On September 24, we marked Heritage Day, when South Africans “across the spectrum are encouraged to celebrate their culture and the diversity of their beliefs and traditions, in the wider context of a nation that belongs to all its people”.
We are 21 years into this journey of shaping our “national character” yet many of us remain disingenuous and even ambivalent to the issues facing our country. We cannot truly define who we are as a country simply by name or badge, rather we have to subscribe and embrace certain guiding or convening principles and values.
We would be naïve to think that the Constitution or the National Development Plan in isolation would be sufficient to guide us to a set of convening principles. The polarisation of our politics seems to be more important and so it continues to contribute to the fragmented nature of our society. Moreover, the threat to agreeing to convening or guiding principles is the hubris and mediocrity that so many display, which goes unquestioned, and often unchallenged.
This hubris is not only reflected in our leaders but rather in our own participation as South Africans in our democracy. It would be easy to forget our own privilege when we engage with issues of inequality, poverty, corruption and defining the future of South Africa.
I have in a number of earlier columns indicated my support for students who are willing to lead a discussion about transformation and what it means to be a South African living in a democratic South Africa. However, many of these students have not confronted their own role in our unequal and fragmented society.
I am mindful that many students have struggled against all odds to complete their schooling and then often have to go on to fight tooth and nail, with their families often having to stretch every last cent, in order to gain access to university. However, upon our arrival, regardless of whether we come from the townships of the Cape Flats (as I do) or elsewhere, we have become privileged and that privilege must equate into responsibilities for us to fulfil.
The question for those of us, who are able to chatter, tweet, and often pontificate about issues, (often from their smartphones and other devices) is why are we unwilling to admit our own privilege? At what point did the truth become inconvenient? The youth of Steve Biko’s generation had to make a plan with far less and were far closer to the grassroots than many of the students of today.
The snowballing of student movements such as Rhodes Must Fall, Open Stellenbosch and the like across South Africa at the moment appears to be confined to their respective geographical location. However, the issues are a forewarning of the sort of conversation that we need to be having as a country. We need to embrace the values of Biko’s generation and honestly confront our own privilege in order to do more beyond the confines of the university grounds.
In 1993, there were some among us who had thought carefully about the sort of convening or guiding principles and values that would be needed in order to meaningfully shape our democracy.
Comrade Chris Hani made the following remarks about who the new enemy would be as we were about to enter the democratic stage of our struggle: “Our biggest enemy would be what we do in the field of socio-economic restructuring; creation of jobs; building of houses, schools, medical facilities, overhauling our education, eliminating illiteracy, building a society which cares, and fighting corruption and moving into the gravy train of using power, government position to enrich individuals. We must build a different culture in this country, different from Africa, different from the Nationalist Party. And that culture should be one of service to people”.
Yet, 22 years after Chris Hani’s statement or 38 years since the death of Biko, we as a society have not embraced the notion of caring about what happens in our country and to each other while our leaders have also failed to embrace the notion that they “should be of service to people (and that they) should cut down (their) salaries (and) subsidies”.
The risk to all of us is that ambivalence and hubris permeates almost every layer of our society. We allowed this rot to set in. We have failed to acknowledge our own culpability, often excusing the failures of our leaders and never ever addressing the mediocrity that now surfaces at every level of our society.
What is evident is that we as South Africans have not taken root in our country or future. We have not fully committed to shaping that future using the tools afforded to us by the many women and men who fought for this democracy. Our failure to account and take ownership is not a heritage to be proud of. We need to stop making excuses. DM
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