Today is better than yesterday

Two days before the publication of this edition of ANC TODAY, Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) published its Community Survey 2007. This is an important document about the progress we are making to meet the basic needs of the masses of our people.

I urge as many of our people as possible to study the Survey as it addresses matters that are central to the realisation of the goals of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). This is particularly important because of two reasons.

One of these is that our movement has an obligation constantly to make an objective assessment of whether we have put in place policies that are actually working in terms of advancing the objectives of the NDR.

This is necessary because such assessments would give us the scientific basis to determine whether we should change any of our policies and the direction that such possible change should take.

These objective assessments are also important because arguments have been advanced that our policies, especially since 1996, have actually impoverished the already poor black section of our population, especially the Africans.

The democratic state against poverty

From the very beginning of our democracy we put the struggle for the alleviation and eradication of poverty at the centre of our government programmes. We understood that the critical variable in this regard is job creation, and therefore the creation of the possibility for all our citizens to rely on their labour to extricate themselves from poverty and build a better life for themselves.

At the same time we understood that it would take time to accomplish this goal. We therefore knew that necessarily the social wage would have to play a critically important role in the struggle to help lift millions of our people out of poverty. In this context, we took the decision that we would not allow the market to be the sole determinant of what happens with regard to the achievement of the goal of a better life for all.

This meant that the democratic state had to play its role to help address what the RDP policy document described as 'meeting the needs of the people'. This is one of the reasons why we have consistently opposed the neo-liberal/neo-conservative propositions about 'a minimal state' which seek to surrender everything about the human condition to the market.

To implement one of the policy directives explicitly stated in the RDP document, we adopted GEAR in 1996, to address the challenge of correcting the negative macro-economic imbalances we had inherited from the apartheid years. One of the focal points of GEAR was the reduction of the budget deficit to ensure that our new democracy does not fall into a debt trap, as a result of which we would have to use a large part of our budget to service the national debt, necessitating even more borrowing.

This would mean that we would have to reduce the public resources available to achieve the development objectives of the NDR because of the large volume of public revenues that would have to be devoted to servicing an expanding public debt. The RDP document said that in order to achieve the socio-economic objectives it set we should do everything necessary to avoid this outcome, focusing centrally on achieving the required macro-economic balances.

As expressed explicitly in GEAR, we adopted measures to reduce the budget deficit, which we succeeded to do. At the same time, we took the decision that this budget deficit reduction should not negatively affect our capacity to respond to the RDP goal to meet the needs of the people.

The social wage

Accordingly, even a cursory study of the statistics on public social expenditure to expand the social wage would show that exactly during the period when we were reducing the budget deficit, our social expenditures increased.

It is exactly for this reason that we rejected and reject the false allegation that GEAR represents a neo-liberal assault on the standard of living of the working people, for the benefit of capital, and that it has resulted in further impoverishing the poor.

For the same reason we rejected and reject the entirely wrong assertion that GEAR constituted a 'structural adjustment' programme that had been imposed on us by the World Bank and the IMF, which we had willingly accepted because the leadership of our movement, the ANC, had become confirmed neo-liberals and servants of capital.

Historically, structural adjustment programmes implemented to secure the financial support of the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank and the IMF, which invariably include the reduction of budget deficits, have consistently insisted on, and resulted in the reduction of the public expenditures focused essentially on meeting the needs of the people.

As we have indicated, we refused to follow this path. By sovereign decision, we continued to increase the social wage even as we addressed the macro-economic challenge identified in the RDP document. We did this specifically for the benefit of the poor, completely rejecting the 'structural adjustment' prescription that the democratic state should abandon them, leaving it to the market to determine their fate.

The entirely false argument that sought to portray GEAR as an ANC betrayal of the working people has resurfaced in the recent past under the label of a so-called "1996 class project". The shameless fabrications advanced under this label have sought to discredit our movement in the eyes of the masses of our people, to prepare for its political defeat.

In this regard, the strategic objective, emanating from factions that seek to present themselves as "the left alternative", was and is the displacement of the ANC as the leader of the NDR. This offensive seeks to create the possibility for these anti-ANC factions to capture the leadership of the NDR for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with advancing the interests of our working people.

