Hon House Chairperson, hon Deputy President, hon members, as we mobilise society towards consolidating democracy and freedom, let us take this opportunity to salute our sung and unsung heroes who fell in the struggle for the freedom we are celebrating today. Let us remember our heroes who lie in marked and unmarked graves in the country and abroad and remind ourselves that they have paid the supreme price for our freedom.
We remember that in April, Comrade Chris Hani was killed in cold blood and Solomon Mahlangu was hanged by the apartheid regime. We remember the former president of the ANC, O R Tambo, who led us through the four pillars of our struggle.
Our freedom did not fall from heaven like manna. This year we celebrate 19 years of democracy, freedom and liberation; nineteen years of exercising our rights to choose the party we want to govern; nineteen years of transforming the legislative landscape to ensure transformative and progressive legislation; nineteen years of hard work of reversing a 300 year-long development backlog and to set about ensuring deracialisation, gender equality, reconciliation, nation-building whilst addressing the embedded and pervasive socioeconomic legacy of apartheid colonialism and patriarchy.
Those who argue that 19 years is sufficient time to create a new nation, for that is exactly what was needed given our racialised and inhuman legacy, must be bold enough to admit that the entrenchment of separateness which consumed this land cannot be overturned within 19 years. If we are honest, we must admit that no person can accurately quantify how long it will take to undo, repair, heal, develop and sustain a nation traumatised by the apartheid legacy, which was termed by the United Nations a crime against humanity.
It is easy for those who sit on the sidelines in judgement of the ANC-led government to continuously bemoan that all of us should stop harping on the past and get on with it. When one does not know where one's parent is buried after being killed by the apartheid regime, or whose elderly grandmother lives in a rural area and has not had the luxury of hot water running out of a tap, or whose mother is a domestic worker who takes care of her employer's children but not her own, or whose shack in a densely populated area of shack-dwellers is either prone to annual floods or runaway fires, then one must not demand immediate amnesia and expect those who suffered immensely and still do so to stop harping on the past and get on with it. As Madiba wisely said, "true reconciliation does not consist in merely forgetting the past."
The triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment weigh heavily on our nation largely because the vestiges of inequalities and divisions imposed on society over some three centuries are still persisting almost two decades after the democratisation of South Africa. The impact of this reverberates across the land, and if left unattended, threatens to destabilise our hard fought for democracy.
We can acknowledge that despite these challenges, progress has been made. Perhaps, this progress is not at the pace that most would like it to be. However, given the state of the nation that the democratic ANC-led government inherited in 1994, coupled with the global situation, we can proudly state that few societies can claim to have experienced the depth and breadth of policy, legal and institutional transformation as we have.
As former President Nelson Mandela observed:
It is true that there is much work still to be done to bring true equity, social justice and thus stability to the nation. It is true that change sometimes seems slow. How many decades, indeed, centuries, has it taken European and American democracies to stabilise their governments, their economies and their societies? How many former liberation movements that have become governments in other parts of Africa, in Eastern Europe, in South America can match the South African government's attempts to redress injustice and stimulate economic growth?
The National Planning Commission articulated this progress as follows:
Since 1994, access to primary and secondary education has been expanded to include almost all of the age cohort. A reception year has been introduced. Ten million people have been accommodated in formal housing. Primary healthcare has been expanded. Access to electricity and water has been significantly expanded. Enrolment in higher education has almost doubled and, in terms of its race and gender demographics, is more representative of our nation.
However, while we can take a modicum of pride in acknowledging the gains we have made, we are also realistic enough to understand that deep poverty, high levels of unemployment and vast inequalities can easily trigger major fissures in our society and set us back tenfold, unless we speed up service delivery and substantially improve the lives of all our people. To quote the National Planning Commission's diagnostic overview once more:
Despite these successes, our conclusion is that on a business-as-usual basis, we are likely to fall short in meeting our objectives of a prosperous, united, nonracial and democratic South Africa with opportunity for everyone, irrespective of race or gender.
Further, the ANC has always held that the South African nation is a product of many streams of history and culture. Given this history, the ANC has always called for unity in diversity through the building of a national democratic society with a common value system and national identity.
The ANC has always held that material conditions are essential to social cohesion. When it assumed power in 1994, it undertook a very conscious campaign to intensify a nation-building programme. This programme called for government, public and private institutions along with all the citizens of this diverse society to begin working together to build an inclusive, just and cohesive society in which not just a privileged few, but all members of society live in peace and prosper together. To achieve this, an effective national strategy on social cohesion and nation-building was required.
