Editor
South African politics has become a dirty game.
Speak to any adult South African and you will hear them complain about various problems plaguing us today, yet you go to a mall and you see us walking around, black and white, living in false sense of freedom.
In South Africa, that has a high poverty rate and a substandard education system, most politicians actually don’t give a damn.
The reason for this isn’t because of the elected, it is because the good people have stood by and done nothing to stop it.
We have lost the culture of pre ‘94.Yes, you have various organisations that are fighting against various social injustices in the courts, but is this enough?
Protest is a culture in South Africa, so much that we have been dubbed the protest capital of the world, stemming back to the major protest action seen during the Defiance Campaign back in 1952.
Since then, the fight against the injustices of the apartheid system intensified. Today we live in a South Africa where we see protest action every two days on average.
But the question I ask myself is, are we doing it right? ln the Western Cape we have the “turd brigade”; in Gauteng the labour brokers protest under the guise of an eTolls protest; the youth wage subsidy march to Cosatu house and the DA’s march to Nkandla.
What was the result?
Bad service delivery is still an occurrence in the Western Cape and everywhere else in the country.
We now have eTolls, labour broking is still with us, there is no youth wage subsidy and the construction of Nkandla is almost complete. We are doing this protest thing wrong!
How many of us have sat back since 1994 and had no political impact in that we are actively involved in one of the various political parties in South Africa?
How many have said, “well, l have the ability to change things, so I will go to a branch meeting and have my say?”
I hate to break it to you, and l will try and do it gently, things are going the way they are in our country because we have allowed it to get that way.
The good people have stood back and done nothing.
Don’t blame the ANC. You have had every opportunity to join them and make a difference, to take the party in a direction that stays true to the freedom charter, one that stays true to what was fought for all those years.
I am a firm believer in John F Kennedy’s statement, “One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.”
lf one person endeavours to make a difference, others will follow.
Active, proper and change making protest, boycott and participation in various political parties and organisations in our country are necessary to achieve our goals. Yes, laws will sometimes be broken, but we need true freedom in South Africa.
No freedom was ever won by throwing poo.
The previous government was not beaten by people who followed the law either. Laws were broken; people were arrested and scores went to jail. We have lost the ability to fight for what is right and for all that is good.
ln the South Africa we live in today, mediocrity is rewarded and celebrated.
We are not an ordinary country; we have fought for the freedom many countries only dream of fighting against things such as eTolls, for example and successfully stopping it won’t simply involve not buying an eTag, it will involve not utilising the highways altogether.
We can learn from history: the Alexandra bus boycott of 1957 lasted from January to June of the same year and was named Azilwelwa (we will not ride).
lt was a massive success in that the government of the day worried about the large numbers of the workforce walking more than 20 miles a day to work, thus also having economic implications.
They won, and so can we. This is but a small example of many things that can be done and we must start taking a tougher stance against things that we are unhappy with.
26th June 1955, in Kliptown, the words: ‘The people shall govern’ a pertinent statement from The Freedom Charter, is, l believe, more relevant now than ever before.
We need to do more as South Africans to take control of the direction our country is moving in, if left as is, I believe we are set for disaster.
There are so many problems in the various political parties we see today. Some are trying to COPE – some are trying not to EFF things up, some are AGANG of people that don’t really say much, another is seeing divorce on a scale where ANC isn’t even helping, and DA minorities are sick and tired of being sidelined.
Only we have the power to change things. I reiterate ‘one person can make a difference, and everyone should try’.
Let’s get involved, stop complaining and get things where they should be. “And there are too many of us who stand on the side-lines, comfortable in complacency or cynicism when our voices must be heard.”-Barack Obama.
Let your voice be heard.
You can make an impact and you can make a difference. Do not underestimate the power we have as the people of this beautiful country.
Ugan Chetty