On 27 April 1994, my wife and I queued with many others at Leicester Road Primary School in Kensington, Johannesburg, to vote for the first time in democratic elections. I was 33 and had mixed emotions: I was angry that I had been deprived of this basic right until then, but I was excited to be able to exercise my vote from that point onward and to contribute to decision-making in our new democracy.
It was the same way I would feel when we visited some of my favourite beaches and I would be angry that we had been deprived of this beauty and pleasure for so many years because these beaches had been reserved for whites only during apartheid.
Apartheid was evil and cruel and had prevented the majority of South Africans of enjoying life and, in many cases, realising their full potential. Until the end of apartheid, we could not study where we wanted to study and what we wanted to study, we could not live where we wanted to live, we could not date or marry whoever we wanted, we could not work where we wanted to work, and we could not go wherever we wanted to go. Whites sat downstairs in buses, while blacks sat upstairs or at the back. Even park benches had “European” and “Non-Europeans” signs, with “European” meaning “white”. Resistance to apartheid often resulted in severe beatings, imprisonment or even death.
The election on 27 April 1994 signalled a move from this cruel and evil past to a democracy in which, we believed (not hoped, believed), all of us would be able to realise our full potential.
My youngest daughter, who was born in Durban in January 1994, a few weeks before we moved to Joburg, was with us on that maiden election day and I cast my vote in the hope that life will be better for her and her sisters, and for all the young people who we hoped would be able to benefit from freedom.
Twenty-six years later, South Africans celebrate this momentous day in lockdown along with citizens of countries all over the world. Our enemy is no longer apartheid, but a virus that is threatening to kill a large chunk of the world’s population and has been indiscriminate in the way it has gone about its business. But there is another enemy – inequality and poverty – that was there during apartheid and that continues to be there in our democracy.
Freedom Day 2020 is a time for reflection as opposed to celebration.
My daughter is now 26 years old and trying to make a living in the music industry, one of the toughest industries to be in even during “normal” time. It is an industry that has almost been wiped out by the coronavirus, along with things like airlines, hotels, tourism, events and a range of other industries which will probably never recover fully.
My two older daughters – one is a street artist and the other helps artists of all kinds become more professional – have also seen their work grind to a halt. It has been tough on us as a family, but we still have much more than many others who have close to nothing.
Freedom Day 2020 is in some way reminding us of the basic human freedoms that we have taken for granted. The freedom to work is one of those, but also the freedom to walk around freely, to run or exercise, to visit family and neighbours, to walk dogs, to do whatever we want to do with our bodies, whether it is good or bad.
It is a good time, during this crisis and lockdown, to think about the current limitations on our freedom – which are necessary to try and halt the virus – and how hard we must fight to protect them when things return to “normal”.
South Africa is a rights-based society and we have one of the most progressive Constitutions in the world, with a strong Bill of Rights. Some of our rights have been suspended during this period of “national disaster” proclaimed by the President, but there are rights that should never be taken away. That includes the right to be treated with respect.
We have an opportunity, during the lockdown period, to review the way we have interacted with others, especially those who we considered to be inferior to us or with less power, money or influence than us. We have had an opportunity to see the importance of people who we took for granted and who are now in the frontline of the fight against the coronavirus. It is a time to pay respect to them and to ensure that that respect continues into the future.
It is a time when we need to revisit our attitudes to the vulnerable in our society, especially one as unequal as ours. Many people, if not the majority of South Africans, will never be able to escape poverty in our lifetime and probably many lifetimes to come. We need to accept that those who have need to share with those who do not have. And, in South Africa, there are some who have plenty while many have nothing.
Freedom Day 2020 is a good time to reflect how little freedom most South Africans have and how fortunate some of us are to have enjoyed some form of freedom over the past 26 years.
We thought that political freedom would bring economic prosperity. We have seen that this is not the case. We need to find a way of bringing economic freedom to those millions of South Africans who have not really benefited from having the right to vote. Economic freedom does not mean more social grants, but rather jobs that bring economic rewards as well as dignity.
We need to think about the vision we had when we voted in long queues on 27 April 1994 and find ways of making that vision comes true, even if it is already 26 years too late.
Happy Freedom Day.