On the occasion of our centenary celebration last year, the ANC, in its January 8th statement, said:
The process of developing a sense of common nationhood or a common vision of the future has been slow. We continue to have different and differing perspectives on the processes unfolding in our country. Despite the progress we have made, there remain deep fault lines in our society that continue to undermine our vision of a united, nonracial and nonsexist South Africa. These fault lines include the persistence of poverty and unemployment, old and new forms of inequality and the persistence of patriarchal relations that continue to marginalise women.
It would seem that selective amnesia of the untold suffering and disparities which exist, has not only desensitized but also created apartheid fatigue amongst many. It would seem that when one seeks to justify the challenges which impede delivery, one is castigated for dwelling in the past. However, we must perhaps continuously remind ourselves of what we endured so that we appreciate how far we have come.
Let me list these crimes against humanity and in so doing, also marvel at the forgiving nature of the majority of the people who endured these. They are the division of the population along racial, linguistic and cultural lines; the denial of the majority of the population the right to representation in national government; the dispossession of the majority of the people of land; the fragmentation of the country into ethnic enclaves designed to foster ethnicity and tribalism; the reservation of participation in all aspects of national life to a minority of the population; the imposition of an unequal, segregated and indoctrinating educational dispensation on the society; the regulation and prohibition of free intercultural social interaction; the denationalisation of the majority of the population; the criminalisation and brutalisation of the majority of the population; the restriction of the free movement of the majority; the disruption of the family and community life of successive generations; and the denigration of African languages and cultures.
The entrenchment of these has made overturning the laws which enacted these atrocities easier to do when compared to liberating our people from the socioeconomic bondage perpetuated by the apartheid regime.
Political posturing and political dishonesty in certain quarters is consistently ignoring the many achievements scored by this government. Curiously, they have accused us of clinging to the past but today, we are seeing them through a distortion of history and lies, shouting on the podium that "we too fought for freedom."
They have even appropriated former ANC president and the face of our anti- apartheid struggle, Nelson Mandela, by placing his image side by side with that of Suzman on the campaign pamphlet.
The DA has all the right to blow its trumpet about the role it played, if any in history. However, it has no right to insult the intelligence of the nation through factual misrepresentation of history, distortion and lies. Whether the choice of Mrs Suzman as the face of "we also fought for freedom" campaign is advisable, is a matter for history to judge. However, to equate the role she played in the anti-apartheid struggle with that of Madiba, by publishing their picture in a friendly embrace as the face of such campaign, is an act of great desperation and political fraudulence.
The policy of Mrs Suzman's progressive party preferred limited voting rights for blacks, which meant only 150 000 out of 15 million black people with standard seven would vote. It is an open secret that the late Suzman dedicated her energies protecting economic interest of apartheid South Africa, which were enjoyed by the white minority by rejecting international call for disinvestment and sanctions against apartheid South Africa.
During her visit to the British House of Commons in 1989, she reiterated to the international media, "I am against disinvestment and sanction. I totally support Mrs Thatcher on this issue". Thatcher, for years an international face of opposition against sanctions and disinvestment against apartheid South Africa, was a friend of the apartheid regime and controversially regarded Mandela and the ANC as terrorists.
The progressive party agreed with the apartheid regime that Mandela must renounce the armed struggle as a condition for his release from Robben Island. As we said when Mrs Suzman sadly passed away in 2009, "we remember and respect the contribution of Mrs Suzman towards the demise of apartheid". Because of the ancient African traditions of Ubuntu that we subscribe to, which teach us never to talk ill of the departed, we would have preferred that she rests in peace, rather than subject her to this kind of scrutiny. It is unfortunate and regrettable that due to reckless and mischievous political posturing of the DA, we are today forced to reflect on this painful and unfortunate part of our history.
Whilst the Constitution and its Chapter 9 Institutions have laid the foundations for an inclusive and just relationship between the citizens and the state at different levels of government, as well as with other public and private agencies, the effective realisation of the full participation of all citizens remains uneven. Increasing economic marginalization of the poor and disadvantaged constitutes the biggest threat to the formation of a cohesive national identity in South African society.
We have witnessed frequent and widespread service delivery protests, xenophobic attacks, barbaric sexual violence against women and children, increase in crime levels, alcohol and drug abuse, teenage pregnancies and corruption. All these challenge our nation building project and pose a real threat to social cohesion.
The preamble of the South African Constitution clearly declares that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.