live. We are especially privileged that this ceremony brings us into communion with the noble souls of the Honoured Members of the National Orders who have departed from the world of the living. To them all, the living and the dead, on this day, the nation says - bayethe!"

Social Development

Youth and children at centre of development programmes

The latest report on progress in implementing government's programme of action places special emphasis on interventions to improve the lives and opportunities of the country's youth and children, including social assistance, education and youth employment.

The target set three years ago to extend the child support grant to 3,2 million children by March 2006 has been exceeded by 300,000. By June this year over 3.5 million children were registered as beneficiaries of the child support grant. The total number of people receiving social grants was 7.4 million. In addition to the grant, many more children benefit from free health care services and free basic education.

A detailed study which profiles all child beneficiaries and their access to the various forms of government services has been completed with a view to consolidate all services provided by government to children. This report will be presented to Cabinet during October.

More than 7,000 schools have implemented a voluntary no fee policy. This means that 2,6 million learners need not pay school fees, thus increasing access to education. Policies will be in place at the beginning of the 2007 school year to ensure that fees for the poorest primary schools are eliminated.

As part of work to provide good quality classrooms for learners, the Department of Education has been conducting an audit of all schools. As of August 2006, 63% of the 30,000 institutions had been audited and an interim report on the first 15,000 institutions had been prepared.

Proper classrooms were made available to those learners who were found to be learning under trees in 2004. However, recent storms have resulted in damage to some schools. While the damage is being repaired, some learners are forced to learn under unfavourable conditions.

Young people are also targeted as beneficiaries of the social cluster's second economy interventions, in the form of the Expanded Public Works Programme. A plan has been developed to expand the Early Childhood Development Programme. The challenge is to find ways of balancing expansion and the provision of quality early childhood development services.

Plans are also being finalised to increase the numbers of community caregivers from 11,182 community caregivers at the beginning of this financial year to 25,000 by the end of this financial year. A key challenge is government's capacity to adequately train the new recruits into this programme.

The work of the cluster also looks at the situation of youth who have finished school. There are still too many graduates who are unable to find employment. Government received 2,490 requests for placement and from its database sent more than 2,500 CVs to various companies.

The National Youth Service reports that more than 4,800 young people will be working in various projects over the year, including the maths and science project in Ekurhuleni, the Expanded Public Works Programme in the Western Cape, and the Kraaipan Heritage Project.

In presenting progress on the implementation of it's programme of action, the social cluster also reported on health issues affecting the broader population, including extreme drug resistant tuberculosis and HIV and AIDS (see next article).

In March the Department of Health launched a National Tuberculosis Crisis Management Plan that prioritises four health districts with the highest TB caseloads. This plan was developed to raise awareness about TB to improve detection and deal with the large TB case load and poor treatment outcomes.

The country has learned during the past few weeks of the emergence in a few provinces of what is called Extreme Drug Resistant TB. Cabinet has been briefed about this new challenge. The Minister of Health held a consultative meeting with TB researchers, clinicians and laboratory scientists. They agreed to keep the minister briefed on a continuous basis on the extent of the problem and what can and is being done to contain the problem.

The minister has also been in touch with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other ministers of health in the region. An urgent meeting has been requested with experts from the WHO to seek assistance and to develop a national and regional strategy to deal with this form of TB.

MORE INFORMATION:

Social Cluster programme of action update, September 2006

HIV and AIDS

A comprehensive programme and a clear message

Government's programme on HIV and AIDS is comprehensive and extensive, and its message clear. This was the indication from the briefing of the social cluster on implementation of its programme of action.

The cluster spent some time outlining government's programme and message following claims that government's messages on HIV and AIDS were confusing. Addressing the briefing, Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said government's approach was to ensure that the major challenge of HIV and AIDS was not worsened by first and foremost preventing further infections.

"We thereafter say that for those who may be living with HIV, let us prolong for as much as we can, the progression from HIV infection to development of AIDS-defining conditions. Let us maintain good health. We do this by promoting healthy lifestyles, regular physical activity, avoiding health risk behaviours like smoking, alcohol and substance abuse and unsafe sexual behaviour."

Government acknowledges the serious challenges of the nutritional status of the population and therefore approved various interventions such as food fortification, school nutrition, and vitamin supplementation for pregnant women and children. HIV in particular puts additional nutritional demands on the body and extra efforts are need to meet these demands. That is where emphasis is put on the use of fruit and vegetables that provide particular vitamins and other micronutrients necessary in dealing with conditions associated with HIV and AIDS.

Tshabalala-Msimang said: "We treat opportunistic infections because many of them can be successfully treated even in the presence of HIV and AIDS. We make antiretrovirals (ARVs) available for those with a CD4 count of 200 and below in facilities that have been accredited to provide this treatment. These facilities are available in all districts and have been extended to more than 70% of local municipalities to ensure that there is equitable access to this service."

"The message should not be lost that we want every person in the country to eat a balanced and nutritious diet and maintain good health. For those living with HIV, we are saying that good nutrition will help in prolonging progression from HIV infection to the development of AIDS-defining illnesses. It is not a substitute for medical treatment, but it helps in maintaining optimal health. It is also a foundation for effectiveness for many medical interventions.

"Some have asked why do we advocate the use of particular fruits and vegetables, and whether this is an alternative to treatment? There has been extensive research on the Mediterranean diet and its health benefits particularly with regard to garlic and olive oil. Garlic has antiviral and antibacterial properties, lemon is a source of selenium and vitamin C and the benefits of beetroot with regard to anaemia are also well documented," she said.

