Dear DM168 readers,

While typing the first words of this letter, I subconsciously wrote Dear DM168 “leaders” instead of “readers”, but, hey, if I think about it, every one of you who takes the time to read this and our weekly newspaper are probably leaders of some form or another, even if of your own lives, which quite frankly is probably the best kind of leadership there is.

If more of us led our own lives authentically without being influenced by someone else’s idea of what life we should be leading, or constantly hankering for some other life, we might just be more joyful and less miserable. Free.

One of my favourite songs of all time is Bob Marley’s Redemption Song, in particular the line he paraphrased from Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/None but ourselves can free our minds.” This resonated with me so much that I used to sing it as a lullaby to my sons when they were babies.

These words are as relevant to me today as they were when Marley sang them in 1980, when all of us melanin-endowed were treated as inferior beings by the leaders of the melanin-deprived who believed they were divinely destined to divide and rule us.

Many of my generation who were teens and young adults in the 1980s spent endless nights and days, marching, talking, making music, performing poetry, dancing, debating, dreaming, reading, campaigning, boycotting, protesting, getting beaten up, blown up, killed and imprisoned for the ideas we had of freedom.

For me, it was about the freedom to love whomever you liked without the police arresting you and throwing you in a cell if that person happened to be of the same sex or a different colour. It was about the freedom to read, learn, listen to and watch what you liked without the police confiscating your literature and jailing you for reading or watching banned material.

It was about the freedom to associate, protest and express your disagreement with those in power without being thrown in jail or murdered by the state for doing so. It was about the freedom to express, write, create and perform without being banned for doing so. It was about equal access to learning, skills training, business and work opportunities.

Freedom for me was an end to the poverty and inequality, discrimination and inherent corruption that split us into a minority of haves and majority of have-nots. It was about a participatory democracy where ordinary people, all of us, could have some say in how we were governed, how taxes were distributed so that all could have equal access to the opportunity for a better life.

It was definitely never about replacing one group of elites who served their own selfish interests to the neglect of the majority, with another group of elites.

I think my unconscious switch of the R and the L on my keyboard is related to these thoughts that have been swirling around my head about freedom and this democracy, which next year will have been around for 30 years.

I was 29 when I first voted in April 1994. I remember that amazing day like it was yesterday. I was an IEC volunteer in Joburg at the voting station in Bez Valley. It was the first time I experienced South African patience and acceptance as thousands of people of all ages, hues and political persuasions showed up to peacefully participate in our first democratic elections. I can’t explain the joy, camaraderie and elation I felt, being part of something that brought us together in hope after the decades, no, centuries of disenfranchisement and repression.

My feelings about this democracy that we fought for started with elation, but increasingly deteriorated into disappointment, disillusion and then disgust as the freedom we voted for turned into a venal free-for-all essentially to steal and strip us of critical services such as quality healthcare and education, electricity and water, road maintenance and trains.

It stopped being about the dreams of the ordinary people who patiently queued in 1994 and became about feeding the insatiable greed of thugs of all sorts from all sectors of our society and from all over the world who have permeated our business and political classes, robbing everyone of the better future we voted for in 1994.

Despite what our democracy has become, on 18 November I took my 18-year-old son to register to vote for the first time. What a celebratory affair it was at Lynnwood Ridge Primary School, with the enthusiastic IEC staff cheering my son for stepping up as a first-time voter.

That was a great coming-of-age experience for him. But I wondered how his vote would ever connect him to making the change that his generation needs in a world where jobs will increasingly be replaced by AI, and where political choice is manipulated with disinformation by paid-for bots. Where most of our parties’ chosen representatives in Parliament are older people, dem crazy baldheads, with all their divisive ideological baggage and political party groupthink that is a huge stumbling block to the creative, innovative and collaborative thinking needed to navigate the complex challenges of our times.

Our lead story, dear leaders, speaks to the radical change we need in the thinking and actions of the people we vote for to lead our municipalities, provinces and national government. Caryn Dolley, the author of Clash of the Cartels and our Daily Maverick specialist crime reporter, writes about how the beautiful facade of our Mother City, Cape Town, hides a deeply entrenched Gangstas’ Paradise that is not restricted to the long-suffering, overcrowded and impoverished townships of the Cape Flats. It extends its violent tentacles all the way to the rich mountain and seaside suburbs and the city centre. Caryn describes how gangsters are running private security companies, violently muscling in on construction sites, extorting businesspeople, are connected to entertainment venues and collude with an array of people in the government and the private sector.

This, dear leaders, is not freedom. It’s the most pernicious kind of mental slavery by organised crime, which has been allowed to take root everywhere.

On a much brighter note, a few weeks ago we asked Daily Maverick readers to vote for their favourite small town to visit. Grab a copy of the newspaper at your nearest retailer to find out which small towns blew your hair back and which town was most loved of them all.

Next week is our last edition for the year. Please email your deepest wishes for the New Year by 9am on Monday to [email protected] so our letters page can be filled with your hopes and dreams for the next 12 months.

Yours in defence of truth and freedom,

Heather

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.