Philippa Garson
CLASS STRUGGLE
As protestors converged on Seattle to rant their opposition to the effects of globalisation on vulnerable communities this week, similar mutterings of dissent were being echoed at a small but significant gathering of South Africans.
Entitled Construction Site: Good Governance for New South Africa – A Quest to Reinvent or Strengthen African Governance? – the conference, hosted for the “partners” or beneficiary NGOs of the Finnish embassy ranging from human rights groups to literacy organisations and violence prevention groups, aimed to debate the ifs and buts of good governance in South Africa.
What took place was some important discussion around the chasm between the lofty aims of our Constitution and the reality on the ground. If our Constitution is as good as the Western world says it is, why then does its effective implementation elude us?
Speaker Martin Prozesky, professor of ethics at the University of Natal, put forward the provocative view that our Constitution is flawed because it elevates human rights at the expense of human responsibilities. The Constitution should be seen as an experiment, not a dogma, he added, suggesting that a charter of human responsibilities be created to balance the Constitution’s emphasis on individual rights.
While the mere idea of curtailing individual freedoms is anathema to most of us, I can nevertheless see his point. The gaping divide between the ideals (however wonderful the laws giving shape to them may be) and the practice threatens to make a mockery of those ideals. Surely the right of nurses and teachers to strike should be balanced by an equal responsibility on their part to do their jobs properly?
But how one actually achieves this is another matter. The Department of Education has begun to grapple with finding ways of enforcing teacher accountability and professionalism – a strong theme of its Tirisano implementation plan to be unveiled early next year. According to Minster of Education Kader Asmal, the nine-programme plan is a “very creative exercise, involving every directorate of the department”. He has every confidence in its ability to deliver real results.
I will try to snip at that cynical thread of thought that says that implementation plans, like policy and laws, are useless unless real people, not just the thinkers at the top, have the will and the sense of responsibility to carry them out.
Several delegates at the conference spoke of the selfishness of today’s populace, whose pursuit of personal wealth and status is the only thing that seems to jerk them out of their state of glazed apathy. Although battle-weary, many South Africans appear nostalgic for the activism of previous decades which saw people unite for the perceived good of everyone. Why, asked speaker after speaker, do we not see the same tide of activism against today’s more invisible, but just as devastating, threats to peace and prosperity like Aids, violence against women, crime and poverty?
If Seattle was anything to go by, a widespread resistance to environmental degradation and exploitation of the poor seems to be gathering in a strong backwash against the gigantic tidal wave of globalisation.
But given the air of political correctness that waves away the tiniest twitch of criticism in this country (as many conference delegates testified) in the face of an ever-more complacent governing elite and the advancing centralisation of the state, much has to happen if South Africa is to prove itself as a properly functioning democracy, whose citizens do not just lie back and take whatever is handed to them.
Significantly, most speakers – themselves censored by the insidious climate of political correctness and well aware of the shrinking resource pie for NGOs – were quick to point out that they were speaking in their personal capacity, not on behalf of their organisations, when voicing frustration at the fact that five years after democracy the poor are even poorer and the newly enfranchised – bar a small elite – are as jobless as ever.
The Seattle affair is a reminder that the growing gap between rich and poor is not specific to South Africa. Given that South Africans have no real experience of democratic governance, and that most leaders of civil society are now in government, it is also hardly surprising that our new democracy is as delicate as it is. Invoking the image of a house being built on sand, one participant reminded all that a violent and brutal past is hardly a solid foundation to build upon.
So what does all this mean for education? Everything, it seems. While 54% of our country is functionally illiterate, while schools remain dysfunctional (60% of children did not receive new textbooks this year), and until a human rights culture is developed and actively taught in schools, the principles of democracy enshrined by the Constitution will continue to waft uselessly above a crumbling construction site.