Deputy Speaker, in the 1980s hon Eric Mtshali taught me and other lawyers that in the new South Africa we must guarantee, not just protect, workers' rights.
These wise words of our veteran, hon Mtshali, should apply with equal force to the rights of women, children and people living with disabilities. Spurred on by these wise words, I decided to title my address, "Working together to guarantee the dignity of all".
Slavery and colonialism forcibly deprived black people of their human dignity and they were treated as subhuman beings. On 21 March 1960, apartheid security forces shot and killed 69 peaceful demonstrators who were demonstrating against the inhumane apartheid system. This massacre is commemorated annually as a reminder that we must act more decisively to combat racism, discrimination and intolerance. Today we honour the people of Sharpeville who were gunned down in cold blood by the apartheid security forces.
On Monday, 21 March 2011, we paid tribute to the patriots who lost their lives in this massacre. In memory of these patriots, we must remind ourselves that their protests were part of a broader struggle for freedom and justice, informed by the moral vision expounded by the founders of our democracy from the close of the 19th century.
In his exposition of this moral vision, Rev John Langalibalele Dube called for a new African society that is spiritual, humane, caring and prosperous. Pixley ka Isaka Seme embraced this vision in his oration titled The Regeneration of Africa, in which he also called for a unique civilisation for Africa and Africans.
In 1919, the then president of the ANC, Sefako Mapogo Makgatho, outlined the mission of the ANC as being, amongst other things:
To destroy racism and to create on its ruins a nonracist South Africa with traditional democratic rights that would be available to all, irrespective of race, colour, religion, sex, possession, formal education ...
Hardly two years thereafter, in 1921, Rev Z R Mahabane observed in his speech titled "We are not political children", that African people had been rendered landless, voteless, homeless, hopeless, degraded and dehumanised. Thus, in 1923, he told the national conference of the African National Congress that given these conditions, the ANC must strive to recover the humanity - ubuntu botho - of African people as a prerequisite for the recovery of all South Africans, both black and white.
At its 1923 national conference, the ANC adopted its first Bill of Rights, the first on the African continent, which reasserted African humanity and the right of African people to participate in the economic life of the country.
In 1943 the ANC amplified the social and economic clauses of the 1923 Bill of Rights in its African claims. The African claims demanded the right of African people to self-determination and human rights such as education and health care.
African people had participated in World War II on the side of the Allied forces, hoping that in the event of victory they would be granted these rights. President Theodore Roosevelt of the US and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, however, denied Africans their rights on the grounds of the colour of their skin.
Both the UN Charter of 1945 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 failed or neglected to extend the right of self-determination and human rights to African people. In 1948 the National Party came to power on the platform of racism and racial discrimination.
Notwithstanding the racially discriminatory policies and laws of the people of European descent, the ANC stood firm by its mission of creating a nonracial and democratic society based on the common humanity of all South Africans, both black and white.
No wonder that in 1955 the Congress of the People, led by the ANC, adopted the Freedom Charter, which reasserted the right of the people of South Africa, as a whole, to land and its natural resources; and the right to establish a nonracial, democratically elected government, justice for all and equal opportunities for all. Thus the Freedom Charter provided an alternative vision to apartheid in South Africa.
In his keynote address at the commemoration of National Human Rights Day at the Athlone Stadium here in Cape Town, President Jacob Zuma reminded us that the Freedom Charter -
... still remains an inspiring and visionary document that has shaped the development of democracy in South Africa and also forms the basis of our democratic Constitution.
The Freedom Charter and African claims are amongst key human-rights-based documents in the country's history and national archives.
There can and should be no doubt in the mind of anyone in this House that the ANC was the architect and guarantor of a human rights culture and it remains its reliable custodian and protector.
The democratic breakthrough of 1994 enabled South Africans to collectively affirm belief in inalienable human dignity and its inherent values of equality, freedom and justice for all. These basic rights are not manna from heaven. They are the product of protracted struggles of the people of Sharpeville, Langa, Boipatong, Matola, Sekhukhuneland, Pondoland and other parts of the country. This must be asserted and protected at all times.
The founding President of the Republic and our icon, Nelson Mandela, realised that citizenship rights alone could not and would not fully restore human dignity and its inherent basic human rights. In particular, he realised that the legacy of apartheid colonialism imposed on us a moral, political and constitutional duty to free and develop the full potential of all South Africans to enable them to work together for the improvement of their quality of life.
In his own words, Madiba said:
The new Constitution obliges us to strive to improve the quality of life of the people. In this sense, our national consensus recognises that there is nothing else that can justify the existence of government but to redress the centuries of unspeakable privations, by striving to eliminate poverty, illiteracy, homelessness and diseases.
Spurred on by these wise words of our icon, President Jacob Zuma ably linked the restoration of our human dignity to decent education, health care, safety and security, rural development and land reform. The declaration by President Zuma that 2011 is a year to create decent jobs and transform the economy reveals a deep-seated conviction that the unbearable socioeconomic conditions in which the black majority live in this country must change, and change faster.
Hence the President called on all of us to work faster, better and smarter to speed up service delivery to the people of South Africa as a whole, especially people living in townships, informal settlements and rural areas.
