×

We've got news for you.

Register on SowetanLIVE at no cost to receive newsletters, read exclusive articles & more.
Register now

Are 67 minutes enough for Tata?

THE celebration of former president Nelson Mandela's 93rd birthday saw South Africans from all walks of life coming together to honour his legacy.

Ordinary people, politicians, business people and celebrities joined hands and heeded the call that they should use 67 minutes of their lives to express some goodwill towards their less fortunate compatriots.

These expressions of goodwill were done in honour of the man seen by the world as a symbol of commitment to forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion and peace.

But while the world was responding to the call to honour the man described by many as an icon, questions were also raised about how the responses to the call were undermining his role as the militant revolutionary who took arms to fight the apartheid regime.

The questions raised were about how initiatives like the 67 minutes in honour of Mandela are failing to address the quest for the fundamental changes that Mandela and many other revolutionaries have fought for. In their failure to do so, the initiatives are unfortunately undermining the ethos that, for example, drove Mandela to declare that: "The struggle is my life".

The struggle that Mandela spoke about was against land dispossession, poverty, lack of human dignity, structural inequality and economic exploitation of the oppressed majority. It was a struggle driven by an understanding that the apartheid social relations needed to be overthrown.

As Professor Sipho Seepe has pointed out in his critique of how Mandela should be honoured and remembered, any initiative that steers clear of confronting these fundamental challenges runs the risk of trivialising the man's legacy. So, it is important that in honouring him we assess whether these anomalies have been redressed; and if not, how we can qualitatively contribute towards the redress.

Our assessment must be based on an understanding of the impact of apartheid and colonialism and how these have come to determine the extent to which the politically free majority can enjoy the fruits of their liberation.

It is common knowledge that South Africa became a majority state after 1994, wherein the majority of its citizens have the right to vote. But it is also common knowledge that the acquisition of political power has not led to the economic emancipation of its majority citizens. South Africa, as former president Thabo Mbeki once said, remains a country of two nations - where the poor majority is black and the rich minority is white.

These, unfortunately, are some of the challenges that post-colonial societies often find themselves. What then becomes important is the mechanisms put in place to tackle these persisting anomalies.

On its part, the government has made several interventions, including the adoption of policies aimed at opening up opportunities for the marginalised to be incorporated into the mainstream economy.

In doing so, they have acknowledged that the situation cannot be redressed by pretending it is business as usual. There are impediments as to how much the government can achieve in its drive to create an egalitarian society.

The history of any struggle for liberation has taught us that building alliances and solidarity is a sure way of mobilising forces to challenge such impediments.

What history has also taught us is that such impediments cannot be challenged with superficial solutions that deal with symptoms rather than causes.

What we need are not solutions that (like many charity initiatives) enable those who remain the victims of marginalisation and poverty to cope with their situation.

What we need is the kind of solidarity that Mandela and other heroes of the liberation struggle had built with the people to challenge apartheid and colonialism.

As Kenyan activist Firoze Manji says, this is the kind of solidarity that "establishes cooperation between different constituencies on the basis of mutual self-respect and concerns about injustices suffered by each".

"It is about taking sides in the face of injustices or the processes that reproduce injustice. It is not built on sympathy or charity or the portrayal of others as object of pity."

What differentiates this kind of solidarity from the limited expressions of goodwill that we display during our "67 minutes in honour of Mandela" is that it does not reproduce the social relations that perpetuate inequality and the injustices faced by "the less fortunate in our society".

Building such solidarity is the greatest honour we can pay Mandela.

Would you like to comment on this article?
Register (it's quick and free) or sign in now.

Speech Bubbles

Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.