This article is part of a series of reflections from Young Maverick writers about what Human Rights Day (March 21) means to them.

After President Cyril Ramaphosa’s speech proclaiming that gatherings of crowds of 100 or more were prohibited due to the Covid-19 outbreak, political parties around South Africa announced that they would not hold any commemorative gatherings on 21 March 2020.    

The day is significant because in 1960, in the township of Sharpeville, apartheid police fired on a crowd of protesters. Sixty-nine people died in the massacre. A further 180 sustained injuries.

This has gone down in our country’s history as a great sacrifice in the fight for the freedom we currently enjoy.

Fast forward to modern-day South Africa and this day, now known as Human Rights Day, has been almost exclusively used by politicians as a politicking weapon and a means to score cheap political points.

However, a quick survey of the land will show that as much as every anniversary of the massacre has come with a plethora of promises, little has been done to make them a reality.

A large number of citizens of South Africa, especially those in rural provinces, are still far from enjoying basic human rights.

Case in point: there are still children in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Free State that either have to risk crossing raging rivers or walk outrageous distances to get to school.

The media, too, plays its role as enablers of this continued violation of human rights by greedy politicians.

Every year, before the matric results are released, you are bound to find stories of learners who defied the odds and managed to notch up seven distinctions despite having to go to school for 12 years under such dire conditions.

Then again, at the time schools are scheduled to open around the country, we get into our mobile stations, grab our cameras and notepads – then rush off. This we do to find learners whose stories of struggle we can tell.

Once we have found and told our stories we forget about that young man who has to strip down to his underwear and carry his little sister across the relentless river, every single school day throughout the whole year.

And we return again to the rivers the following year, ready to feast like piranhas. 

Sure, adversity builds character and those stories should be told to inspire.

On the other hand, we should guard against falling into the trap of romanticising struggle. The truth is that it can have long-lasting mental effects on those who experience it and are not fortunate enough to make it to the other side.

It is our duty as mouthpieces of the masses to always hold accountable the fibbing politicians who use the struggles of the voiceless as a means to benefit themselves and those closest to them.

Because surely, those people who lost their lives in 1960 did not do so only to see their sacrifice used as a game of political chess. All while their people still live in inhumane conditions. DM