Issued by African National Congress - Parliament
27 March 2003
HAVE CONDITIONS IMPROVED IN SA SINCE 1994?
The fact that the Democratic Alliance has posed the question: "Have conditions improved in SA since 1994?" is a symptom of the fact that we are a nation still engaged in the difficult process of healing the divisions of our painful past.
We are a nation that understands its past in ways that reflect the racial, class and gender divisions caused by the very past that we understand so differently.
Yesterday the Hon. Tony Leon wrote in his weekly internet column: "However, one recent cause for optimism in South Africa is the fact that the national debate is shifting towards a discussion of the needs of the poor. The DA has played a critical role in that shift. This month we are bringing the debate to the floor of the National Assembly."
What is it that causes us to understand ostensibly clear words such as "recent", "national debate", "shifting" and "needs of the poor" in ways that are so different.
Perhaps the problem is that arrogance, born of the enjoyment of privilege over generations, has made some of us believe that debates are significant and meaningful only on condition that we not only participate in, but lead and dictate terms and direction those debates.
One wonders what it is that the founders of the South African Native National Congress were doing in Mangaung in 1912 if not engaging in a national debate on what to do about the situation that the poor and oppressed majority of South Africans found themselves in.
Equally the question arises what the drafters of the document Africans' Claims in South Africa were addressing themselves to in 1943 if not needs, aspirations and rights of the dispossessed and downtrodden majority of our county.
Surely the lengthy process of collecting and discussing the concerns and demands of the poorest of the poor across the length and the breadth of our country in preparation for the Congress of the People in Kliptown in 1955 constituted a national debate about the needs of the poor.
The Freedom Charter adopted at this Congress proclaimed: The People Shall Govern, The People Shall Share in the Country's Wealth; There Shall be Work and Security; The Land Shall be Shared Amongst Those Who Work It; There Shall be Houses, Security and Comfort; The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall be Opened.
Perhaps he believes that nothing of much consequence could have come from the poor and oppressed themselves debating their own needs in the absence of the privileged.
The Reconstruction and Developmental Programme was the product of the creativity and determination of millions of the poor and oppressed organised in the African National Congress, South African Communist Party, Congress of South African Trade Unions and South African National Civics Organisation to establish a framework for addressing not only the needs of the poor but for the reconstruction of our society as a whole.
Were the discussions that we conducted over a period of more than two years from 1994 to 1996 in the Constitutional Assembly not about the needs of the poor?
The Democratic Party distinguished itself in these debates by the strongest opposition to the clauses dealing with socio-economic and property rights.
Over the past ten years the work of this Parliament has been focussed on little other than setting a policy and legislative framework for addressing the needs of the poor and overseeing the implementation of such.
The role played by the Democratic Party in this decade long national debate has been to be at the forefront of opposing most if not all measures that seek to redress the effects of Apartheid, create a better life for all and to roll back the frontiers of poverty.
Legislation to give protection to workers, protection for farm workers and domestic workers, security of tenure for those living on farms [???]
We come back to the problem that we clearly understand our past in ways that are very different and hence we have different understandings of what measures are necessary to deal with that past.
The overwhelming majority of South Africans understood and experienced Apartheid as a comprehensive system of institutionalised racial oppression that permeated every aspect of their lives.
The indigenous people were ruled as a conquered and colonised people.
It was based on the conquest and dispossession of the indigenous people of their land and its wealth. Access to 87% of the decisive sectors of productive land was racially determined by law to the advantage of the Whites.
The dominant White minority held a monopoly over economic power - the land, mines, industry and commerce. As a result the propertied classes were virtually exclusively White.
It was a system that compelled the indigenous people to be a source of cheap labour.
The above was maintained amongst others by a repressive state machinery that conducted a reign of terror against the majority of South Africans.
All of this was rationalised on the basis of the racial superiority of the Whites.
National oppression pervaded all aspects of life for blacks in general and Africans in particular. Economic, social and developmental indicators - such as poverty and underdevelopment, exclusion from education, clean water, electricity, food and health; low incomes, low levels of skills, and a generally unsafe environment characterised the day-to-day life experience of the majority of South Africans.
Apartheid colonialism also meant the systematic suppression of the talents, creativity and capacity of women to play their role in the ordering of the nation's affairs. Much more than any other sector, colonial oppression and a universal patriarchal culture, including socially constructed "gender roles", conspired to degrade women and treat them as sub-human. These gender roles permeate all spheres of life, beginning with the family, and are entrenched by stereotypes, dominant ideas, cultures, beliefs, traditions and laws.
Yet in his speech during this year's State of the Nation Debate Mr. Tony Leon boldly asserts: "But the South African reality is that for millions of our fellow citizens, life is no better now that it was in 1994. For many people, in spite of political freedom, life is actually worse."