These working masses include the poorest in our country, who were among the new masses that carried the struggle for the victory of the democratic revolution on their shoulders. Those who pose as "the left alternative" to the ANC seek to exploit the continuing misery of these masses, which the democratic revolution inherited from the centuries of colonial and apartheid white minority domination, to persuade them that the ANC has betrayed them.

The criterion of truth

One of the fundamental propositions of materialist philosophy, to which the "left alternative" claims to adhere, says that practice is the criterion of truth. Accordingly, the only reliable standard we should use to measure whether our policies are succeeding to achieve the RDP objectives is practice.

This is exactly what the StatsSA Community Survey 2007 seeks to use, focusing specifically on one of the important strategic objectives of the NDR characterised in the RDP document as "meeting the needs of the people". To discharge its mandate as the official body charged with the vital task to establish and publish the facts about our social reality, StatsSA conducted the Community Survey to establish whether measurable practice confirms the truthfulness of our assertions that we have put in place and are implementing policies designed to meet the needs of the people.

StatsSA has entitled the Survey "The RDP Commitment: what South Africans say". This is because the Survey is composed from responses given by South Africans to StatsSA enumerators, who carried out a scientific survey based on a random sample of 255 000 households, which are structurally representative of our diverse population.

RDP commitments

The Survey says: "In 1994 upon winning the election and forming government, the ANC led government adopted the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) as a policy framework for development. The RDP is an integrated, coherent socio-economic policy framework which seeks to mobilise South Africans and their associated resources toward the final eradication of apartheid and the building of a democratic non-racial and non-sexist future.

"The RDP commitment consists of five key pillars of delivery:

• Meeting basic needs;
• Developing our human resources;
• Building the economy;
• Democratising the state;
• Implementing the RDP.

"The report tabled today,(the Survey), after 13 years of taking the first step in the domain of democratising the state, deals specifically with measurement in the domains of meeting basic needs and developing our human resources. The other domains of the RDP such as building the economy in particular are continually reported upon through economic indicators. The measurement on meeting basic needs and developing our human resources, provides an objective assessment of the performance of the country, on the extent to which it has made progress or failed to make progress. By comparing information gathered over the last 13 years such assessment can be made.

"The results are based on objective enumeration of those things that can be visibly seen such as the number of households that have access to a particular form of energy and to what end they deploy such energy. It is not anecdote, but it is what South Africans say about their living conditions. It is therefore appropriately titled 'The RDP commitment: what South Africans say'."

What the people say

What then do the South Africans say? Among other things they say:

• Over 70% of households now live in formal dwellings. This reflects a steady increase, from 64,4% in 1996, to 68,5% in 2001, and 70,5% in 2007.
• The percentage of households where refuse is removed by a local authority at least once a week increased from 51,2% in 1996, to 55,4% in 2001, to 60,1% in 2007.
• There has been a decline in the percentage of households having to use the bucket toilet system, from 4,1% in 2001 to 2,2% in 2007.
• Use of electricity as the main energy source for lighting increased substantially between 1996 and 2007 (from 57,6% in 1996 to 80,0% in 2007).
• The percentage of households which have computer facilities increased from 8,6% in 2001 to 15,7% in 2007.
• Only 7,3% of households had access to Internet facility at home in 2007.
• The proportion of households owning a radio, television, computer, refrigerator and cell-phone increased considerably between 2001 and 2007. For example, the proportion of households owning a cell-phone increased from 32,3% in 2001 to 72,9% in 2007.
• The percentage of households with access to piped water increased from 84,5% in 2001 to 88,6% in 2007.
• There was an increase in the percentage of households that have access to piped water in all nine provinces.
• The proportion of households obtaining access to water from piped water inside the dwelling increased from 32,3% in 2001 to 47,3% in 2007.
• Between 2001 and 2007 there has been a notable growth in some secondary schooling among persons aged 20 years and older (33.6% in 1996 to 40.1 % in 2007)... In 2007, 9.1 % of persons aged 20 years and above had completed higher education, against 8.4% in 2001 and 7.1% in 1996.

Tomorrow will be better than today

In the RDP, addressing the challenge of Meeting Basic Needs, we said: "Poverty is the single greatest burden of South Africa's people, and is the direct result of the apartheid system and the grossly skewed nature of business and industrial development which accompanied it. Poverty affects millions of people, the majority of whom live in the rural areas and are women. It is estimated that there are at least 17 million people surviving below the Minimum Living Level in South Africa, and of these at least 11 million live in rural areas. For those intent on fomenting violence, these conditions provide fertile ground.

