NO blows BARRED
Sipho Seepe
Former president Nelson Mandela’s words on the occasion of his inauguration resonated with the relief and hopes of the world. He pledged: ”Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud.
”Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all. All this we owe both to ourselves and to the peoples of the world who are so well represented here today.”
Imbued with this optimism, laws that served as vehicles for the oppression of African people were replaced with those consistent with the new political dispensation.
The political discourse became awash with new phrases human rights, people-centred and participatory democracy, putting people first, responsive and transparent governance, respect for human life, social and economic justice, freedom of expression and association.
Not even the most sceptical could have foreseen that a mere seven years later, the very masses that Mandela thanked for bringing the new dispensation would be questioning the government’s commitment to a ”better life for all”.
These questions are increasingly being expressed through mass-based religious, women, youth, business and various non-governmental organisations.
The discrepancy between stated commitments, values, principles and beliefs on the one hand and behaviour on the other is becoming more apparent.
Progressive legislation and pious political pronouncements are rarely matched by a change of attitude or a new consciousness at both the personal and political level. Instead of the struggle achieving the liberation of both the oppressed and the oppressor, it has simply replaced the oppressor. The oppressed are assuming the role of the oppressor.
Having over time internalised the image of the oppressor, his guidelines and structures of domination are adopted and the formerly oppressed is unable to see himself/herself outside the image of the oppressed.
In his book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the Brazilian scholar Paulo Freire captures this as follows: ”But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors. The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped.
”This phenomenon derives from the fact that the oppressed, at a certain moment of their existential experience, adopt an attitude of ”adhesion” to the oppressor. Even revolution, which transforms a concrete situation of oppression by establishing the process of liberation, must confront this phenomenon.”
Adhesion and close identification with the oppressor leads to a situation wherein the new bosses conduct themselves in much the same way as their erstwhile oppressors. Appealing to apartheid laws to achieve narrow political objective must be seen within this context.
Only recently, and despite paying lip service to accountable and transparent governance, the ruling elite made use of apartheid legislation that was created to handle clandestine arms acquisitions. The argument that auditing practices demand that the arms report be verified first by relevant government institutions does not explain the ruling elite’s determination to hurriedly get the report out of the way.
At the same time the country’s commitment to human rights is being overtaken by economic considerations, if the readiness to sell arms and weapons of destruction to countries with a poor record of human rights is anything to go by.
The ruling elite does not only appeal to apartheid legislation when it is convenient, it at times behaves in a manner reminiscent of apartheid. In rallying around President Thabo Mbeki’s misguided views on HIV/Aids, the ruling elite has displayed the same propensity to ignore world opinion this time on scientific matters and has invited a chorus of condemnation locally and abroad.
Castigating Mbeki, the New York-based Human Rights Watch stated recently that ”the continued refusal of your government to support the provision of the low-cost treatment for prevention of mother-to-child trans- mission, along with public statements that sow confusion about the scientific basis for HIV/Aids prevention and treatment programmes, are acts of injustice against your people”.
Claims of creating a caring society sound hollow in the context of a government willing to stand by while millions of HIV-infected people die painful deaths.
While the new ruling elite liberally pays homage to notions such as ”people-centred” government, evidence abounds that it fails to appreciate that democracy is not what governments do, but that it is fundamentally what people do to make their governments accomplish things for the common good.
Democracy is not a grant from government to the people. In a democracy people must have a right to discuss national affairs and be able to communicate their ideas freely.
Before assuming political office, the potency of the African National Congress was people’s power. As it increasingly acquires state power, the masses and their organisations are progressively becoming irrelevant and ignored. Like apartheid before it, it can appeal to and rely on other sites of power (the army, the police, bureaucracy, security and intelligence forces, the public broadcaster, para- statals) to entrench its dominance.
Failure to respond to the demands of the new dispensation is not limited to government. Most political and societal organisations conduct themselves as they did prior to 1994. This lack of social and attitudinal trans- formation can be sharply illustrated in the higher education sector. Not only does the sector continue to reflect the indelible imprint of apartheid South Africa, it has also not evolved strategies that go beyond a racial approach to transformation.
While historically black institutions face challenges that are peculiar to them, they have failed to enlist the support of their historically white counterparts in their campaigns for institutional redress.
They have failed to transcend the historical divisions wrought by apartheid. There is a reinforcement of the notion that because the government is black-led, it must necessarily be sympathetic to black concerns rather than South African concerns.
Aside from it being incompatible with the new dispensation, it is no different to the apartheid regime’s concern with white interests.
In summary, as long as our attitudes and behaviour are not consistent with values enshrined in our Constitution, we run the risk of becoming prisoners of the past, thus remaining trapped within the socio-political imagination of apartheid colonialism.