Perhaps the problem is that some of us still do not regard others as human beings of equal humanity and worth. Because when the DA through Mr. Leon says that life is worse for many people than it was under Apartheid they are saying the following:
They are saying that it was less offensive to the dignity of some people to treated as sub-human on the basis of their race or gender than for other people.
They are saying that it was less humiliating for some people to be treated as foreigners in the land their birth than for other people.
They are saying that it was less fundamental for some people to be denied the right to vote than for other people.
They are saying that was less hurtful for some parents to see the potential of their children being wasted than for others.
They are saying that it was less traumatic for some people to live in fear of arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and assassination than for others.
They are saying that it was less heartrending for some people to die exiled from the land of their ancestors than for others.
They are saying that some people were less attached to the land and homes that they were forceably removed from that others.
They are saying that it was less frustrating for some people to have their entire human potential restricted through Bantu education, job reservation, pass laws, the Group Areas Act, the Land Act, the Immorality and Mixed Marriages Acts than for others.
In short the DA is saying that is was normal and not very much out of the ordinary for Africans to be regarded as savages and to be treated as such.
They downplay the enormity of the reign of terror that was perpetrated against all facets of the humanity of the majority of South Africa's people.
They ask: "Have conditions improved in South Africa since 1994."
Since 1994 the government led by the ANC, with the involvement and support of the overwhelming majority of South Africans, black and white, has ensured that:
We live in a country where we can truly say that: "South Africa Belongs to All Who Live in It, Black and White."
We live in a country in which the rule of law and the supremacy of our Constitution is respected.
We live in a country where we can be proud to be proud South Africans, united in our diversity, working together to create a better life for all our people.
This is not to suggest for one moment that the road ahead is not still very long or that all South Africans have benefitted equally, or that mistakes have not, are not and will not be made in the process of pushing back the frontiers of poverty.
Yes conditions have improved in South Africa. Unfortunately the arrogance of some of those who have consistently tried to block these improvements has not.
Yesterday during questions to the President, Ms. Raenette Taljaard asserted that race is being displaced by class as the fundamental dividing line in our society.
This statement is based on a wrong conception of the relationship between racial oppression and class exploitation in South Africa that can only set back the cause of social transformation.
Have our own homegrown Tories become champions of the working class? Hardly. Mr. Leon says in his speech during the State of the Nation Debate:
"We must focus on the welfare of the individual human being. Not a particular race of human beings, or a class of human beings, or "the masses." No - we must focus on the woman, the man, the child, each created uniquely in the image of God."
But the stubborn fact, consistently denied by the DA, is that those of us who were oppressed by Apartheid were not oppressed as individuals neither were those of us who were advantaged by Apartheid advantaged as individuals. We were advantaged and disadvantaged as members of certain races, genders and classes.
What does the DA mean when it says that "race does not matter"?
It means that the grotesquely distorted patterns of ownership of, control over and access to socio-economic power along racial lines must be accepted as normal or incidental at best.
What we must be suspicious of are those black entrepreneurs who in the face of tremendous obstacles are slowly de-racialising our economy - with or without assistance from the State. They are characterised by the DA as an elitist group of corrupt, nepotistic cronies.
Put simply the DA is saying that to be black and to be anything other than poor is inherently morally suspect.
To paraphrase the President:
In our specific situation, what this means is that those who are fittest to survive will survive. Those who are best able will qualify on the basis of merit. Those whose race defined them as sub-human must now have no access to state support, which state must, after all, retreat to allow those who have the means to survive and dominate, to dominate.
The DP hopes that by propagating these distortions they will succeed in their strategic objective to undermine the popular support of our movement especially among the African people and to persuade the national minorities to turn against us.
They hope that by consistently attempting to discredit our policies and arguing that they are ineffective in terms of solving the problems facing our country and people, they will succeed to persuade the majority to abandon our movement and switch its allegiance to political forces that oppose the creation of a better life for all.
These distortions betray the contempt and disdain the DA has for the poorest of the poor. They think that they can continue to ride on the backs of those they exploited in the past by telling them untruths.
The African National Congress has always respected the dictum: "Tell no lies, claim no easy victories."
The struggle to achieve a better life for all will be a long and difficult one.
However our policies are correct, a solid foundation has been laid, significant progress has been made in a relatively short time. The pace of delivery is speeding up. The tide has turned. With the support and involvement of the the masses of our people we will succeed just as we succeeded in defeating Apartheid.
The ANC has declared 2003 The Year of United Action to Push Back the Frontiers of Poverty.
The ANC's programme for 2003 will see our branches taking forward the experience of the letsema volunteer campaign by mobilising communities to work in partnership with government to push back the frontiers of poverty.
Drawing on the spirit and practice of last year's letsema campaign - which was launched to mark the ANC's 90th anniversary - the 2003 programme will seek to mobilise all sectors of society in working to encourage job creation and tackle the effects of poverty; expand service delivery; and build safer communities.
We urge all South Africans to join us in these endeavours.
Thank you.