Convicted Western Cape cleric Allan Boesak warned South Africa and the official opposition against ”the politics of delusion” on Wednesday. Boesak, an anti-apartheid activist who was convicted of fraud, was addressing the Johannesburg Press Club.
Referring to the liberation struggle, Boesak said: ”It is not that anybody is denying that the struggle took place. It is, rather, its moral and political significance, then and now, that some are seeking to undermine.”
Boesak said that a sarcastic dismissal of the struggle caused more hurt and anger than could be imagined.
”I have heard the argument that today’s young people, who have not gone through the struggle years, are all but ignorant of it and could not care less. Their concerns are different, we are told. Of course their concerns should be different… but to argue that they are ignorant of, and could not care about, the struggle is ‘fallacious,’ it is the politics of delusion.”
Boesak said that ”to look at some newly-privileged kids on campus with designer clothes and BMWs and to take them as the examples of South Africa’s youth is delusory and dangerous”.
Boesak drew attention to the continuing poverty in South Africa, and to the hunger and disease still suffered by millions.
He said that ”those South Africans whose interests are served by the continued untransformed nature of our society, from our sports fields to our justice system, speak glowingly about ‘the process of national reconciliation’. Those who differ… are ignored.”
Boesak warned that reconciliation had not yet been achieved, and said that the ideology of reconciliation could ”be used as a tool by the powerful to keep the poor poor, the landless landless, and the rich and privileged… untouched and immovable”.
His plea was for genuine reconciliation and the uplifting of the poor. He called for ”the reconciliation that does not seek cheap, quick fixes for deeply rooted problems”.
Boesak said South Africa needed a credible opposition.
”To be in opposition in South Africa without having any struggle credentials is difficult enough. But to be an opposition that is seen to be pouring all of its energies into holding onto… the past is wholly untenable.”
He was not saying that everyone should be ”singing from the same political song book” but that opposition politics was about ”providing an exciting, viable, attractive alternative to the policies of government… giving voice to those who feel excluded… providing a better way of governing. I don’t believe the opposition in this country has any of this.”
Boesak summed up his address by calling for real change and genuine transformation.
Boesak was sentenced to three years imprisonment in May 2000 for fraud, and was granted parole after serving a third of his sentence. Asked at the Press Club meeting about a possible presidential pardon, he said he did not know the status of his pardon, but was of course ”anxious to know”. – Sapa