"It is not merely the lack of income which determines poverty. An enormous proportion of very basic needs are presently unmet. In attacking poverty and deprivation, the RDP aims to set South Africa firmly on the road to eliminating hunger, providing land and housing to all our people, providing access to safe water and sanitation for all, ensuring the availability of affordable and sustainable energy sources, eliminating illiteracy, raising the quality of education and training for children and adults, protecting the environment, and improving our health services and making them accessible to all."

The Community Survey 2007 sought to hear the views of our people about what progress we have made to meet the basic needs of our people as identified by the RDP. It concludes by posing the question - "What do South Africans say in 2007?" It answers this question thus:

"The report tables what South Africans say. They say in these areas of delivery of Meeting Basic Needs, 2007 is better than 2001 and indeed 2001 was better than 1996. Today is better than yesterday."

This is an outcome of which our movement must be proud. However, it also constitutes the challenge that we must also make the commitment to the masses of our people that tomorrow will be better than today.

Celebrating our heritage

IsiZulu should not become the next Latin

Opening the debate about the place of African languages in our society (ANC Today Vol 7 No 38), President Thabo Mbeki says: "There is no doubt that as part of the process of our redefinition of ourselves we must do everything possible to spread knowledge of literary and other material written or recorded in the African languages since the material began to be published in our country from the beginning of the 19th century."

President Mbeki was raising this issue in relation to commemorative activities embarked upon during the heritage month of September, and the need to embrace the whole spectrum of inheritances from the past.

There is indeed a tendency in contemporary South Africa in general, and African communities around South Africa in particular, to use the month of September to promote the narrow aspects of our heritage, while drifting back towards narrow tribal and ethnic identities. Modernising agents in the artistic and literary world are often ignored. Many still see September as an opportunity to reconfigure the unfinished pre-colonial script. This often happens in complete denial of our past dealings with missionisation, urbanisation and industrialisation. Until now, and save for interventions by government, ethno-culturalists and tribalists, by and large, are often on the loose during the month of September, promoting their emotional and narrow views of heritage. It is the state we are in.

The unfinished pre-colonial cultural script

The continuous re-enactment of the unfinished, often undefined, pre-colonial cultural script is black South Africa's biggest hurdle to the achievement of a common identity. There is a lot that is common and binds all African people which can be unearthed in the history of how they dealt with the external agents of change as experienced in the last 200 years or so. Language was there, and saw it all, often adapting and reshaping, in an attempt to continue mediating between the African and their changing world. While our languages may have slight differences among them, our experiences of these languages during this period reflect the dawn of some universality of experience that stands to create a common African cultural history over the period. Our understanding of President Mbeki's thesis, therefore, is within the context that African literary achievements in the medium of African languages, once highlighted and understood by all, can reveal the depth of African genius as it has unfolded over the past two centuries, a fact often missed if all our attention is on fixing the pre-colonial culture. We hear the President saying, 'in dealing with the matters of heritage, cast the net wider".

IsiZulu Language and Literature

Like all indigenous languages of South Africa, isiZulu was an oral language until it came into contact with the missionaries and western explorers and researchers, mainly anthropologists. These were the first to commit it to the written form. Using the Latin alphabet, early missionary writers, with an immediate task to translate the Bible, were able to avail the first complete isiZulu Bible by 1883.

Before that European travelers like AF Gardiner (1836) and Catherine Barter (1855) had focused their attention on documenting, in English, Zulu culture, traditions, history and customs as they saw them at the time. Even then there was already a concern that these cultures, traditions, histories and customs were disappearing. Language was not spared, it being the medium by which these cultures, traditions, histories and customs were transmitted and preserved. This approach was to dominate the rest of the 19th and early 20th Century Zulu style of writing, being factual and poised to conserve rather than venturing into creative writing. James Stuart, CH Samuelson, AT Bryant, among others, led the pack in this regard.

IsiZulu orthography

IsiZulu orthography was standardised in the IsiZulu Language Conference of 1905-1907, held in Durban and Pietermaritzburg, with the express aim of achieving such standardisation. Since then, there has been many attempts by the isiZulu Language Board to achieve a more cohesive and standardised orthography. The latest attempt is awaiting publication.

