The government could not give in to pressure from ”shrill, shriek and opportunistic” voices claiming the people’s cause had been betrayed, former minister of justice Penuell Maduna said in Johannesburg on Thursday.
”It has not been betrayed,” he told the business community at the launch of a new fund-raising system run under the auspices of The Giving Organisation.
The government might not have been able to give everyone a roof over their heads, drinking water or ensure no child was educated under a tree. However, this was ”no proof or evidence of any notion that we did not care”, he said. ”It is because we are grappling with scarce resources.”
What would help is sustaining the democratic order arising from the struggle of the country’s people for freedom from oppression.
Over the weekend, President Thabo Mbeki criticised South African Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande speaking of a rupture in the national democratic revolution’s (NDR) shared perspective around a socialist imperative.
Nzimande told recent Congress of South African Trade Unions and South African Democratic Teachers’ (Sadtu) Union conferences that a dominant group was arguing that the key strategic task of the liberation movement was to manage capitalism.
Nzimande told Sadtu’s recent congress: ”It is a shame that much as South Africa was liberated by a movement whose strategy and tactics was informed by this philosophical outlook, only capitalist ideology is taught in our schools.”
Mbeki accused Nzimande of ”extraordinary arrogance”.
Also speaking at the launch on Thursday, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said South Africans needed to show the world they could not only defeat apartheid, injury and oppression, but poverty and the scourge of HIV/Aids.
”We want to show the world that it is possible to be a sharing, compassionate and gentle … people. … Let’s show the world we are people with a heart; we are people who care; we are ready to wipe tears away from the eyes of those who mourn,” Tutu said.
”This is a country that is going to demonstrate to the world … that we are actually able to live with all of our rich diversity.”
The Giving Organisation consists of 12 charities including the Red Cross, Cansa and Choc, the childhood cancer foundation.
It has asked businesses to help it raise R2-billion by allowing customers to make small donations from the rounding off of their purchase amounts, and employees to make donations directly from their salaries. — Sapa