“If we are to realise the vision of human dignity for all, which is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, we need to commit as a nation to ending poverty, which continues to deny over 60% of South Africans their human rights and basic freedoms,” he said.

Steenhuisen was speaking during the DA’s organised Human Rights Day in Gemsbokspruit, just outside KwaMhlanga in Mpumalanga, on Monday. Before his address, Steenhuisen spent the better part of the day interacting with the Amandebele traditional leadership and conducting door-to-door visits in the area.

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“On Human Rights Day, our nation commemorates the Sharpeville Massacre of March 21, 1960, when police opened fire on a peaceful protest, killing 69 people and wounding 180 under the oppressive apartheid regime. It is a day on which we remember the importance of human life and dignity, and the responsibility we have to protect these basic rights. Yet just last week, a World Bank report found that South Africa remains the most unequal country in the world. The most pressing and evident human rights violation in South Africa today is crippling poverty,” said Steenhuisen.

“Section 10 of the Bill of Rights in our Constitution says that everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected, but for as long as poverty persists in our country, no South African will ever live a life of dignity and respect. This is the fight of our generation, and the fight that the DA will be taking up under my leadership.

Today I am visiting the rural community of Gemsbokspruit in Mpumalanga to listen and to learn. I am here to see for myself the daily indignities that poverty subjects them to and to hear firsthand about the daily struggle of people to make ends meet.” He stressed that poverty kills. “Nearly 7 500 children under the age of five die from hunger each year in our country. South Africa’s children are at much greater risk from hunger than they are from Covid-19, and this is evident in communities such as Gemsbokspruit.

Food inflation and the rising cost of living are not merely circumstantial. They are linked to rising fuel and electricity prices on the back of Ramaphosa’s useless, corrupt, and indifferent Poverty Cabinet. Today, on Human Rights Day, we appeal to all South Africans to get behind our vision of ending poverty in our lifetime, and the first step is getting rid of South Africa’s Poverty Cabinet,” he lashed out.