Dictionaries, mainly English-Zulu and Zulu-English Dictionaries emerged very early in the 19th Century. Bishop Colenso's Zulu-English Dictionary first appeared in 1884, followed by an even more comprehensive one by AT Bryant in 1904. Dictionaries by CM Doke and BW Vilakazi, Sibusiso Nyembezi, Abraham Nkabinde and, quite recently, in 2006, an isiZulu monolingual dictionary edited by Mpumelelo Mbatha have always featured prominently in isiZulu literature. The main role of dictionaries is to preserve words and their meaning.

The missionaries were able to determine the parameters of written Zulu. It was not surprising, therefore, that when the very first text book to be written in isiZulu by a Zulu, Magema Fuze, was published 1922, it focused on Zulu historical ethnography. Magema Fuze's "Abantu Abamnyama Nalapho Bevela khona", later translated into English as "Black People and whence they came", was an earnest attempt by an educated Zulu culture bearer to document Zulu cultural history and genealogy. Fuze had lived through and seen the days of King Cetshwayo and was worried that a lot of Zulu cultural knowledge was disappearing in the beginning of the 20th Century.

It was not until 1930 that a Zulu novel appeared. "Insila kaShaka", by Dr JL Dube - teacher, politician, preacher, community leader and publisher - is a historic novel portraying the life of Jeqe, King Shaka's personal attendant. Writing historical novels has remained the most favored style and theme in Zulu literature.

Dube had many other issues on his desk. Besides being an active politician (first President of the ANC in 1912), he established an industrial school for boys (Ohlange Institute) in 1901 and the Ilanga laseNatali newspaper (first published on 10 April 1903).

Dube's contemporary, if not somewhat younger was Benedict Wallet Vilakazi (1906-1946), According to Encyclopedic Britannica Online, 23 October 2007: " Vilakazi's literary output was large. He is best known for his poetry, which critics praise for the beauty and vitality resulting from his astute powers of observation and for his full use of the resources of the Zulu language."

Vilakazi's novels include "Noma Nini" set in Groutville and "Nje Nempela", a historical novel set to depict life and its dangers during the 1906 Bhambatha Uprisings.

In a scene to project preparations for a traditional wedding, Vilakazi writes: "Eza amanye amantombazane azombabaza u Nomcebo, emlungise yonke imvunulo yakhe ethokoza kuthi makazibulale nxa ebona uNomcebo emuhle kangaka,Ayesemthatha amantobazana embeka phambili ukuba awahole, aqala ukuhaya ihubo lawo elaliletha umunyu ngoba amantombazana ayazi ukuthi namhla kuphelile ukuba ayotshakadula nabo azenamise njengabo, nakuba bazomlahla emzini abangazi nokuba uzothokoza yini kuwona."

Vilakazi, quite impressively, depicts the traditional Zulu wedding as a significant rite of passage to the unknown future in the life of the bride and all concerned. Significantly, Zulu cultural core views the wedding as such; the most important step a living human being can take. In "Nje Nempela", this wedding takes place in the context of the 1906 Rebellion and the characters like Chakijana ka Gezindaka, who featured prominently in the actual rebellion. Vilakazi brings the scenes of warriors, war songs, dance, traditional dress, traditional religion and the ideas about death.

Vilakazi also wrote poetry, publishing his anthologies, "Inkondlo kaZulu" (1934) and "Amal'ezulu" (1945).

Highlighting the role of language and poetry Vilakazi sees language as being the centre of a people's soul and that poetry is expressive of a gateway to their universe.

Vilakazi's poetry reflects his fascination with Zulu life in the days of the Shaka kingdom, with Shaka's palace of KwaDukuza often featuring in more romantic terms. Still, during Vilakazi's time Zulu literary writing tended to focus on the historical, re-living the revered past and being hard at work trying to find its place in the ever changing present.

Kenneth Bhengu's "Ukhabethule" (1952), NNT Ndebele's "UGubudele Namazimuzimu" (1941), Elliott Zondi's "Ukufa kuka Shaka" (1960) isiZulu as well as RRR Dlomo's series on Zulu kings, attempt to deal with a past, characterised by tragedy and unmeasured accomplishments, which passed but could not go away.

