House Chair, hon members, the law of nature has bequeathed to us a sound and rich inheritance in the knowledge of the fundamental rights that mankind must recognise, respect and, ultimately, live in conformity with their philosophy. It is true that, as citizens of South Africa, we have been able to articulate human rights with the utmost brilliance and intelligence. We have successfully put in place human institutions as support systems.
But, at the same time, we have sadly lacked the national consciousness and conviction necessary to translate fully human rights and the fundamental freedoms into our day-to-day existence, neither in our relationships with one another, nor in the governance of the state.
As we continue to deliberate these big questions of our time in this House, we must acknowledge that what has been popularly referred to as the South African miracle has become, to a few of our citizens, a source of affluent living, obscene wealth, selfishness and corrupt tendencies. On the other hand, the same South African miracle, for the majority of our citizens, is perennial nightmares of unfreedoms of grinding poverty, unemployment, landlessness, homelessness, poor education, institutional brutality, racism and exploitation, violent rapes and murders.
The great exponents of the rights of man see these - meaning, human rights - as the manifestation of justice, the supreme value that must be written in the hearts of men and women, to make them an imperative guide of the moral order of our universe. By the same token, human rights must be the guides of the South African statehood.
On the contrary, the signs are now clear to all of us that almost 20 years into liberation from oppressive systems and long after South Africa was accepted into the human rights commonwealth, we are still presiding over a constitutional state that is struggling to fulfil some of its national and international obligations to the majority of its citizens. It is yet to fulfil to the satisfaction and for the freedom of the majority, the following obligations: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the International Convention on Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination; the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women; the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and we have just seen what the police did to somebody; the Convention on the Rights of the Child; and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. We have seen how we handled the question of xenophobia.
Lastly, for this reason, the IFP feels that it is urgent for civil society, with all its components, and the government, as represented by Parliament, the executive and the judiciary, notwithstanding their independence, to recentre their efforts on human rights in a quest for moral accountability and personal responsibility as the basis for a stable social contract. I must hasten to say that failure to realise this unity can only put the constitutional state on a collision course with the civil state. I thank you.