She responded to questions about why government emphasises that it is 'HIV and AIDS' and not 'HIV/AIDS': "We have used the phrase HIV and AIDS because we think it helps clarify the specific challenges we confront. These are, first, to prevent the transmission of HIV; second, to slow progression to AIDS-defining illness once transmission of HIV has occurred; and third, to treat and support HIV-infected patients to the best of our ability when they present themselves with AIDS-defining illness."

The briefing also answered allegations from some quarters that there is no support from government for the use of ARVs:

"Our view is that ARVs play a role when the CD4 count reaches 200 or below and they can prolong life. As government, we are determined to make them available through accredited health facilities and there 262 of these in the country currently, including four Correctional Services facilities. At least 178,635 people had been initiated on antiretroviral therapy by June 2006.

"The most important thing is to ensure that our facilities and the health system are able to provide this treatment in a safe manner. We should be able to monitor patients and respond accordingly to issues of adverse drug reaction and resistance. We are working on strengthening the patient information system and pharmacovigilance programme.

"Medicines are registered with accompanying information on their contra-indications. Health professionals responsible for implementing this programme need to be aware of these and be able to advise the patients accordingly. Patients also have to know the challenges they may face and the need to seek medical advice on these."

Cabinet has taken particular decisions to ensure that the coordination of activities on HIV and AIDS is strengthened. The Ministry of Health is part of those structures tasked with coordinating these efforts.

"We need to move away from the perception that HIV and AIDS is just a medical or health issue. We want to ensure that all sectors are coordinated and that they contribute to the country's comprehensive response to this challenge. I hope all role-players will also be constructive in their approach. We need to strengthen partnerships and move forward as a country, guided by the Comprehensive Plan," Tshabalala-Msimang said.

Lala ngo xolo Khumbeni

A tribute to the late Thozamile Gqweta

The heart-rending news of Comrade Thozamile Gqweta's hospitalization and subsequent passing on came when this article was already in gestation. The sad news exerted a decisive shaping influence on the final form in which this article is now seeing the light of day.

I remember as if it were only yesterday when Thozamile performed one of his many acts that typified the death-defying mood which had come to possess us at the time. He had just come out of detention when in August 1981, he traveled from Mdantsane to Langa, in order to take part in the first round of trade union unity talks. The Langa talks over which he presided eventuated, four years later, in the formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

My own journey to Langa took almost twenty hours. Together with my fellow travelers, Gatsby Mazwi and the late Neil Aggett, we took turns to drive from Johannesburg to Cape Town. Although the three of us belonged to three different unions, our own language of discourse enabled us to trace our progeniture to one political commune. We knew then that we were ourselves born of professional revolutionaries to whom the unity of workers was an article of faith. We understood that this common progeniture beckoned us to bend every effort towards forging worker unity.

In Langa we were joined by Joe Forster and Piroshaw Camay, the then General Secretaries of the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) and the Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA), respectively. This duo flew in from Brussels where they had just taken part in the business of the International Confederation of Free trade Unions (ICFTU) – an organisation some of us were rightfully mistrustful of. The ICFTU then, was infamous for deploying its vast amount of resources towards getting unions to enlist as Cold War conscripts in an counter-revolutionary army.

As Thozamile departs the land of the living, a number of the goals for which he staked his life have been achieved. These include the fact that a new flag now flies over the Union Buildings - the then citadel of the racist Pretoria regime. As for Cosatu it has grown into a very promising entrée for the working people of South Africa, into working class politics.

Cosatu's existence is a monument to those who had the foresight to see beyond the ideological differences that existed within the labour movement in the late 1970's and the early 1980's. They were renown for their ability to understand that the those differences could be resolved because they were not given by nature.

Unionists of Thozamile's generation understood the need not to nurture the microbe of dogmatism which encourages fanatical intolerance of plurivocality. They saw the existence of the plurality of views within the democratic movement generally, as a source of strength rather than a source of weakness. They strove for the interpenetration of ideas and ideological traditions. The existence of Cosatu bears testimony to the welcome reality that their noble efforts were crowned with success.

Comrade Thozamile, we are eternally proud of who and what you were. You belong to a generation of unionists and the African National Congress (ANC) cadres whose membership of the South African Communist Party (SACP) never tempted them to indulge in the infantile act of seeking to achieve a "left" reification of the SACP. Such was the level of your grasp of the Marxist philosophy of transformative praxis that you did not think of human beings as having any fixed essence. You were not surprised when Joe Forster and Piroshaw Camay subsequently became your comrades in the African National Congress.

Khumbeni, if you by any chance meet comrade Moses Mabhida again, tell him that I remain loyal to the teachings he imparted to me at the Sitholes in Swaziland. Tell him that we, who are his charges, remain steadfast in the endeavour to bring about a just and exploitation-free society for which he sacrificed his all. Please, tell him that consistent with his teachings, we remain in harness – soldiering on without succumbing to a utopian disinclination to accept the realities of our time. We accept that the changed geopolitical situation presents us with a set of circumstances that do not make a continuous and unilinear process of change, possible. We stay focused on this inevitably dysrhythmic journey which professional revolutionaries the world over, undertake in conditions which are hardly of their own choosing.

We who belong to Thozamile's political family have an obligation to discharge. We must build him a political monument, and build a political monument for Comrade Thozamile, we shall. We shall insist, as did Thozamile, on the absolute need to correlate in a properly Marxist way, the class-based and the general democratic tasks of our revolution. We shall also insist on the need for a scientific assessment of social progress and of the potential possessed by different forces on whose unity depends the successful prosecution of the national democratic revolution.

Lala ngo xolo Khumbeni, Bhayi, Khetshe, Msuthu!

This tribute is by Sydney Mufamadi Member of the National Executive Council and National Working Committee of the ANC as well as the Central Committee of the SACP.

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