The mysteries of the Zulu kingdom (1816-1876), even after its destruction in the aftermath of the Anglo-Zulu War (1879), continue to dominate Zulu thought patterns in literary productivity. It is a revered past, which passed but too quickly, before it could be fully comprehended.

Even literary writers of the late 20th Century, the likes of Mazisi Kunene, DBZ Ntuli and Otty Nxumalo, continue to be dominated by the quest to define the pre-colonial script while seeking to align with contemporary themes of liberation, freedom and societal normality. Outstanding women writers are still a rarity, although Ncamsile Makhambeni and the late Emelda Damane are notable.

Zulu writers in English

Even Zulu intellectuals writing about isiZulu language, culture and history in English have been captured by the pre-colonial script. While RRR Dlomo dismisses the kings of the Zulu Kingdom as malicious despots, his brother, HIE Dlomo, also a 20th Century Zulu intellectual of note, is full of praise for Shaka who he describes as having been a super imbongi (bard) himself. He writes in Ilanga laseNatali on 2 October 1954: "He (Shaka) considered izimbongi very important. they (bards) were the recorders of history, battle, feats and memorable occasions. Shaka himself was no mean linguist."

In fact, praise singing, in addition to story telling, war talk and music making, was the highest form of Zulu oral literature in pre-colonial times. Sibusiso Nyembezi's compilation of the praises of pre-colonial Zulu Kings, "Izibongo Zamakhosi" (1958), remains a historical record of note in the Zulu literary and cultural body of knowledge.

IsiZulu language publications in the media are well represented in the Ilanga, UmAfrika, and Isolezwe newspapers, and the Zulu versions of Bona Magazine. IsiZulu Language radio was started by the state in the 1940s and gained ground in the 1960s. IsiZulu language television was introduced in the 1980s. Recently a full-length feature film in IsiZulu, "Yesterday", was released. Zulu Language commercial music like mbhaqanga, isichathamiya, maskandi and even hip-hop, as well as the non-commercial written choral music, continue to grow and gain acceptance.

In 1994 isiZulu was recognised as one of the eleven official languages. However, like the other eight African official languages, isiZulu continues to meet challenges, which impact on its growth and development.

On 5 November 1955 the Bantu World Newspaper published a statement by the Federal Council of African Teacher Associations (later African Teachers Association of South Africa - ATASA), which read: "We believe most Bantu people do not favour instruction through the medium of vernacular in the higher classes. The Bantu realise that many economic avenues will be shut to them if they fail to master the official languages - English & Afrikaans."

The teacher federation was opposing the introduction of Bantu Education and the intended use of the vernacular for tuition at primary school level. This attitude of internal opposition to vernacular instruction through African languages persists even today. What makes it powerful is that it is the Africans themselves who voice it most. Until recently Zulu literature, grammar and language were tutored through the medium of English in most South African universities.

While the period of early contact with the missionaries and industrialisation marked the golden age for the growth and development of IsiZulu, especially in the field of terminology and translation, 21st Century South Africa has remarkably introduced the age of stagnation for isiZulu. No Zulu literary works are available in leading bookshops, writers write for school prescription and, quite significantly, it would seem like few, if any, Zulu people of note seek to buy Zulu novels with a view to reading them.

IsiZulu Language classes at universities exist at near empty capacity. Most upward and mobile youths speak the least of it and its scholars spend their time shouting down English and praising Afrikaans, without learning much from its approach of total culture pursued from the 1930s.The scientific and economic status of isiZulu remains very low, and unless something dramatic happens, isiZulu may be limited to the level of Latin in 50 years time, a distant classical language spoken and understood by very few.

In conclusion, isiZulu language is blessed with literary giants who form part of our rich cultural heritage. However its scholarship, worsened by its low economic and scientific status, continues to drive isiZulu in the direction of language archives, and into attainment of some kind of classic language of old. We stand on the verge of the total collapse of the language; and we stand at the door which if opened, can propel isiZulu language and literature to heights it never experienced before.

** Prof Musa Xulu is an ethnomusicologist and cultural researcher, and advisor in the Office of the Premier, KwaZulu Natal. This article is part of a series from readers on the subject of African languages and literature. More articles and comments will be published in future editions.

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