Jay Naidoo. (Photo by Patrick Durand/Sygma via Getty Images)
Every November during the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, politicians decry this scourge against women and girl children. Songs that are seldom accompanied by action. It may just be time to consider whether this form of activism has worked to combat these challenges meaningfully or, if anything, whether activism in the post-apartheid environment has worked to cause meaningful change in our society in general.
Take the 2015-16 FeesMustFall student uprising that rocked the country’s higher education system, demanding complete transformation and fee-free education at public universities. The movement lost impetus when, at the start of the ANC’s national conference in December 2017, outgoing president Jacob Zuma unilaterally announced that higher education would be free for students in households whose income was less than R350 000 a year. But free higher education is yet to be realised in 2022.
Many people were caught off guard by the intensity of the wave of protests that swept the country’s universities and colleges during this period. Nothing like this had been witnessed on our soil since the mid-1980s. And in those days, the student movement had been acting in collaboration with the liberation movements. The FeesMustFall students themselves organised the campaign for a decolonised and free education system.
Activist movements in the past achieved far greater success but at the cost of many lives lost. And with many other losses and compromises along the way. In recent times activist actions and protests have also seen lives lost — the 34 miners killed at Marikana — and livelihoods compromised, but many have certainly not achieved their desired goals.
I recently spoke to the former parliamentarian, business leader and activist Jay Naidoo to ask the question: has activism won?
Naidoo explores this question in relation to modern-day challenges such as failing leadership and key lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, while also looking at his younger self in the South African union movement during the 1970s and 1980s.
I asked him where he thinks it all went wrong because in 1994, when the ANC took power, it had a plan: the Reconstruction and Development Programme. And it seems that 28 years later, we’re still in reconstruction and development.
Naidoo started by admitting that one of the ANC’s problems as a revolutionary movement is that when it assumed power in 1994, it also reduced the energy of South Africa’s people to effect the changes needed.
“We demobilised the very energy that causes change because we thought that we had gained state power and that through this power we will know and do what is right for our people,” Naidoo said.
“And so that was a big mistake on our part. The reconstruction and development documents were not a plan drawn up by a bunch of technicians sitting in the backroom. It was based on the people’s forums that were held before it in each sector. For example, there was the National Education Crisis Committee that designed what would be the demands around the reconstruction of education. There was health, the labour market, and others where we designed policies for reconstruction.”
Naidoo believes that there were indeed successes from these moves during the negotiations with the National Party: “We made important progress during this time to an extent that at some point, the NP was negotiating for a veto for white people. We won the battle for one person, one vote, and a democratic and non-sexist society. We did.
“The Reconstruction and Development Programme embraced the vision of the South African people at a grassroots level”, he noted, adding that it emerged out of the understanding that “it was the Freedom Charter that was the foundation stone of our freedom stance”.
Naidoo tells an especially important anecdote about the conflicting ideological positions of many of those that were in the government of national unity after the ANC took power. He explained that the comrades coming from exile, for example, had always believed they were the government in exile. Was it this initial disunity that contributed to the stagnating reconstruction and development objectives of the state?
Naidoo explained the failures and spoke about how a renewal of activism could help revitalise the programme at a national level. “Africa today has a large population of young people who, like the young of 1976 must reclaim our path. This requires an understanding of who we are and why we are here.”
He said that young people were beginning to realise that the kind of leaders we have today don’t have the answers to our problems: “So, this renewal of activism must take away from these corrupt leaders who seem to not care about humanity and our future. And take the fight unto themselves against issues that affect us all today, including global warming, wars, economic meltdowns, and the xenophobic violence we have witnessed in our country in recent times.
“Where we were as young people in 1976 required us to build communities of activism that delivered to our people the freedoms we enjoy today — everything from human rights, and education to health. This is what we need to recreate today. A new movement that resides in our communities representing the hopes and aspirations of our people and building power from the bottom. That’s the only way that we can break down the rule of tyranny that’s been built in the world today from the top down.”
What I heard Naidoo say is that we need to return to the source because we have clearly forgotten who we are, and we need to reclaim our power. He closed off by saying: “This is the challenge of your generation. Know who you are. Know where we come from and where we are going. And commit to a set of values that prioritise integrity, honesty and service, and embrace empathy, compassion, and solidarity. And understand that I am who I am because I am part of something greater. That is the basic tenet of ubuntu, a philosophy that guided Africa for millennia.”
Lebo Madiba is the founder and host of the Influence podcast platform
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.