The creation of jobs and the transformation of the economy is the surest way of restoring and protecting the human dignity of all South Africans, both black and white, and to guarantee it by extending socioeconomic rights to all our people in terms of our justiciable Bill of Rights. Our government stated unequivocally that human rights are women's and children's rights and that human rights are workers' rights. It is this conviction that led Mrs Albertina Sisulu and Sister Bennett Ncube to stand up for women and children's rights in the second half of the 80s. They established the National Children's Rights Committee and partnered with Unicef, a UN agency, to protect women and children's rights.
Spurred on by these veterans of our struggle for freedom, our government, Lead SA and the National Interfaith Movement, yesterday, 23 March 2010, launched a Bill of Responsibilities here in Cape Town. This Bill will ensure that every school and house of worship becomes a site for human and people's rights education.
On Sunday, 19 March 2011, the Roman Catholic Church in Midrand issued a pastoral letter endorsing this Bill of Responsibilities and advocating the cultivation of rights and responsibilities in the minds of our children. This Bill will truly and certainly inculcate the values of human dignity, equality and freedom, and build the character of our children.
This Parliament should commend President Zuma's administration and its media and social partners for this giant step in defence of human dignity.
The policy imperatives of this activist Parliament include public education. Each parliamentary constituency office, PCO, like every family and school, should become a site for human and people's rights education. Every PCO outreach programme should include a human rights education aspect to empower our people to stand up for their rights and to explode the myth that human rights take away the authority of parents over their children.
The other policy imperative of this activist Parliament is to guarantee and enforce public involvement and participation through various programmes such Taking Parliament to the People, people's assemblies and sectoral parliaments.
The widespread service delivery protests in some provinces suggested that, as public representatives, we have not used these programmes optimally and to ensure that we maintain contact with our people, especially women and youth in rural areas, townships and informal settlements. We allowed a social distance to grow between us and the masses of our people.
To remedy this situation, this House resolved to establish a nation- building and heritage committee. It will intercede and intervene with the executive, other organs of the state and business on behalf of the masses of our people. The committee will enable us to interact, inter alia, with rural women and youth, students and all sectors to ensure, as the President called upon us to do, that we know where the people live, how they think and what they want, as well as ensure that we minister to their needs.
This activist Parliament is an integral part of our rights-based constitutional order and must serve as a guarantor of human and people's rights and close the gap between government and the people, to ensure that no one takes the law into their own hands out of desperation or ignorance.
This activist Parliament has a primary responsibility of building cohesive, caring and sustainable communities. It will use partnerships, as the hon Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe often advises, to participate and contribute to nation-building and deepening and entrenching the culture of democracy and human rights.
This year's international commemoration has a special focus on the people of African descent. Hon members will recall that in 2009 the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution making 2011 the International Year for People of African Descent. At the centre of this resolution is the promotion of the economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights of the people of African descent, as well as their participation and integration in all aspects of society.
The commemoration must remind us not only of the persistent exclusions and marginalisation of people of African descent in some African countries, but also in the diaspora. Many of these diaspora Africans are the progeny of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, one of the greatest stains on the human conscience.
Statistics bear out the enormity of this crime against humanity. It is believed that 14 million Africans were transported to America as slaves and another 14 million to the East. In America alone, the number of the descendants of the African slaves exceeds 200 million and many of them live under dire circumstances.
In her article titled "African descendants suffer prejudice rooted in the atrocity of slave trading", Navi Pillay observed that dispora Africans -
... are often among those who are affected the most by poverty, unemployment and precarious living conditions. This is not a mere accident of fate.
We must recognise that at the root of this deplorable reality is structural discrimination that had its origins in places like Goree Island. Indeed, the legacy of the slave trade persists in many of today's practices. We see reflections of discrimination against African descendants in racial profiling, over-representation in prison populations, and poor access to quality education, justice and health services. All these obstacles, created by prejudice, intolerance and inequality, deny millions of people their universal human rights.
The resolution on the International Day for People of African Descent confirms the legitimacy of our affirmative action legislation and programme as mechanisms to reverse discrimination.
As recently as April 2009, at the Durban Review Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, 182 countries agreed that a renewed commitment was imperative to counter these scourges.
In memory of the heroes and heroines who fell in the struggle for the protection of human dignity and its inherent and inalienable rights in Africa and the diaspora, let us take this opportunity to express solidarity with people of African descent and generate long and overdue remedies that can address their plight and entitlement to a life of dignity and prosperity.
These international developments pose a challenge to this Parliament to strengthen its committee on the Interparliamentary Group on International Relations, PGIR, and to reinforce our participation in international fora and use the PGIR as a report-back mechanism to this Parliament.
The ANC calls on this Parliament to assume responsibility for a politically driven public education programme including workers', women's and children's rights. We believe that the phasing out of the public democracy offices and channelling of resources to politically driven public political education will stand us in good stead.
The ANC calls on Parliament to make resources available for mechanisms to interact and intercede with the executive, other organs of state and business on behalf of the people.
Addressing the NCOP, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe reiterated and emphasised the centrality of an activist Parliament in ensuring that we deliver quality services to our people, so that their human dignity can be deepened and entrenched in our motherland. Thank you. [Applause.]